Sean Gordon, CEO of the Yadha Muru Foundation, joined Paola Tamberlin, Head of Indigenous Programme at Shore, on her podcast Tennant Creek Talks to discuss the Foundation’s partnerships between high expectation metropolitan schools and remote schools with a very high enrolment of Indigenous students.
Asked why he set up the Foundation, Sean said it was because Aboriginal children are disengaging from school by Year 3 and, more recently, by Year 1. The work grew out of relationships Sean built with Peter Berkley and Leanne Holt through the Darkinjung Land Council and Barker School Council, leading to Darkinjung Barker on the Central Coast – a permanent, community-led school showing what’s possible when done properly. Yadha Muru Foundation was formally established in 2019, and has since supported five schools, including catalysing Gilibaa at Port Stephens, bringing a bilingual, culturally grounded school to the Worimi community. The City-Country Partnerships program later expanded this model nationally — Yadha Muru won the tender, establishing 22 partnerships across 47 schools in its first two years.
Paola picked up on the language Sean uses — partnership, not model — and asked him to explain the difference. Sean’s answer: there’s no one-size-fits-all. The challenges facing remote and urban Indigenous communities are similar in kind, if not in degree. What matters, he said, is recognising that each community has its own language, culture and governance, and building the partnership around what that community decides it needs — “place-based development, but based on the needs of a community and not on the priorities of a government.”
Turning to impact, Paola asked what would make the programme feel truly worth it. Sean’s focus is the long game, partnerships that hold for years rather than short-term wins, though he said the small wins matter too. He traced this back to a decade of work on the referendum, where he came to see disengagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia as a lack of understanding rather than dislike. He expects some of today’s Shore students to be in leadership roles within twenty years, with a first-hand understanding of how policy lands on Indigenous communities. Paola called it “big ripples… working your way out to systemic change across society” — and added her own reflection, describing Shore as “blessed” to be part of a two-way relationship where both sides grow together.
Asked to close on a win, Sean pointed to Tennant Creek High School’s woodwork room, vacant for years until Shore brought specialist teachers up six weeks ago to get it running again. Sean, a former carpentry and joinery tradesman turned construction teacher, said watching students use the saws and chisels to make timber iPhone speaker stands is a real measure of the trust a partnership builds. Without it, he said, the room would probably have sat empty for another five years.