Throughout NAIDOC Week's history, the event has evolved from protest to celebration with businesses coming on board and hosting morning teas and talks.

In 2021, the annual week marking First Nations culture, history and excellence is now a firm date in the corporate calendar with the appetite from big business to be involved bigger than ever.

You just have to look around to see it.

An NRMA-owned Sydney ferry features traditional wave designs that recognise local Aboriginal clans, Facebook is telling users what land they're on, and Yahoo has changed its logo to Indigenous art by Noongar and Saibai Islander artist Tyrown Waigana.

Australia Post will now permanently include traditional place names on letters and parcels.

Are corporations walking the walk?

Corporations are talking the talk with big PR campaigns but whether they are walking the walk when it comes to committing to standing with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples can be unclear, according to Aboriginal woman Professor Jacinta Elston.

"We've got to be really careful we don't allow companies and organisations to turn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues into a notion of some sort of holiday without there being a deeper level of engagement inside of their organisations."

The pro-vice-chancellor (Indigenous) at Monash University said this meant support on the most pressing issues facing Indigenous people.

"Where are they on black deaths in custody? Where are they on child protection or the over-imprisonment of Indigenous people? Where are they on building an anti-racism agenda in our society and in our workforces?"

Professor Elston urged companies to show a deeper level of engagement and a year-round commitment to First Nations issues and events.

Dr Emma Lee, a Trawlwulwuy woman from Tebrakunna country, north-east Tasmania and research fellow at Swinburne University of Technology, said big businesses bombarding NAIDOC Week with reconciliation and PR announcements felt transactional.

"What bothers me about this is that instead of this week being for us to be able to define what our views are, what our aspirations are, we're now in a situation where we're having to respond to what others are doing," Dr Lee says.

"I'm concerned they're taking our space, because all of a sudden it puts an issue of gratitude onto our peoples — that we must be grateful for other people, governments in particular, for making these statements and pronouncements during our week.

"And if we disagree with that during our week? Well, generally Indigenous peoples are seen as being fractious."

What's a reconciliation action plan?

Both Dr Lee and Professor Elston said Reconciliation Action Plans go hand-in-hand with companies 'jumping on the bandwagon' of an event because it's seen as being politically sensitive or correct.

Reconciliation action plans, or RAPs, are a kind of road map that helps companies foster positive relationships with Indigenous Australians.

It could look like employment opportunities, cultural training, leadership scholarships, or volunteering in the community.

"We have reconciliation action plans because Indigenous peoples do not get a fair deal," said Dr Lee.

"They're meant to be able to highlight where Indigenous peoples have been discriminated against previously, where our cultures have been diminished or hidden or not valued.

"A reconciliation plan is meant to bring out and draw out within a business how they can improve their diversity and inclusion."

Dr Lee said some companies might even capitalise off their RAPs and this was problematic.

"[Companies] can use a reconciliation plan to work out how knowledge, practices, and traditions can actually be capitalised on or can be made commercial," she said.

"So Indigenous peoples don't actually have a role within businesses to just be an Indigenous person under a reconciliation action plan — the onus is actually on Indigenous peoples to contribute their labour for others to make gains out of that."

Walking the talk

Australia Post knows all about RAPs.

National Indigenous manager at Australia Post and Noongar man Chris Heelan said the company is on its fourth RAP.

"It's a generational thing," he said.

"You can't be just in there to meet a two-year plan or a three-year plan … this is this 10, 15, 20, year plan. For us, it's like 30 odd years."

When it comes to talking about healing country, this year's NAIDOC theme, Professor Elston wants corporations to prioritise conversations around the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the call for constitutional recognition for First Nations peoples.

"Voice, treaty, truth …. that's something that they could be supporting," she said.

"They could be helping to increase the capacity of people in their organisation to understand truth-telling and treaty and why it's important to consider constitutional change."

The knock-on effect of the corporatisation of NAIDOC Week

Koori artist Blak Douglas, whose illustrations feature in Thomas Mayor's 'Finding Our Heart', a children's book explaining the Uluru Statement, said commercial interest could be a positive thing.

He's worked with Verizon Media to bring his illustrations to life in augmented reality and highlight the need for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to Parliament.

"I believe it is becoming commercial, but I don't hold corporations to account regarding that," he said.

He said the trouble was when corporate campaigns around NAIDOC Week looked like tokenism and this often happened when organisations consistently focussed on imagery inspired by the dot painting from Central Australia.

"It seems to be becoming more stereotypical in what the layperson views as the Aboriginal art form," he said.

"It's starkly consistent with what we end up seeing on each round of the NRL Indigenous footy team, in the tourist shots, on didgeridoos, on terracotta pots, on mouse pads etc.

"It's a horribly graphic rendition of the most stereotypical style that most people are accustomed to and it kind of keeps us in a stereotypical dark age."