Key Points

- How a cleaner's son from Darwin became ACT Australian of the Year

- Why his mother begged him to change the name of his first business

- The $16 billion figure Devow says every Australian should know

Opening the Broome Chamber of Commerce's inaugural Indigenous Business Forum, the 2018 ACT Australian of the Year offered a keynote that was equal parts memoir, manifesto and family album, with a few jokes about Crocs along the way.

Dion Devow took the stage on Yawuru Country to open the Broome Chamber of Commerce's first Indigenous Business Forum with a story about his mother.

"She always said to me: 'Choose a career that will give you the ability to help your people, make sure you go to university'."

Three decades later, that instruction is still the through-line of everything Devow does.

A proud Meriam Mir man from Darnley Island with Manbarra heritage from the Palm Island group, Devow grew up in Darwin in a strict but loving Christian home. His mother, now 80 and still working in circle sentencing courts, cleaned the toilets at his school while studying part-time. She graduated at around 40 and went on to teach from preschool through to James Cook University.

"I saw how that degree changed the socioeconomic status of our household overnight," he told the Broome audience. "Education is fully powerful."

From health worker to accidental entrepreneur

As a kid Devow dreamed of becoming an Olympic athlete. Sport gave way to study, and he leaned on his Bachelor of Applied Science in Health Education from the University of Canberra to build a career in Indigenous affairs. He spent more than a decade as an Aboriginal health worker, including two years touring 80 communities with childhood friend Nova Peris piloting the Aboriginal Child Health Check.

It was on the road, surrounded by promotional shirts mob couldn't get enough of, that the idea for a clothing label began to form. "I really wanted to wear clothing that expressed how proud I was of being an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person," he said. "There were only about three or four Aboriginal clothing labels at the time. I thought, well, I could probably do it better. And I did. Fifteen years later I'm still here."

He launched Darkies Design in 2010, a name his mother begged him to reconsider.

"I was trying to send a message and negate the historic way that name was used," he said, with the easy laugh that punctuates most of his stories. "If I could go back, I'd probably call it 'Close the Gap'. But people remembered me."

The label, now DDesigns, has produced some genuine firsts in Aboriginal-designed school scrubs, Crocs and women's handbags, plus a federal commission for ties and scarves commemorating the Battle of Fromelles.

Closing the gap in unexpected sectors

Devow's current portfolio runs to two active businesses, DDesigns and First Nations Partners, a medical supply company servicing organisations across Australia. Alongside them he works as a Reconciliation Action Plan specialist with clients including LinkedIn, Wilson Security and AON, and a swag of government agencies.

He has also been the first Aboriginal person employed at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, where he co-authored a 55-recommendation report on Indigenous participation in cyber security. He put the findings into practice with a one-day kids' cyber camp at Questacon. "The instructor told me she'd been running that program for ten years," he said. "Our kids picked up the concepts faster than any cohort she'd ever taught."

That conviction, that black excellence belongs in every sector, animates his community work too. The Woden Warriors basketball club, which he founded a decade ago after one too many afternoons on the sidelines, now runs a NAIDOC competition that has grown from six teams to 204.

Changing the narrative

For Devow, the case for Indigenous business is also a case for changing how Australia talks about First Nations people.

"Indigenous businesses contributed $16 billion to Australia's economy in 2024," he said. "That's what people need to hear, because the narrative is always in the deficit, always in the negative stereotypes about who we are as a people."

He sees economic self-determination as a mental health story as much as an economic one. "Creating wealth is a real buzz. Making money for yourself extends to your family, your friends, your community. It changes your mindset."

The next generation

Devow's daughter pitched her first business at eight, came second against a room of adults, and has since delivered her own TEDx talk. "We've always been business people," he told the Broome crowd. "We've traded with Macassans, with Chinese fishermen, for thousands of years. It's innate to us."

His parting advice to the Forum was characteristically direct: don't let shame, pride or fear keep you small.

"Believe in yourself. Be bold. Take a step of faith. The only person that will stop you is you. Ask the questions, ask for help, find a mentor. We're deadly, we're thriving, we're awesome. Business is just one of the sectors where black excellence belongs."