Getting it Right: Safeguarding a Respected Space for Indigenous Oral Histories and Truth Telling

ABSTRACT

Indigenous stories increasingly challenge the Australian understanding of the relationships between colonizers and Indigenous experiences and perceptions of the postcolonial past. Indigenous oral history is becoming an integral and powerful aspect of oral historiography that includes Indigenous oral histories and stories as important components of Australian history making. Given that Indigenous reclamation of history is essential to the process of decolonization, this paper poses the question of how we can safeguard a respected space for Indigenous oral histories so truth telling can take a rightful place in history making. The paper details examples of a non-Indigenous researcher working with and for Indigenous storytellers and in doing so, elaborates on an Indigenist approach to oral historiography. We provide examples from the Moola Bulla project, an Indigenist methodologically based study collaboratively designed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers around ethical research practices. The authors recommend that to ensure ethical practices and faithful re-storying, researchers engage in training with Indigenous people, thereby enabling the moral integrity and rigor of Indigenous history making in the field of oral history. This paper reiterates the fundamental prerogative for all those in the domain of history making in colonized contexts to work with Indigenous people in the rewriting of postcontact history informed by an understanding of Indigenist methodologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous methodology
• Indigenist research
• Indigenous storytelling
• truth telling

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the editors of Oral History Review who offered support in the editing of this article, and the reviewers for their carefully considered responses. We also wish to acknowledge and thank the publication team for their meticulous attention to detail in the final stages of the article’s publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. A note on terminology: the term Indigenous is used throughout this paper when referring collectively to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia, Māori peoples of Aotearoa, First Nation, Innuit, and Métis peoples of Canada, and the Native American peoples of America. We intentionally use the term Indigenous to signify the united struggle of peoples against ongoing colonialism. Nevertheless, distinctive terminology will be used to specify individual nations where appropriate—for example, when identifying the Kija Country and peoples in the Moola Bulla research project cited below. In a stand against epistemological racism, we have heeded the warning against the dangers of acquiescence issued by D’harawal scholars Bodkin-Andrews and Bronwyn Carlson in their article, “The Legacy of Racism and Indigenous Australian Identity within Education,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 19, no. 4 (2016), https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2014.969224. Wherever possible we have purposefully made visible Indigenous scholarship by acknowledging Indigeneity and affiliations to nation groups the first time the Indigenous researcher or oral historian is mentioned in the study. The exception here is in the lists of multiple coauthors, where affiliations may appear in a different citation. We also acknowledge that all Indigenous scholars do not wish to be identified by affiliation, and in these instances, the term Indigenous is used.

^2. See Mick Dodson, “The Dispossession of Indigenous People and Its Consequences,” Parity 23, no. 9 (2010); John Maynard, “Australian History: Lifting Haze or Descending Fog?,” Aboriginal History 27 (2003).This has been supplemented by the work of ally non-Indigenous historians, such as Bain Attwood, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History (Sydney, AU: Allen and Unwin, 2005); Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (Ringwood, AU: Penguin Books, 1995), 5; and Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales 1770-1972 (St. Leonards, AU: Allen and Unwin in association with Black Books, 1996).

^3. Mick Dodson, “The Wentworth Lecture: The End in the Beginning—(Re)defining Aboriginality,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1994, no. 1 (1994). See Margaret Kovach, “Doing Indigenous Methodology: A Letter to a Research Class,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2018); Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012); Aboriginal scholars Lynore Geia, Barbara Hayes, and Kim Usher, “Yarning/Aboriginal Storytelling: Towards an Understanding of an Indigenous Perspective and Its Implications for Research Practice,” Contemporary Nurse 46, no. 1 (2013); Rhonda Povey and Michelle Trudgett, “When Camp Dogs Run Over Maps: Proper-Way Research in an Aboriginal Community in the North East of Western Australia,” Journal of Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 2 (2019).

^4. Anna Haebich, “Fever in the Archive,” Thesis Eleven 135, no. 1 (2016).

^5. See Povey and Trudgett, “When Camp Dogs Run Over Maps.” See also Dodson, “The Wentworth Lecture”; Geia, Hayes, and Usher, “Yarning/Aboriginal Storytelling”; Kovach, “Doing Indigenous Methodology”; and Smith, Decolonising Methodologies. See also Penny Van Toorn, “Tactical History Business: The Ambivalent Politics of Commodifying the Stolen Generation Stories,” Southerly 59, no. 3-4 (2000).

