FUNDING INDIGENOUS ENTREPRENEURSHIP Dean Foley is the founder of the world’s first Indigenousstart up accelerator, Barayamal, or "Black Swan" in the Gamilaraay language. Our editors discussed venture capital, sustainable entrepreneurship, and black cladding in a wide-ranging interview with Foley.
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rior to the colonisation of Australia, schoolchildren in Europe were only taught about white swans, while Australia’s First Nations people knew for millennia of the black swan. The "discovery" of the black swan in Australia forced Europeans to reconsider and change their perceptions about what a swan actually means. For Foley, the black swan represents the First Nations entrepreneurs who haven’t been recognised in the business world because of current perceptions – and that Barayamal will show the world that First Nations entrepreneurs exist and can build successful businesses that create a better world for everyone. What were your goals when you first founded Barayamal, and how have they changed over time? Foley: I started Barayamal because I didn’t believe in the existing system that was primarily operating from a Western entrepreneurship perspective. I wanted to learn how to run and grow businesses, but I was frustrated with government organisations that were supposed to "help" Indigenous people.
After starting from frustration and just wanting to do "cool" events and programs to support Indigenous Entrepreneurship, we’ve had to take things more seriously, measuring our impact to secure further philanthropic funding and develop a strategy that would allow us to compete against the status quo organisations that are still receiving millions of taxpayer dollars. As soon as I founded Barayamal, one of those government organisations I was frustrated with supposedly bankrolled a non-Indigenous program to run their “Indigenous” program by providing them with $500,000. Our budget at the time was $0 and it hasn’t gotten that much bigger so we’ve had to be creative and leverage the community support to beat these well-funded government programs. How big is the gap between venture capital (VC) funding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous businesses, and what impact does this have for startups? Foley: Venture capital is purely focused on a return on investment and making money which is okay, however, they are starting to get pressure
"Black cladding", while not strictly defined, is the process in which non-Indigenous businesses "partner" in an unfair, or inequitable way with Indigenous businesses to access corporate funds or government grants through the Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP). The IPP sets a target of three per cent of all government contracts to go to Indigenous-owned businesses, and awarded $3.5bn of contracts between 2015 and 2020. In black-clad businesses, benefits to Indigenous communities are often limited, while decision making, supply and resourcing is kept firmly in the hands of the white partner, subverting the goal of the program.
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