Reconciliation and Recognition

The Reconciliation and Recognition Committee maintains an overview of all aspects of the MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Policy and MLS Reconciliation Action Plan.

MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Policy

The objective of this policy is to set out Melbourne Law School’s reconciliation and recognition commitments. It provides the background and justification for the particular goals enumerated in the MLS Reconciliation Action Plan (MLS RAP), and provides principles to guide the implementation and evaluation of those commitments. View the MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Policy here.

Terms of Reference – Reconciliation and Recognition Committee

Melbourne Law School is committed to building and supporting responsible relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and between their respective laws and legal traditions. In particular, the Law School acknowledges the enduring importance of Indigenous law and legal systems, and the longstanding use of Australian law to coerce and dispossess Indigenous peoples, including by undermining the continuity and autonomy of their communities. With this difficult history in mind, the Reconciliation and Recognition Committee is established to maintain an overview of all aspects of the MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Policy and Reconciliation Action Plan of the Melbourne Law School (MLS RAP), including:

Recognition of Indigenous laws, legal systems and cultures in the Law School
Recognition of Indigenous experiences of, and engagement with, Australian law
Establishment and maintenance of relationships with Indigenous communities, institutions, groups and peoples
Attracting, supporting and retaining Indigenous students
Attracting, supporting and retaining Indigenous staff
Ensuring that Indigenous laws and perspectives are incorporated in teaching and learning at the Law School, including in the structure of offerings, the design and delivery of teaching and the experience of students
Ensuring that MLS is implementing an Indigenous Research Plan for developing Indigenous research and researchers at MLS

To advise on MLS and University rules, policies and procedures to the extent that they raise significant policy questions concerning the MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Policy and MLS RAP;

To monitor the resources, performance and support offered by the Law School to further the objectives of the MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Policy and MLS RAP, and make recommendations where appropriate to enhance them;

To make recommendations of principle or policy on any of these matters to the Associate Deans, Deputy Dean, Dean, Law School or to any other Law School board or committee as appropriate;

To report to the Melbourne Law School on these matters including at Departmental Meetings as appropriate.

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Acknowledgement of Country

Melbourne Law School acknowledges the Wurundjeri Peoples of the Kulin Nations as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the law school stands. We pay our respects to their Elders both past and present.

Content Warning

This website may contain images or names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased.

Banner image credit: Ande K Terare, Food Sites, 2010. Language group: Bundjalung, Tribe/clan: Minjungbal.

Ande K Terare was born in 1970 on the North Coast of New South Wales. He gained knowledge of traditional culture from older siblings and other relatives in his family. His paintings depict the traditional ways of life: the land, the natural resources, ceremonies, stories and legends, and contemporary works which are largely influenced by his Aboriginal heritage. He currently shows his work at Art Yarramunua Gallery.

A Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) is a document that sets out an organisation's commitment to promoting reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the broader Australian community.

The University of Melbourne is committed to building practices that recognise and support responsible lawful relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Melbourne Law School, as a leading Australian legal institution, is committed to the University’s vision and ambition, and we aspire to meet our particular responsibilities in ensuring that Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians have a shared future. MLS is engaged in initiatives and actions that form a key part of the University-wide Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), including the establishment of The Indigenous Community Pilot Program and the implementation of the Classroom Photo Mural Initiative.

Discover more at Reconciliation at Melbourne

The Indigenous Community Pilot Program was established in 2017 to support Indigenous law school students’ success. The program assists students with exploring their indigeneity in the context of the law school (both physical spaces and scholarly experience) and supports them as they prepare for practice in the Australian legal community.

The program intends to ensure that Indigenous students are pedagogically supported through faculty consultation, specialist guidance and professional support.

The pilot program objectives are being fulfilled through the establishment of initiatives in three vital areas:

Community: Providing support with study community meetings with Indigenous students, establishing strong relationships with Murrup Barak and strengthening partnerships with Indigenous and legal organisations.

