Cross-Cultural Learning
Cultural competency knowledge and skills with an original Australian flavour
This Platform offers all an opportunity to gain knowledge and skill that will empower cross-cultural communication and relationships—giving real insight and answers as to why many cross-cultural interactions fail.
Plus, our decades of work alongside the Yolngu people of Arnhem land in their struggle to survive has provided us with meaningful live case studies to ground the international cultural competency theory and skills with unique real-life first Nations Peoples’ content.
Cross-Cultural Booster Pack
This Booster Pack presents a new, safe, exciting approach to cross-cultural online training. The 1.5 Hr Worldview course shows how Worldviews are different and can block cross-culture communication. With awareness, the blockages can be avoided. The 2.5 hr Kinship Course delivers an in-depth introduction to the Yolngu Kinship system that Yolngu have trouble explaining in English. Tips for Teachers course delivers ten helpful cross-cultural tips about Yolngu culture that few mainstream people know exist. Finally, Cultural Safety needs to be more than just a popular phrase used in cross-cultural settings. This module offers ten fundamental principles needed to navigate cultural differences in a mutually respectful way.
This Booster delivers a running start to becoming culturally competent while learning many exciting things about Yolngu culture – one of the most traditional cultures that still exist in Australia.
Our site supports Group Training
We can also offer a dynamic group training package and bulk discounts for your staff or group reconciliation programs. For example, your team leader can register your group under a Group Name and purchase the number of seats you require. The team leader can then add and manage users/students up to the number of seats purchased and receive reports on individual users’ progress.
If you add other courses to your group in the future, they will be added to your users/student logins. You can also add more seats at any time.
Please contact us to discuss your specific group training needs. We can also offer a more complex group learning package. This could include the Starter Pack plus a copy of the book Why Warriors Lay Down and Die, a live online Q&A session with Richard Trudgen, an in-person group workshop or access to ongoing assistance and other free resources.
Our Featured courses
After 40 years of face-to-face training, we now offer these online courses for your convenience. Click through to explore our first lessons about the Yolngu way of life, including tools for effective cross-cultural communication, and insights into universal human dynamics.
Worldview Course
Understanding worldview is like learning a new language, and it is essential for effective and productive cross-cultural communication.
The Worldview Course includes:
Chapter 1 introduces the new language of understanding ‘worldview’, essential for effective and productive cross-cultural communication.
Chapter 2 explores the strange and unexpected differences in people’s worldviews. Surprising real-world examples are used to give real depth to the course.
Having a good understanding of worldview will give you new breakthrough Information and skills to super-charge your communications with persons from a different cultural or even generational group to your own.
Richard Trudgen shares his 40 years of cross-cultural experience to guide us through the Worldview course. Course length is about 1.5 Hrs
Kinship Course
The Kinship chapters explore the complex and unusual kinship structure of the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land.
The Kinship Course includes:
Chapter 1 introduces the Yolngu kinship system and its terms, rules and naming protocols.
Chapter 2 details kinship connection relationships.
Chapter 3 explores the reasons behind kinship avoidances. There are 3 lessons in each Chapter.
This course equips the student to understand kinship structures when working with other Indigenous and Minority groups.
Understanding the Yolngu kinship structure is integral to comprehending the basis of Yolngu economic, legal and social systems and engaging in successful cross-cultural communications.
You will also be given downloadable kinship charts in A3 and A4 formats. Total course length 3 Hrs
Why Learn about Yolngu Culture?
Australia’s First Nations peoples are one of the oldest continuous surviving groups in the world, known to have existed for at least 60,000 years — before the end of the last ice age. Yolngu people are some of the most traditional of these groups, who still live by their original law and language.
By learning about Yolngu culture, you can learn about, and in effect protect, the original Australian culture in its true form.
Learning about cross-cultural and cross-language differences between Yolngu and non-Yolngu people will also empower you with information and skills to help you understand human dynamics in other cross-cultural settings.
In developing these courses, Richard Trudgen builds on his wealth of experience teaching Yolngu culture in seminars across every major city in Australia, as well as in small communities — from Weipa, in northern Qld, to Broome in WA.
Thanks to Richard’s hard-earned insights, Why Warriors’ Cross-Cultural Learning courses can equip you to be more culturally competent and be able to work in a more culturally safe way, with a wide range of ethnic groups.
Learning outcomes include:
- an understanding of the original Australian (First Nations) culture from a Yolngu perspective
- cross-cultural skills and knowledge
- a deeper understanding of the different cultural protocols that can exist within any particular group
- increased self-awareness of unconscious bias
- greater self-confidence when engaging with different cross-cultural, cross-language groups
- deeper cultural knowledge that usually takes many years of living in a First Nations community to acquire
- the human development and human dynamic skills necessary to build productive teams.
Hi, I'm Richard Trudgen, your Cross-Cultural Learning Mentor
I have lived and worked with the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land for over 40 years.
Learning their language and way of life has provided me with a unique hands-on, cross-cultural learning experience. Much of this has come from the elders and their ancient wisdom, which they have requested I share with you.
I helped the Yolngu build their own small town, develop homeland villages, build media services, and provide cross-cultural training for English first-language people like myself.
We can all be future changers just by helping someone. At times, that can mean learning new things about ourselves, and walking in the footprints of another group of people can do that.
So please, join me in a life-changing experience as we share these knowledges with you.
Hi, I'm Richard Trudgen, your Cross-Cultural Learning Mentor
I have lived and worked with the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land for over 40 years.
Learning the Yolngu Matha language and Yolngu way of life has provided me with a unique hands-on, cross-cultural learning experience. Much of this experience has come from the elders and their ancient wisdom, which they have requested I share with you.
I helped the Yolngu build their own small town, develop homeland villages, build media services, and provide cross-cultural training for English first-language people like myself.
We can all be future changers just by helping someone. At times that means learning new things about ourselves, and walking in the footprints of another group of people can do that.
So please, join me in a life-changing experience as we share this knowledge with you.
What my students say
Why Warriors respectfully acknowledge the Yolngu people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live and work.
We pay respect to all First Nations peoples, past, present and emerging.