Striving to ‘fix’ systems
New business focuses on cultural fusion
A GEELONG woman’s drive to equip businesses and indigenous communities with a way to connect and collaborate is born from a unique and deeply personal perspective.
Aboriginal entrepreneur Marsha Uppill believes the business community has untapped potential to make a significant contribution towards Closing the Gap.
But Ms Uppill, whose mother was part of the Stolen Generation, is working both sides of the street.
“I often say I am the fusion between two worlds, I am able to communicate in both worlds, and also to bureaucracy,” Ms Uppill said.
The name of her business start-up, Campfire, reflects the communal conversations she wants to facilitate by giving businesses the skills to work with Aboriginal communities.
Still in development, Campfire will provide the diagnostic ability for businesses to address how they engage with Aboriginal communities and traditional owners with key focus areas on cultural intelligence, cultural impact and cultural respect
But that is just the launching pad towards more systemic and committed change.
“The diagnostic parts are just the beginning,” Ms Uppill said. “It’s the training, the engagement, the relationship building, it’s about the high-level business strategies that become a life of your business.”
As gaps and opportunities are identified, Ms Uppill is keen to engage Aboriginal businesses and entrepreneurs to provide the commercial outcomes.
Campfire is geared towards empowering both sides of the marketplace with respectful selfdetermination for Aboriginal communities and less involvement by government.
“I am looking for business buy-in, and Aboriginal community buy-in as well,” she said.
“All these things (in the welfare model) work in their own space, but I want to try something slightly different.”
Her own background has been working in government and Ms Uppill now works part-time at the Geelong council as a social policy equity officer.
She is developing her start-up through the Runway Geelong program and has received positive feedback after pitching her business at a major LaunchVic event, at the Melbourne University Accelerator Program Gala and on That Start Up Show on which she was the winning pitch for the episode, going on to the final which aired online last week.
Not winning the final didn’t matter.
“When I stand up there, it’s not just Marsha, I stand up there thinking, ‘How many Aboriginal people have had this stage, how many are going to come after me?’.
“I just don’t think about me and my business, I think about my children and my family … and doing justice for First Nations people across the board.”
Her understanding and appreciation of her own culture came as a revelation in her teens after her early family life wore the aftermath of her mother's tragic journey.
“The Stolen Generation had ramifications in terms of her raising children and the grief and people not acknowledging what had happened to them as being an atrocity at that time,” Ms Uppill said.
“I grew up in what we call the Lost Generation; having a parent that wasn’t engaged in parental skills because they hadn’t had that in their life.
“We lived in poverty, we were homeless for periods of time, the racism was quite high.
“For me, the challenge was in existence ... of surviving more than living.”
But she has always been motivated to fix the systems that failed both herself and her mother.
“I love the fact I say, ‘come and sit with me at my Campfire, and bring the questions you might think are stupid, so we can give you answers, and we can start collaborating and making a commitment’.”