^6. See the work of Nepia Mahuika, Rethinking Oral History and Tradition: An Indigenous Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). See also Amberlin Kwaymullina, a Palyku scholar from the Pilbara in Western Australia, who develops this notion with particular reference to Australian Indigenous women’s storytelling, in “The Creators of the Future: Women, Law and Telling Stories in Country,” in Us Women, Our Ways, Our World, ed. Pat Dudgeon, Jeannie Herbert, and Darlene Oxenham (Broome, AU: Magabala Books, 2017).

^7. John Maynard, “Circles in the Sand: An Indigenous Framework of Historical Practice,” Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 36, supplement (2007).

^8. This idea is further developed by Tanganekald and Meintangk First Nations scholar Irene Watson, “Standing Our Ground and Telling the One True Story,” in Us Women, Our Ways, Our World.

^9. We develop this notion below, but in brief, Indigenist methodologies refer to a research paradigm that respects and honors Indigenous epistemologies, ontology, and axiology. Grounded in the principles of resistance as an emancipatory imperative, political integrity, and the privileging of Indigenous voices, Indigenist paradigms are relational and inclusive of Indigenous ways of storytelling. See Lester-Irabinna Rigney, “Internationalization of an Indigenous Anti-Colonial Cultural Critique of Research Methodologies: A Guide to Indigenist Research Methodology and Its Principles,” Wicazo sa Review 14, no. 2 (1999). See also Karen Martin, “Ways of Knowing, Being And Doing: A Theoretical Framework and Methods for Indigenous and Indigenist Re-Search,” Journal of Australian Studies 27, no. 76 (2003). Indigenous methodologies are born from diverse Indigenous epistemologies and are therefore contextually specific: Indigenous methodologies are organic in process; involve community; and are critical, flexible, transformative. See Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2009); Karen Martin, Please Knock before You Enter: Aboriginal Regulation of Outsiders and the Implications for Researchers (Teneriffe, Canary Islands: Post Pressed, 2008). We can thus see that Indigenist methodologies are born from within Indigenous cultures.

^10. Moral integrity is a term coined by the first author of this article, Rhonda Povey. The term refers to the intent of the research and of making moral decisions pertaining to doing no harm to Indigenous peoples of communities; it is drawn from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Code of Ethics, “AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research” (Australian Aboriginal Press, 2020), accessed September 5, 2022, https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-10/aiatsis-code-ethics.pdf. Rigor is defined as an evaluative paradigm as developed by Pranee Rice and Douglas Ezzy in Qualitative Research Methods: A Health Focus (South Melbourne, AU: Oxford University Press, 1999). See below for a detailed description.

^11. In this paper, white refers to the hegemony of institutions and public discourse that privilege whiteness as an identity and marginalize Indigenous peoples and Peoples of Color.

^12. Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Paddington, AU: Macleay, 2002). By attempting to discredit oral history, controversial white historian Windschuttle intended to continue the silencing of Aboriginal political and historical voices, thereby devaluing the contributions of Aboriginal historians. For a detailed riposte, see the work of historians Bain Attwood in Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History; Ann Curthoys, “The History of Killing and the Killing Of History,” in Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing Of History, ed. Antoinette Burton (London: Duke University Press, 2005).

^13. See J. Andrews, “Memoirs of an Aboriginal Woman, by Theresa Clements: Reflections on My Great Grandmother’s Life,” in Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation: Richard Broome and the Practice of Aboriginal History, ed. B. Silverstein (Canberra, AU: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2018).

^14. See public historian Paula Hamilton, “The Knife-Edge: Debates about Memory and History,” in Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, ed. K. Darian-Smith and P. Hamilton (South Melbourne, AU: Oxford University Press, 1997). See also Haebich, “Fever in the archive.”

^15. “Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families,” Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997.

^16. John Herron, Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee Inquiry into the Stolen Generation, Parliament of Australia (2000), http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/submissions/lcstolen/finalreport.pdf.

^17. Mahua Sarkar, “Between Craft and Method: Meaning and Inter‐subjectivity in Oral History Analysis,” Journal of Historical Sociology 25, no. 4 (2012). See also oral historian Anna Sheftel, “Embracing the Mess: Reflections on Untidy Oral History Pedagogy,” Oral History Review 46, no. 2 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/ohr/ohz020. For a detailed discussion of memory in history, see the work of oral historian Alistair Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” Oral History Review 34, no. 1 (2007), https://doi.org/10.1525/ohr.2007.34.1.49.

