A 7NEWS Young Achiever Award nominee has said she wants rescind her nomination due to the lack of engagement with the SA Aboriginal community by the awards organisers.
24-year-old Ngarrindjeri woman, Shaylem Wilson said she was left “disappointed” after organisers gave her little notice to send personal details and a photo to accept her nomination.
She was nominated for the Department of Human Services Aboriginal Achievement Award for her work managing the University of Adelaide's Indigenous tutoring program with Wirltu Yarlu.
This week, 7NEWS Young Achiever Award SA posted the nominees to the category on their Facebook page with a photo of another Aboriginal woman.
“I’d seen that they’d asked for a headshot and a few other photos, so I had a look at their Facebook to see what other people had provided,” Ms Wilson told NITV News.
“And that is when I saw they had used someone else's photo under my name and said that it was me in the photo.
“Obviously it wasn’t me, it was someone else, but they’d just found that photo and thought that was the best thing to run with.”
She then replied to the post.
“I made a comment on the Facebook post saying, ‘just to clarify, this isn’t me. I’m super disappointed and I don’t want to be considered a finalist anymore if this little thought has gone into it’,” she said.
“To start with, they gave me super short timeframes. I work full-time and I study.”
Ms Wilson said she was only given three days to come up with the information required to move forward with the award nomination, which was very little time because of her busy schedule.
“I think the broader issue is the fact that there’s clearly no engagement done with the Aboriginal community here,” she said.
“I would rather not have anything to do with it now, I think they’ve shown their lack of appreciation for us as a collective, myself as a finalist and also the other finalists.
“I don’t think that they put a whole lot of effort into this one at all.
“I would happily rescind my nomination… I don’t want to be considered for it.”
Ms Wilson, who is an academic manager for Indigenous students at the university of Adelaide, said she would much rather have a larger discussion around what the awards organisers could do to engage better with Aboriginal communities in the future.
It is the second time she has been nominated for the same category, along with some of the same nominees from last year.
'Not good enough'
In response to the wrongful post, Josh Griffin from 7NEWS Young Achiever Awards SA posted an apology to Ms Wilson to their Facebook page.
“An unacceptable error was made yesterday (Tuesday) by our team, where a photo was incorrectly sourced online and then used without permission, for a post to congratulate the Finalists in the Aboriginal Achievement Award,” said Mr Griffin.
“We will not offer any excuses, this was a mistake and not good enough.
“We also apologise to the young lady who had their photo posted on our Facebook account without their permission, as well as to everyone who has been impacted by our mistake.
“It has been reiterated to our team and we have had to take some serious reflection on this mistake and the damage it has caused to Shaylem and others, for which we apologise.
“We are devastated, because we are aware that this mistake has caused understandable distress, which goes directly against the purpose of these awards: to create positivity and joy, highlighting incredible young people from across South Australia.”
