Happy NAIDOC from afar: Celebrate with our new self-guided audio tour
The Indigenous Law and Justice Hub is pleased to introduce a new way to navigate the halls of Melbourne Law School. This comes as a group of our staff and students celebrate NAIDOC on Larrakia Country in Darwin as part of the Hub’s 2024 Access to Justice on Country course.
The Hub has collaborated with Palawa woman Maggie Blanden, and Banjima woman Keshi Moore, to produce the Encounters of Laws: The Classroom Mural Project audio tour of the MLS building.
Each episode tells a story to accompany a mural in the Melbourne Law School building picturing a key moment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander encounters with the settler legal system, showcasing First Nations advocacy and legal authority. You can listen while walking the halls of MLS, or from home.
Encounters of Laws: The Classroom Mural Project is an interdisciplinary research collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners of jurisprudence, history, and public art practice. It is the work of current and former scholars at Melbourne Law School, initiated by Wiradjuri legal scholar, Professor Mark McMillan.
The day-to-day custodianship of Professor McMillan’s vision - its curation, installation, and text - has been a collaboration between Melbourne Law School colleagues Amy Johannes, a visual arts practitioner, and Ann Genovese, a historian of Australian jurisprudence.
The project saw carefully chosen images of historic meetings of First Nations and Australian laws installed on the walls of several classrooms in the Law Building. Accompanying these images is explanatory text. All text has been authorised by those who appear in the images, or their descendants.
Melbourne Law School staff and students celebrating NAIDOC Week on Larrakia Country