^18. Katrina Srigley and Lorraine Sutherland, “Decolonising, Indigenising, and Learning Biskaaybiiyang in the Field: Our Oral History Journey,” Oral History Review 45, no. 1 (2018): 13, https://doi.org/10.1093/ohr/ohy001.

^19. Margaret Carter, Western Education at Moola Bulla, oral history project, 2018, unpublished interview, Kimberley Language Resource Centre, Halls Creek. The details of my yarn with Kija Elder Aunty Margaret are recorded in Povey and Trudgett, “When Camp Dogs Run Over Maps.” The paper elaborates how an Aunty taught me about proper-way research through storytelling about a previous non-Indigenous researcher who disregarded Aboriginal cultural protocols during an interview, such as by interrupting Elders, causing Aunty great offence. For further details, see also Rhonda Povey, “The Proper-Bad Lie: Aboriginal Responses to Western Education at Moola Bulla, 1910-1955” (PhD diss., University of Technology Sydney, 2020).

^20. Povey, “The Proper-Bad Lie.”

^21. Speaking back is a term derived from Indigenous standpoint theory promoted by Rigney; see Rigney, “Internationalization of an Indigenous Anti-Colonial Cultural Critique of Research Methodologies”; see also Dodson, “The Wentworth Lecture.”

^22. See the work of Indigenous scholar Robyn Williams, “Cultural Safety: What Does It Mean for Our Work Practice?,” Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 23, no. 2 (1999). See also Kovach, “Doing Indigenous Methodology: A Letter to a Research Class”; Povey and Trudgett, “When Camp Dogs Run Over Maps”; Srigley and Sutherland, “Decolonising, Indigenising, and Learning Biskaaybiiyang in the Field.”

^23. Srigley and Sutherland, “Decolonising, Indigenising, and Learning Biskaaybiiyang in the Field,” 15.

^24. See also Dodson, “The Wentworth Lecture.”

^25. See A. Moreton-Robinson and M. Walter, “Indigenous Methodologies in Social Research,” in Social Research Methods, 2^nd ed., ed. M. Walter (South Melbourne, AU: Oxford University Press, 2009), ch. 22, http://ecite.utas.edu.au/59358. Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Goenpul scholar of the Quandamooka People, and Maggie Walter a scholar from the Trawlwoolway Nation.

^26. Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy, The Practice of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005).

^27. Dawn Bessarab and Bridget Ng’andu, “Yarning about Yarning as a Legitimate Method in Indigenous Research,” International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 3, no. 1 (2010). See also the work Geia, Hayes, and Usher, “Yarning/Aboriginal Storytelling “; and Povey and Trudgett, “When Camp Dogs Run Over Maps.”

^28. The term informal when used to characterize Indigenous methods of interviewing is misleading. As argued by Kamilaroi educator Cheree Dean in “A Yarning Place in Narrative Histories,” History of Education Review 39, no. 2 (2010), characterizing yarning as “informal” undermines its strength and integrity; the term implies the process is without intention or a focused direction. Although semistructured interviews have set questions, the interview style allows both the interviewer and participant to digress, meandering into connected stories.

^29. Lorina Barker, “‘Hangin’Out’ and ‘Yarnin’’: Reflecting on the Experience of Collecting Oral Histories,” History Australia 5, no. 1 (2008), https://doi.org/10.2104/ha080009. Lorina Barker is an oral historian and descendant of the Wangkumara and Muruwari People of Northwest NSW, of the Flinders Rangers, SA, the Kooma People of Southwest QLD, and the Baakindji-Kurnu and Kunja People of Northwest NSW, Australia.

^30. Mulaga is a Kimberley Kriol language term for shared meals. See also note 53.

^31. Geia, Hayes, and Usher, “Yarning/Aboriginal Storytelling,” 13.

^32. The term on Country is an Australian Indigenous term that refer to the lands, waters, and skies to which Indigenous peoples are connected through ancestral ties and family origins; for example, KLRC archives are situated on Jaru Country.

^33. Commodification refers to the technological and positivist compartmentalization of Indigenous knowledge for the benefit of non-Indigenous agencies. See Graham Hingangaroa Smith, “Protecting and Respecting Indigenous Knowledges,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press, 2000). Smith explains that commodification is the neat and separate packaging of Indigenous knowledges by non-Indigenous people—for example, in the packaging of educational resources for commercial sale or unauthorized use in educational settings. For a thorough study of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights, see Terri Jankes, True Tracks: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Culture (Sydney, AU: New South Publishing, 2021). Terri Janke is a Wuthathi/Meriam lawyer and an international authority on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP).

