Thursday 5 August 2010

The third annual Nulungu Reconciliation Lecture will delivered on Thursday 5 August 2010 at 5pm at the Broome Campus. The Nulungu Reconciliation Lecture is an annual event on the Broome Campus where key speakers are invited to address issues of Reconciliation that shape contemporary Aboriginal and Australian thought and experience.

This year’s speaker will be Professor Mick Dodson. Professor Dodson is a member of the Yawuru peoples, the traditional Aboriginal owners of land and waters in the Broome area of the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia. He is currently Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University and a Professor of Law at the ANU College of Law.

Professor Dodson was Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity. He served as Commissioner from April 1993 to January 1998. Professor Dodson graduated in law from Monash University. He served as Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in both the NT & WA. Professor Dodson is a member and the current Chairman of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He was a former special commissioner with the Western Australian Law Reform Commission. He is a board member and Co-Chair of Reconciliation Australia and a board member of the Lingiari Foundation. He was a founding member and chairman of the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre. Professor Dodson has been a prominent advocate on land rights and other issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and is a vigorous advocate of the rights and interests of the Indigenous Peoples of the world. He was the Co-Deputy Chair of the Technical Committee for the 1993 International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. He was also chairman of the United Nations Advisory Group for the Voluntary Fund for the Decade of Indigenous Peoples. He served for 5 years as a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Indigenous Voluntary Fund. He has served for the last six years as a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. On 25 January 2009, Professor Dodson was named Australian of the Year. He is currently a visiting scholar on the Broome where he is researching Native Title and the Yawuru people.