Sharing Australia’s First Nations Perspectives and Cultures at a Business Event in Sydney

Warrane is the original Gadigal name for Sydney Cove, which sits on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour. Following consultation with local Elders and Traditional Owners, in 2022 Warrane was introduced as a dual name to represent the wider city, which did not exist as a single entity prior to British colonisation.

Dual naming is being introduced across Australian cities and landmarks, led by government agencies at a national, state and local level. This is an acknowledgement of the more than 65,000 years of Indigenous custodianship, language, and knowledge into the mainstream consciousness of the land on which Australians live, work and travel.

Sharing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, history, customs and knowledge raises awareness and understanding of the rich experiences and traditions that have existed in Sydney and Australia for millennia and safeguards their continuation for future generations. Connecting the ancient with the modern, sharing First Nations perspectives can be a deeply moving experience for delegates visiting Sydney.

There are many ways to immerse your delegates into local First Nations culture and perspectives at a conference, incentive or corporate meeting in Sydney.

Alongside a Welcome to Country, a Smoking Ceremony is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience. The ceremonial burning of specially prepared leaves is used to cleanse an area and participants of bad spirits and to protect and promote the wellbeing of visitors while they are “on country”. Smoking ceremonies use native plants and are specific to the area in which they are performed, so a smoking ceremony in Sydney will be unique to any other you might experience elsewhere in Australia.

Both rituals provide delegates an opportunity to share in a culture and a custom that has been practiced over millennia, stretching deep into the past of Sydney’s rugged landscape and the people who have passed down its history and meaning for thousands of generations. Dreamtime SouthernX and the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council can share these customs with delegates at your Sydney event.

Take your delegates to the summit of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to discover fresh perspectives on the city below guided by an Indigenous Storyteller. BridgeClimb Sydney introduced an indigenous focussed climb experience in 2021 called Burrawa – a local Aboriginal word meaning “above” or “upwards”. This three-hour experience offers a unique and unmissable immersion into Aboriginal stories and landmarks across Sydney Harbour. As they climb, delegates step through history with stories that span thousands of years to the present day.

Gaze out to sea through Aboriginal eyes. Learn the origins of the familiar place names that circle the water’s edge such as Bennelong Point and Barangaroo. The view from Sydney Harbour Bridge is celebrated around the world, offering delegates a rare opportunity to broaden their appreciation of the harbour city. Plus, a percentage of your group price is donated to Tribal Warrior, who provide mentoring programs to young Indigenous people to grow their confidence and sustain their culture.

ICC Sydney's flagship Legacy Program connects events at the convention centre into Sydney’s community to help both the event’s stakeholders and Sydney make the most of the occasion. The First Nations stream of the program offers a myriad of ways for organisers to bring First Nations perspectives and suppliers into their event, to widen understanding of the long-surviving culture and its link to the land, and to help Sydney and Australia’s First Nations people thrive through business, cultural celebration and community support. ICC Sydney can connect organisers with Aboriginal groups who perform cultural ceremonies and performances, with tour operators, First Nations’ speakers and MCs and with Supply Nation, which provides a database of genuine First Nations businesses which can contribute to business events. The venue is also increasing the Indigenous offering within its food and beverage collection, including by partnering with businesses like Sobah, First Nations’ makers of non-alcoholic craft beer.

Hop aboard a private charter of the Mari Nawi (Big Canoe) with Aboriginal organisation Tribal Warrior to learn about one of the world’s most famous – and largest and deepest – harbours from its first owners. The cultural cruise will help groups understand and appreciate Sydney’s rich Aboriginal heritage by outlining the multiple First Nations groups that call the land and water on and around the harbour home – the Gadigal, Guringai, Wangal, Gammeraigal and Wallumedegal peoples – teaching the Aboriginal names for Sydney’s landmarks and explaining their meanings to traditional custodians. Groups will learn of life around Sydney Harbour before western colonisation, exploring the history, stories and practices of those who lived on the land for thousands of years, including traditional fishing and food gathering techniques. The cruise also includes a visit to one of Sydney Harbour’s islands, Be-lang-le-wool, also known as Clark Island. Taking a cruise with Tribal Warrior supports their core work as an Aboriginal mentoring organisation, helping to guide and empower young Aboriginal people and their families in the Sydney community.

Bangarra Dance Theatre is Australia’s premier Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance company. Consistently developing new work and comprising the best of Australia’s professionally trained dancers and choreographers with Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, performances draw on 65,000 years of cultural heritage to tell the stories of Australia’s Indigenous Elders and raise awareness and understanding of First Nations cultures across the country.

