Indigenous Law and Justice Hub

Les Malezer

Les Malezer is descended on his father’s side from the Gubbi Gubbi / Butchulla peoples of the Mary River and Fraser Island region of southeast Queensland and, on his mother’s side, from the Gamiliroi peoples of northwest NSW.

As school captain, he matriculated from Inala State High School in Brisbane in 1969.  He was a skilled sportsman in cricket, rugby league, tennis and basketball.  He began studies in Engineering at the University of Queensland but discontinued after being faced with racism at both study and work.

Les Malezer’s working career commenced in 1972 with the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service in Brisbane, pursuing training and work opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth. He was then transferred to Canberra after the Whitlam government was elected into the newly-appointed Department of Aboriginal Affairs soon.

In the public service he quickly advances to senior positions in the Commonwealth public service before joining to the Queensland government to become head of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs under the Goss administration in 1990.

Apart from his career in government Les Malezer also worked extensively in community-controlled organisations at the local, regional, national and international levels, and he held important posts in representative bodies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

From his early years in Brisbane he participated in community organisations, meetings and rallies,  as a member of the health services, legal services, housing organisations and welfare groups.

He became the Chairperson of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) in 1974 and has continued to hold that position on many occasions when not in conflict with his employment.  He continues as the Chairperson  of FAIRA in the present times.

Les Malezer became Secretary General of the National Aboriginal Conference in 1984, joined the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1989, and was appointed as Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2002.

In 2010, he was elected Co-Chair of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples.  He served two terms as Co-Chairperson in this role.

He has expert knowledge regarding Indigenous Peoples of the world and the relevant human rights standards adopted at the international level and in Australia.  Les Malezer is well known internationally for his work on human rights, and raising the profile of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations and the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings.

He has travelled extensively, meeting with Indigenous Peoples living in countries such as New Zealand, USA, Canada, Panama, Guatemala, Guyana, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, South Africa, India, Thailand, The Philippines, Taiwan, New Guinea, Fiji, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

A notable achievement in his  life was when he addressed the UN General Assembly in 2007 following the successful vote for the UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Then, in 2008, he was awarded the Australian Human Rights medal from the Australian Human Rights Commission.  The award came after two decades of advocacy for the human rights of Indigenous Peoples at the international level, working in conjunction with Indigenous Peoples delegations from around the world.

He was appointed as a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for the term of 2017 to 2019.

He has devoted his entire career fighting for rights of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  Les Malezer continues to seek change for legal recognition of First Peoples’ status and rights in Australia.

Professor Thalia Anthony

Professor Thalia Anthony researches Indigenous people and the law, with specialisation in Indigenous justice mechanisms and systemic racism in criminal law and procedure. Her research is grounded in legal history and understandings of the colonial legacy in legal institutions. Professor Anthony has developed new approaches to researching and understanding the role of the criminal law in governing Indigenous communities. Her research is developed in conjunction with Indigenous organisations in Australia and overseas. She has written influential books Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment (Routledge 2013) and a Decolonising Criminology (Palgrave 2019). She currently leads an Australian Research Council project that introduces Aboriginal justice reports in sentencing in Australia.

Engagement

Canadian Indigenous Over-Representation in Criminal Justice

Jonathan Rudin

Jonathan Rudin received his LLB and LLM from Osgoode Hall Law School.  In 1990 he was hired to establish Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto and has been with ALST ever since.  Currently he is the Program Director. Mr. Rudin has appeared before all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada including representing ALST before the Supreme Court in R v. Ipeelee. Mr. Rudin has written and spoken widely on issues of Aboriginal justice.  He co-wrote the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ report on Justice – Bridging the Cultural Divide- and was a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Ipperwash Inquiry.  Mr. Rudin also teaches on a part-time basis in the Law and Society Program at York University.  Last but not least, he plays the mandolin and sings with Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room, a group that plays regularly in Toronto and has a number of videos on YouTube.

Canadian Indigenous Over-Representation in Criminal Justice

Dr Baz Dreisinger

Dr. Dreisinger works at the intersection of race, crime, culture and justice. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Columbia University, specializing in American and African-American studies. At John Jay she is the Founding Academic Director of John Jay's Prison-to-College Pipeline program, which offers college courses and reentry planning to incarcerated men at Otisville Correctional Facility, and broadly works to increase access to higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. Dr. Dreisinger's book Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World (2016) was heralded by the New York Times, NPR and many more, and was named a notable book of 2016 by the Washington Post. Professor Dreisinger moonlights as a journalist and critic, writing about Caribbean culture, race-related issues, travel, music and pop culture for such outlets as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, and producing on-air segments about music and global culture for National Public Radio (NPR). Her first book Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture (2008) was featured in the New York Times and on NPR and CNN. Together with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Spirer, Professor Dreisinger produced and wrote the two nationally aired documentaries about hip-hop, criminal justice and the prison industrial complex. She regularly speaks about justice reform and prison issues on popular news media and in international settings.

Dr. Dreisinger was named a 2017-2018 Global Fulbright Scholar and is working to internationally replicate the Prison-to-College Pipeline, with a focus on the Caribbean and South Africa. She is currently working on a road map for how prison-to-college pipelines and restorative justice can replace mass incarceration as a system of justice.