^34. M. Koro-Ljungberg, M. MacLure, and J. Ulmer, “D … a … t … a, Data++, and Some Problematics,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 463.

^35. Maggie Walter and Chris Anderson, Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013), 9. See also discussion of the “Closing the Gap” political campaign in Australia, wherein perceived Indigenous deficiencies are identified and targets set to rectify this gap, by historian Jon Altman in Beyond Closing the Gap: Valuing Diversity in Indigenous Australia (Canberra, AU: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research [CAEPR], Australian National University, 2018).

^36. See also Norman K. Denzin, “The Elephant in the Living Room, Or Extending the Conversation about the Politics of Evidence,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research; andWalter and Anderson, Indigenous Statistics.

^37. Dodson, “The Wentworth Lecture,” 2.

^38. Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ed., Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (Canberra, AU: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004). See also Catriona Elder, Cath Ellis, and Angela Pratt, “Whiteness in Constructions of Australian Nationhood: Indigenes, Immigrants and Governmentality,” in Whitening Race.

^39. Janice Morse, “Reframing Rigour in Qualitative Inquiry,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 797.

^40. Rice and Ezzy, Qualitative Research Methods.

^41. Rigney, “Internationalization of an Indigenous Anti-Colonial Cultural Critique of Research Methodologies.”

^42. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, “Introduction: Critical Methodologies and Indigenous Inquiry,” in Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, ed. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2008), 2.

^43. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonising Methodologies, 239.

^44. Pranee Liamputtong Rice, Researching the Vulnerable (London: Sage Publications, 2007). See also Rice and Ezzy, Qualitative Research Methods.

^45. See Mick Dodson, “Truth Telling” (presentation, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Cockatoo Island, Sydney, Australia, November 3-4, 2018). It was at this conference that Dodson sought to correct the current use of the term lived history, arguing that the impact of colonization on Indigenous peoples does not live in the past, but is ongoing—hence the grammatical change from the past tense, so that lived experiences are acknowledged as living experiences.

^46. For a discussion on consent and consultation using MOUs, see Jankes, True Tracks.

^47. For a more detailed explanation of the MOU process, see Povey and Trudgett, “When Camp Dogs Run Over Maps.”

^48. Peter Read is renowned for collaborative sharing of stories by talking with Aboriginal people about their removal as children from family and Country; codesigning projects with Denis Foley, a Gaimariagal man from Sydney; friends and relatives of Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins; or an ongoing project started 1995 to interview ten Indigenous people around Australia who are reinterviewed every seven years. See Peter Read, “The Stolen Generations: The Removal Of Aboriginal Children in New South Wales 1883-1969,” Occasional paper no. l, Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, Sydney (2006). For more oral history studies, see Peter Read, Charles Perkins: A Biography, 2 ed. (Ringwood, AU: Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 2001); Dennis Foley and Peter Read, What the Colonists Never Knew: A History of Aboriginal Sydney (Canberra, AU: National Museum of Australia Press, 2020); Peter Read and Jackie Huggins, Seven Years On—Continuing Life Histories of Aboriginal Leaders Oral History Project, sound recording (Sydney: National Library of Australia, 1995). Jackie Huggins is a Bidjara/Pitjara, Birri Gubba and Juru historian from Queensland.

^49. Martin, “Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing,” 203.

^50. Cited in Claire Land, Decolonising Solidarity: Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles (London: Zed Books, 2015), 179.

^51. The term real Aboriginal is a term used by Gary Foley to challenge the false perception that Aboriginality is defined by where you live; see Foley, “Indigenous Epistemologies and Indigenous Standpoint Theory,” Social Alternatives 22, no. 1 (Summer 2003); Avril Bell, “Recognition or Ethics? De/Centering and the Legacy of Settler Colonialism,” Cultural Studies 22, no. 6 (2008); Tess Lea, Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in Northern Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008).

^52. Land, Decolonising Solidarity, 36.