Academic: Development of study materials, adaptation of pedagogy, professional guidance and support to enable students to explore their Indigeneity in a legal context. Research, bespoke support and academic guidance to enhance student belonging, academic success and the law school’s responsiveness to contested spaces.

Organisation and Planning: Development of information for new student recruitment, removing barriers to enrolment and learning, developing cultural awareness within the law school, and appropriate University of Melbourne academic guidance, pedagogy, and assessment planning.

PILOT TEAM 2017

Bree Williams

Research Fellow, LASC and Indigenous Community Program
Joined LASC, January 2017. Doctor Juridical Science Candidate (Monash), research area: Clear Legal Writing Education in Australia. Previous roles include Knowledge Support Lawyer, Maurice Blackburn, Professional Support Lawyer, Victoria Legal Aid.

Dr Chantal Morton

Senior Lecturer
Director of Teaching and Director Legal Academic Skills Centre (LASC)
Pilot Program Manager.

Dr Olivia Barr

Senior Lecturer
Academic Liaison for the Indigenous Studies Program

A key action as part of the Melbourne Law School’s Reconciliation Action Plan is to consider and implement options that would give prominence and due recognition to Indigenous law and jurisprudence in the Melbourne Law School (MLS) building.

MLS Reconciliation and Recognition Committee are excited to bring you an update on the Classroom photo mural project. Some of you may have seen new murals installed in spaces around the Law School building. A total of 6 wallpapers can be found in various locations.

The purpose of the initiative is to acknowledge the long, complex (and important) history of lawful relations between Indigenous and Anglo-Australian laws and peoples. The Law School acknowledges that Anglo- Australian law is marked by refusal and violence, and has often been found wanting, when asked to meet with Indigenous laws. But we also want to recognise that Indigenous peoples in Australia have resisted, argued with and transformed the law we teach and learn every day in the MLS Building. This initiative introduces to the teaching spaces selected images of meetings, or encounters, between laws that have been driven by Indigenous peoples, often with Anglo-Australian lawyers working alongside or for them. Prof. Mark McMillan commenced the wallpaper project when he was with us at MLS, and we are pleased and proud to bring it to life. The placement of these images, accompanied by explanatory captions and longer QR accessible text that tells the story of the particular encounter, is intended to provide a constant presence to engage students, teachers and visitors in shared stories and histories; and to think about how we might take responsibility for our own law in the past, and into the future, in our studies and subsequent practice. The teaching space where the images are to be located – regardless of the topic being taught – we hope will give rise to questions around particular histories, law/s and lawful relationships to the land on which we teach and learn.

We would also note that the activity of establishing the wallpaper project has in itself involved an engagement of lawful relations. For each image, we have of course not only addressed the necessary legal permissions, but also engaged in protocols of seeking permissions from the Indigenous peoples and their descendants whose stories are told in the images.

In lecture theatre 102 a large-scale mural of the Mabo decision is installed. The image Mabo Plaintiffs and witness with their Lawyer, Supreme Court of Queensland, May 1989 depicts the plaintiffs (L to R: Father Dave Passi, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Bonita Mabo, Bryan Keon-Cohen, James Rice, Eddie Mabo Jnr & Henry Kabere.) in the case of Mabo v Queensland [No. 2] in 1989, at the Supreme Court in Brisbane with their junior counsel Bryan Keon-Cohen and some of their supporters. Mabo v Qld [No. 2] was decided by the High Court in 1992. The decision remains one of the most significant and complex cases in Australian legal history. (Image courtesy of Yarra Bank Films)

In lecture theatre 108 a large-scale mural of the Tent Embassy is installed. The image Aboriginal tent embassy officials arrive at the embassy after it had be re-erected on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra, where over 1,000 Aborigines and their supporters demonstrated for Aboriginal land rights, 30 July 1972 shows activists Ghillar Michael Anderson and Cheryl Buchanan - members of the Tent Embassy diplomatic staff - returning to the Tent Embassy on 30 July 1972. Supporters can be seen saluting and celebrating the ambassadors’ return to the rebuilt Embassy after it was forcibly evicted and dismantled by federal police. The Tent Embassy celebrated its fortieth year in 2012; it continues to stand in front of Parliament and attest to the limitations of Australian laws and governments. Image courtesy of Fairfax Media.