Engagement

Race, Class, Gender and Mass Incarceration

Professor Jacinta Ruru, University of Otago

University of Otago (Indigenous Scholar in Residence)

Jacinta is the Co-Director, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence Nga Pae o te Maramatanga. She currently teaches into the Laws 101 programme and is building a thriving Indigenous law post-graduate programme. Her research interests include:

• Indigenous Peoples comparative law (including rights to own, govern and manage water, land, marine area, minerals and national parks)
• Māori land law including Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993
• Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi and United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• Family law and Māori
• Environmental Law and Māori, Law and landscapes
• Aotearoa New Zealand’s legal history

Jacinta is also a member of the Coastal People: Southern Skies collaboration that connects communities with world-leading, cross-discipline research to rebuild coastal ecosystems.

Dr Crystal McKinnon

Crystal McKinnon is a Yamatji woman and is currently working at RMIT as a Vice Chancellor's Indigenous Research Fellow, where she sits within the Social Change Enabling Capability Platform (ECP) and an Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous Project, Indigenous Leaders: Lawful Relations from Encounter to Treaty. The Discovery Indigenous project looks at lawful encounters between the State and Aboriginal communities of Victoria as historic sovereign practices that may inform current Treaty practices.

Her work has looked at concepts of Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous resistance through the use of the creative arts, including music and literature. Crystal is the co-editor of History, Power and Text: Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies (UTS ePress, 2014), and her work has been published in several books and journals, including Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity (Palgrave, 2010), the Alternative Law Journal, and Biography.

She has extensive governance experience having previously served for a number of years on the Boards of both Flat Out and of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Services Associated Limited, and she is currently a director on the Board of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and she sits on the steering committee for the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women. Crystal has previously worked in both the Aboriginal community organisation and the community legal centre sectors.

Associate Professor Sana Nakata

Associate Professor Sana Nakata is Associate Dean, Indigenous and co-director of the Indigenous-Settler Relations Collaboration at the Faculty of Arts at The University of Melbourne. Trained as a lawyer and political theorist, her research is centred upon developing an approach for thinking politically about childhood in ways that improve the capacity of adult decision-makers to act in their interests.

She has recently completed an ARC Discovery Indigenous Research Fellowship examining Representations of Children in Australian Political Controversies (2016-2019). She is the author of Childhood Citizenship, Governance and Policy (2015), and along with co-director Sarah Maddison, edits the Springer book series: Indigenous Settler Relations in Australia and the World.

Engagement

• Event: Legal Pluralism

Centre Affiliation

• Member, Advisory Board, Indigenous Law and Justice Hub

Mary Spiers Williams

Researcher, Australian National University

In 2019 Mary Spiers Williams accepted a joint appointment between the National Centre for Indigenous Studies and the College of Arts and Social Sciences as Subdean for Undergraduate Indigenous Studies. Mary will return full-time to the ANU Law School in 2022. Mary continues to teach Criminal Law there, and facilitates the at ANU College of Law's plan for action under the ANU Reconciliation Action Plan.

Mary currently teaches Indigenous political, civil and legal rights in Australia and convenes the ANU's Undergraduate Indigenous Studies Programme at the ANU. She leads the Interdisciplinary Social Justice Research Hub.

Engagement

• Event: Legal Pluralism

Professor Angela Riley

Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

Angela R. Riley is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and Director of UCLA's Native Nations Law and Policy Center. She directs the J.D./M.A. joint degree program in Law and American Indian Studies and is the UCLA campus representative on issues related to repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Professor Riley's research focuses on indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance. Her work has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal and numerous others.

Engagement

• Event: Owning ‘Red’: A Theory of Indian (Cultural) Appropriation event

Dr Christine Black

Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Law School

Dr C.F. Black is the Indigenous Scholar in Residence at the Melbourne Law School. She is also an Associate Professor adjunct to the Griffith University Centre for Coastal Management. Dr Black is a descendant of both the Kombumerri and Munaljahlai peoples. Whilst at the Melbourne Law School She has a PhD from the Griffith Law School. Her thesis focused on bringing forth the concept of Indigenous Jurisprudence in the Australian context. Black has made story her ‘legal structure’ in which to convey knowledge pertinent to the understanding that the Land (Earth) as the source of the law, as juxtaposed to the Common Law concept of land as property.

A future publication with Routledge will take this same legal stand point to discuss the ethics of Autonomous Algorithmic decision-making systems (AADMS) through the lens of mythology and ancient stories. She is also developing research with Native American and South American colleagues around the understanding of plant consciousness and the role of plants in Indigenous societies as knowledge holders. Her first publication on the issue is On Lives Lived with Law: Land as Healer, (Law, Text Culture Jl.). Her key research areas: Indigenous Jurisprudence, ethical issues relating Artificial Intelligence and other related technology, landscape and plant consciousness.

Professor John Borrows

Senior Fellow (Melbourne Law Masters)

University of Victoria Law, Canada

John Borrows BA, MA, JD, LLM (Toronto), PhD (Osgoode Hall Law School), LLD (Hons, Dalhousie & Law Society of Upper Canada) FRSC, is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria Law School in British Columbia. His publications include Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Donald Smiley Award for the best book in Canadian Political Science, 2002); Canada’s Indigenous Constitution (Canadian Law and Society Best Book Award 2011); Drawing Out Law: A Spirit’s Guide (2010); Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism (Donald Smiley Award for the best book in Canadian Political Science, 2016); and The Right Relationship (with Michael Coyle, Ed.), all from the University of Toronto Press. John is Anishinaabe/Ojibway and a member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario, Canada

Centre Affiliation

• Member, Advisory Board, Indigenous Law and Justice Hub