^53. How to represent the words of Elders, Aunties, and Uncles on the page is an ethical decision, and we acknowledge transcribing and archiving as political acts. For too long misunderstood as “broken-down English,” Kimberley Kriol is an established shared language respected as a lingua franca across the Kimberley, carrying a layered relationship of people and Country and a detailed orthography. As the problem of understanding lies with the reader and not the speaker, throughout the project, Kriol terms and syntax are explained and not corrected. For a detailed discussion of transcriptions and translations, see Indigenous scholars Leslie McCartney, Ingrid Kritsch, and Sharon Snowshoe, “Publishing Our Whole Gwich’in Way of Life Has Changed—Gwich’in K’yuu Gwiidandài’Tthak Ejuk Gòonlih: Stories from the People of the Land after Two Decades of Decisions,” Oral History Review 48, no. 2 (2021). For more on transcription as a political act, see Alexander Freund, “From .wav to. txt: Why We Still Need Transcripts in the Digital Age,” Oral History (2017); William Burns, “Sloppy Spellin?,” eSharp:Transitions, Transformations and ‘Trans’ Narratives 27 (2019).

^54. Rigney, “Internationalization of an Indigenous Anti-Colonial Cultural Critique,” 119.

^55. Yvonna Lincoln, Susan Lynham, and Egon Guba, “Paradigmatic Controversies, Contradictions, and Emerging Confluences, Revisited,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 139.

^56. Kovach, “Doing Indigenous Methodology: A Letter to a Research Class,” 227.

^57. Robina Thomas, “Honouring the Oral Traditions of My Ancestors through Story-Telling,” in Research as Resistance: Revisiting Critical, Indigenous and Anti-Oppressve Approaches to Research, ed. S. Strega and L. Brown (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2014), 239.

^58. Kovach, “Doing Indigenous Methodology,” 227.

^59. Simone Tur, “A Review of Louise Gwenneth Phillips and Tracey Bunda’s ‘Research through, with and as Storying,’” Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal 4, no. 1 (2019).

^60. Susan Chase, “Narrative Inquiry: Toward Theoretical and Methodological Maturity,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research.

^61. Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 480.

^62. Kathy Absolon and Cam Willett, “Aboriginal Research: Berry Picking and Hunting in the Twenty-First Century,” First Peoples Child and Family Review 1, no. 1 (2004).

^63. Jean Clandinin et al., Composing Diverse Identities: Narrative Inquiries into the Interwoven Lives of Children and Teachers (New York: Routledge, 2006).

^64. To respect the recent passing of this Aunty, their name has been withheld; Western Education at Moola Bulla: Oral History Project, 2018, unpublished interview, Kimberley Language Resource Centre, Halls Creek.

^65. Roun taka is an abbreviation of “roun taka and roun will,” an assertion of independence spoken by Jack Huddleston, a Jaru Elder who was a resident of Moola Bulla. It can be translated from Kriol to mean “my own tucker (food) and my own free will”; J. Huddleston, “Roun Taka An Roun Will: My Own Food and My Own Free Will,” in Moola Bulla: In the Shadow of the Mountain—Stories Collected as a Part of the Moola Bulla Oral History Project Run by the Kimberley Language Resource Centre from 1987-1989, ed. Henry Achoo, Moola Bulla Oral History Project and Kimberley Language Resource Centre (Broome, AU: Magabala Books, 1996).

^66. Maynard, “Circles in the Sand.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rhonda Povey

Rhonda Povey has extensive experience working and researching in the field of Indigenous education. The focus of Povey’s research is on ethical research practices, Indigenous oral histories, and Indigenist approaches to oral historiography. Her particular area of interest is related to the delivery of Western education to Aboriginal students in remote areas of Australia. Povey’s doctoral research received a commendation for the Chancellor’s award in 2020. Povey also publishes research related to Indigenous leadership in higher education and the experiences of Indigenous early career researchers. E-mail: [email protected]

Susan Page

Susan Page is a national teaching award-winning Aboriginal educator and Indigenous higher education specialist; she is currently Director of Indigenous Learning and Teaching at Western Sydney University. Page’s research focuses on Indigenous Australian experiences of learning and academic work in higher education and student learning in Indigenous studies. She has collaborated on multiple competitive research grants and is has frequently published in Indigenous Higher Education. Susan has held several leadership positions including Associate Dean of Indigenous Leadership and Engagement, Centre Director, and Head of the Department; she is currently an appointed Indigenous representative for the Universities Australia Deputy Vice Chancellor academic committee. E-mail: [email protected]

Michelle Trudgett

Michelle Trudgett is an Indigenous scholar from the Wiradjuri Nation in New South Wales. Trudgett currently holds the position Deputy Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Leadership at Western Sydney University and is chair of the Universities Australia Deputy/Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Committee. She also serves as a board member on the GO Foundation. Trudgett has received a number of awards, including the National NAIDOC Scholar of the Year Award, the Neville Bonner Award for Teaching Excellence, and the University of New England Distinguished Alumni Award. E-mail: [email protected]