Headquartered in the theatre precinct of Walsh Bay on Sydney Harbour a short distance from the city centre, various spaces can be hired for exclusive events. The largest is the waterside Dangarra O Badu – Dancing on Water – for 120 people cocktail style or 80 in banquet. Book a private performance, Welcome to Country or Smoking Ceremony for your event and adorn it with set and costume displays. The venue houses a commercial kitchen and offers four catering services. Bangarra’s dancers can also come to your event, exclusive performances at other venues and locations around Sydney are possible.

Take a walking tour of Tallawoladaha, The Rocks, with an Indigenous guide from Dreamtime SouthernX. Named Tallawoladaha thousands of years ago by the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, this experience of the harbourside neighbourhood in the heart of the city initiates an understanding of Aboriginal culture by showing how local Aboriginal people long used the water and the land and how the narratives and philosophies of the Dreamtime still exist in Sydney’s landscape today and shape Aboriginal thinking. Groups will receive a unique insight into the millennia-old spiritual connection between the area’s traditional owners and the natural environment that still endures today and be part of an immersive experience of the original perspective on an iconic part of Sydney – and the world.

Take a guided Aboriginal Bush Tucker tour in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. Led by a First Nations Guide, the tour demonstrates how Sydney’s first people traditionally used native plants in food and how native ingredients are being adapted and adopted in some of Sydney’s best restaurants today. Groups will sample bush tucker as part of the experience. The Botanic Garden also offers an Aboriginal Harbour Heritage Tour. Also led by a First Nations guide, hear stories of how the gardens and the Harbour foreshore are intertwined with the lifestyle, traditions and history of local Indigenous people who called this area home and explores their deep connection to Country – the land and water – and community. Tours in the Botanic Gardens can be tailored exclusively for groups.

Barangaroo is a bustling cultural, culinary and business hub on the western edge of Sydney’s city centre and Sydney Harbour. Its transformation from a disused container wharf has also allowed greater visibility of the culture and significance of the waterside landscape to its traditional owners, the Gadigal people. Its modern name pays homage to a key figure in the early settlement of modern day Sydney, Aboriginal woman Barangaroo, and to its traditional significance when it was known as “Women’s Land”. The precinct includes vast swathes of public green space, which hosts 75,000 native plant species, the most in all of central Sydney. Groups can take an interactive tour of the modern Barangaroo with a First Nations guide to understand the connection to Country and the significance of the land to Indigenous Australians long before its current development and as it is today. The tour explores Indigenous spirituality, sustainability and unites the ancient with the modern to provide a new way of seeing a 21^st century environment.

Sydney based Laissez-Faire Catering has partnered with Sharon Winsor, founder of the award-winning Indigiearth to create an Indigenous degustation menu for the botanical wonder that is The Calyx in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. The new dining experience incorporates Australian native ingredients including Indigenous meats, vegetables, herbs and spices and is delivered in a space of natural renown itself – The Calyx is home to one of the largest living botanic exhibitions in the Southern Hemisphere, with an everchanging green wall comprising more than 20,000 plants. The architecturally striking venue with both indoor and outdoor space can seat 180 delegates for a banquet.

The Sydney-based Cheeky Food Events have teamed up with Indigenous celebrity chef Mark Olive to create The Cheeky Olive, a new competitive MasterChef-inspired cooking and team building experience with a distinctly native Australian flavour and a First Nations philosophy. As groups go head to head to test their cooking skills, Mark, a Bundjalung man from the north coast of New South Wales, the state of which Sydney is the capital, will teach participants how to incorporate Indigenous ingredients into dishes as part of their everyday cooking routines and share stories and knowledge of Aboriginal history and the world’s longest surviving culture.

Include Australian First Nations artwork in your event, with a private after-hours tour of a selection of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders works at either the Art Gallery of New South Wales, set in the greenery of The Domain or at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia at Circular Quay. Australia is home to hundreds of different Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, each with their own language, culture and community and their art reflects the uniqueness of the experience of each artist. The contemporary newly opened North Building is home to the Art Gallery of New South Wales extensive collection if indigenous art in Yiribana, the first gallery visitors experience as they enter the new building. Through guided tours of gallery collections, delegates can gain another perspective on the variety and specificity of Australia’s diversity of First Nations peoples and their cultures. At the Australian Museum, groups can also obtain an insight into the richness and resourcefulness of early Indigenous Australian life through a guided exploration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artefacts held within the museum’s sizeable collection, which is one of the largest in Australia. From 32,000-year-old bread making tools to shell ornaments and jewellery and woven fish traps, each object tells a story.