In seminar rooms 223 and 224 two murals significant to Kulin nation and the land in which the Law school stands have been installed. In room 224 the image titled A group of Aboriginal men at Coranderrk Station, Healesville shows the sixteen Kulin men (In Alphabetical order: Thomas Avoca; Thomas Bamfield; William Barak; Charles Cable; Mooney Clark; John Cogie; Thomas Gilman; Lanky Gilmore; John Logan; Benjamin ‘Lanky’ Manton; Edward McLennon; Thomas McLennon; Samuel Rowan; Frederick Stewart; John Terrick; Richard Werdurum) who comprised the 1886 Coranderrk deputation to Victorian Parliament in Melbourne, to farewell Chief Secretary Graham Berry upon his retirement from public office. The deputation was led by William Barak, the Kulin ngurungaeta (clan leader). The diplomacy, political strategy and negotiation skills of successive Kulin ngurungaeta were vital in the acquisition of land, and the establishment, success and maintenance of Coranderrk Station. In room 223 the image installed captures the first time Wurundjeri elders addressed Victorian Legislative Assembly as the traditional owners of the land on which Parliament stands. On Thursday, 22 June 2017, six Wurrundjeri elders—Aunty Alice Kolasa, Aunty Gail Smith, Ron Jones, Allan Wandin, Uncle Colin Hunter, Jr, and Jacqui Wandin—supported the introduction of the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Bill 2017 (Vic) in Victorian Parliament. Image courtesy of Jim McFarlane/Wurundjeri Tribe Council

In room 628 a large scale mural Pastor Doug Nicholls leads Aboriginal people from Lake Tyers to Parliament House in Melbourne, 23 May 1963 is installed. This image shows Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls alongside community leaders Laurie Moffatt, Eric Onus and Jim McGinness, as well as Victorian Opposition leader Clive Stoneham, in Melbourne in 1963. Leading a crowd of forty, Moffatt, Nicholls, Onus and McGinness marched through the city to Parliament House to protest the forced closure of Lake Tyers Aboriginal Station by the Aborigines Welfare Board. The rally was comprised of a coalition of First Nations activist groups, trade unions, supporters and allies. This demonstration was a landmark in the sustained and strategic political mobilisation that saw Lake Tyers declared a permanent Aboriginal reserve in 1965. The campaign incited and supported other claims to land and civil rights in the decades that followed. Image courtesy of Fairfax Media.

On the Mezzanine level, in the student locker area, outside the entry to GM 15 (David Derham theatre) a large-scale mural of Student Freedom Riders has been installed. The image depicts the student group Student Action For Aborigines organisation 1965 journey through NSW country towns to draw attention to racism and living conditions faced by Aboriginal people. The placement of this image in the Mezzanine student locker area locates the activity of student activism for Indigenous rights within a student space. Image courtesy of Ann Curthoys/Wendy Golding.

We encourage you to take your time to engage with these murals with your teaching, events and/or studies.

Content Warning

This website may contain images or names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased.

Installation of Mabo Plaintiffs and witness with their Lawyer, Supreme Court of Queensland, May 1989 depicts the plaintiffs (L to R: Father Dave Passi, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Bonita Mabo, Bryan Keon-Cohen, James Rice, Eddie Mabo Jnr & Henry Kabere.) at Melbourne Law School

Installation of A group of Aboriginal men at Coranderrk Station, Healesville. In Alphabetical order: Thomas Avoca; Thomas Bamfield; William Barak (second row, third from left); Charles Cable; Mooney Clark; John Cogie; Thomas Gilman; Lanky Gilmore; John Logan; Benjamin ‘Lanky’ Manton; Edward McLennon; Thomas McLennon; Samuel Rowan; Frederick Stewart; John Terrick; Richard Werdurum at Melbourne Law School.