Turn Up Respect - U Right Sis?

[Nooky]

Respect.

Respect for ourselves, for our culture, for each other.

It helps us stand tall and be the warriors we always have been.

Our kids look to us, their mob, mums and dads, aunties, uncles, nans and pops, Elders, mates, to help show them the way.

But these days, there's lots of other voices they're hearing online and on social media.

And they're teaching our kids all kinds of bad, disrespectful stuff about women and girls.

Stuff that can lead to violence.

Violence against women isn't part of our culture.

It never has been.

So we need to drown out the noise from those bad influences and turn up our voices.

Not just online, but everywhere.

Because when we teach our kids respect for themselves, culture, Country and each other, things change, and those disrespectful influencers, they lose. Because we've turned up respect.

Look at U Right Sis?

They're on the front line teaching our sisters how to recognise, report and respond to online disrespect, turning down those bad voices and turning up respect.

[U Right Sis?]

For me, working in domestic family sexual violence was never a choice.

It was something that I had to do. Because it affected my whole family, it affected me and it affects my community. So, I don't believe you can sit around and complain about something and not be willing to be a part of the solution.

Every part of this country has its own story, its own history, its own nation, its own culture.

U Right Sis? is place-based, localised, culturally appropriate, primary prevention.

U Right Sis? is an amazing program that empowers First Nations women to understand when they are experiencing technology-facilitated abuse.

Some women have experienced it and not understood that when they have been abused online or when things have been posted without their consent, that it's actually illegal and it's a form of abuse.

Some women are not understanding that it sits alongside other types of what we call coercive control.

We let the women lead the workshops. So depending what is happening in the community at the time before we go in, we're always invited.

Once we are invited, before we run anything, we say hey what's going on, what’s the issues that this community is experiencing?

Once we get an understanding of what is impacting the community then we let them tell us and then from that we will structure our workshops around their needs.

U Right Sis? is community-owned and it's community-led, so what that means is that everything that is created by U Right Sis? is created with community. So it's co-produced, and then very importantly, is co-owned. So everything that's created is owned by the community members, the communities that produce it.

So they have ultimate say over how the resources are used, how they're disseminated, where they're shown, the language that's being used in them, and they retain their intellectual and cultural property over everything that U Right Sis? creates.

And that reinforces self-determination, which is really important in any kind of localised response.

It's great to see young First Nations women deliver workshops for women and girls in their own community.

My team and some of the other teams that we're in partnership with are leaders in their own right in their community. Whether they're captains of their footy team or whether they're just young women that other younger women look up to.

So for them to be in community, delivering a workshop, talking about respectful relationships, healthy relationships and that experiencing technology-facilitated abuse is not okay, and is never your fault, and it's not something you have to put up with, is exceptionally powerful.

U Right Sis? is local and it's good and it's comfortable and you want Aboriginal people to feel comfortable in workshops on hard topics like this.

It helps me knowing that there's programs out there that talks about staying safe online. Teaching my sister, teaching my cousin, teaching my family back at home, in my community, in my homelands.

We have seen an increase of people addressing tech-facilitated abuse.

People are now calling out behaviour, saying, hey, you're not going to track me on online devices, hey, you're not going to have access to my Facebook.

We are seeing women empowered saying to police, I'm experiencing tech-facilitated abuse, or they're telling their lawyers or frontline workers, hey, this is what I'm experiencing.

So we know through our monitoring and evaluation that 100% of our participants are walking out that door knowing how to access services, knowing that services exist where they can get help.

That makes me really excited.

They know where to go to now.

They know what eSafety is.

Yeah, they know now.

You just need to go out there and educate mob.

[Nooky]

Respect is all about sharing and looking after each other.

It's what our people do.

That's why teaching each other about culture, lifting each other up, being role models is so important.

Those online influencers hating on women, trying to fill our kids' ears with disrespectful stuff, they don't stand a chance against this.

Our voices.

Our culture.

So let's be loud and proud.

Let's raise our voices and teach our kids about respect every day in our communities, because respect for ourselves, our culture, our Country, and each other can drown out the voices of disrespect. Anywhere.

It's time to pump up the volume.

Let's Turn Up Respect.