Who is mick dodson

Some of them were reliving horrible experiences. It was pretty tough. We all had counselling after that. Like the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, I think the biggest disappointment with both those inquiries was the lack of full and adequate implementation of what was by and large sensible and doable recommendations.

So, 20 years ago when I gained that position, we had the ANU Institute for Indigenous Affairs, but it was short lived and was replaced by the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, which was the type of dedicated centre that Peter Read wanted. We had only three staff, whereas the Read Review had recommended six academic staff. Cricket Australia asked us to write a report on Indigenous involvement in cricket. That report has transformed Indigenous participation in that sport.

We won a prize for that report, as the most effective piece of research in We have a large Indigenous cohort among our PhD scholars. Some of the add-ons include a monthly research hour, regular high-profile visitor presentations and the annual NCIS Research Lab. Some individuals do great things but in the end there is someone who does the photocopying. More than 20 years ago, the Bringing Them Home report highlighted and documented the daily reality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of the pain of children torn from their families.

The report recounted the personal agony caused by past policies of removal and the horrendous impact that these policies have had, and continue to have, on our families and communities. Throughout my professional life I have been steeped in the abuses that my people suffer. But never before had I seen the weight of suffering that so many of our brothers and sisters bear.

As a co-commissioner for the inquiry, nothing could have prepared me for what I heard from witnesses as they spoke of the devastation to their lives. Putting Indigenous children in non-Indigenous families or institutions does not give them happy and full lives. We knew this before the Bringing Them Home report and we have known it for the 22 years since the report was completed.

The over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care is beyond a national crisis and must be addressed immediately. The incoming Federal Government as a matter of urgency must progress the following five priorities within a national strategy to end over-representation of our children in out-of-home care:. A review of Australian Indigenous history reveals a shameful legacy in which repair efforts have only recently been made.

Aboriginal groups occupied the Australian mainland for tens of thousands of years before British settlers laid claim to the continent in the late eighteenth century. Those who survived the ravage of European disease and gunfire were, with few exceptions, dispossessed of their land, and with it the nutritional, cultural, and spiritual resources that had ensured their individual and collective sustenance.

Laws soon obstructed their right to marry, permitted the forced removal and assimilation of their children the aptly-named stolen generations , and created reservations that Aborigines lived on and at times were transported between against their will.

These policies continued into the s. Aboriginal groups with varying degrees of reservation ownership. But they have so much farther to go. The mining industry generate[s] enormous income. What use is the Declaration for Indigenous Australians to date, then? Just as the Congress is embarking on an exciting new path, so too is Mick taking up a new project that is especially close to his heart. Now our plan in 20 years is to be the major landlord.