Indigenous students are set to benefit from a new Federation University Reconciliation Action Plan, RAP.

The plan will lead to the university creating learning spaces for Indigenous students and employing more Indigenous staff during the next three years.

The university has committed to a target of two percent Indigenous employment and ensuring students receive Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander perspectives in their studies by 2021.

The university has joined more than 1000 organisations Australia-wide in adopting an action program based on building relationships, respect and opportunities with the Indigenous community.

Vice-chancellor and president Helen Bartlett said the program would help foster opportunities for Indigenous people in the Wimmera and across the broader university community.

“The RAP is about recognising the special place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first Australians and the power of education to create genuine opportunities to transform lives and enhance communities,” she said.

“The new RAP will guide us in our commitment to reconciliation, both internally and within the communities in which we operate.

“It builds on our previous RAPs to really challenge the university to embed reconciliation across the organisation, its campuses and centres with measurable actions and targets.”

The RAP launch follows the renaming of the university’s Wimmera campus library last month.

The library is now known as ‘Wimmera Library Werrunangity larr Wimmerata: A quiet place in the Wimmera’.

Prof Bartlett said renaming the library with an Indigenous name was important because it emphasised Federation Univeristy’s links to the Indigenous peoples of the Wimmera and created a welcoming place for the community.

The entire November 20, 2019 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!