Lecture: Indigenous Peoples' Human Rights in Australia
General Guest Speakers
Join academic, planner and policy analyst Dr. Ed Wensing for a high-level look at the current state of Indigenous Human Rights in Australia.
Juukan Gorge
Photo: Puutu Kunti Kurrama And Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation
From Juukan Gorge to the failure of the Voice Referendum: Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights in Australia
In 2020, 47,000 years of Aboriginal heritage was destroyed when Rio Tinto blasted Juukan Gorge in western Australia. In 2023, the Australian nation voted against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in our Constitution. Of the liberal democracies around the World, Australia is one of the exceptions in that it does not have a Charter or a Bill of human rights at the national level and Australia is a laggard in implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
This presentation will take a bird’s eye view of the current state of Indigenous human rights in Australia.
About the speaker:
Dr. Ed Wensing (Life Fellow) FPIA FHEA is is an experienced planner, policy analyst and academic, based in Australia.
He is an Associate and Special Adviser at SGS Economics and Planning, an urban and public policy consulting firm and certified B Corp. He is also a Research Fellow at the City Futures Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Indigenous Policy Research at the Australian National University.
Ed has worked in government, the private sector, non-government organizations, professional associations and has engaged in teaching and research in several universities around Australia. For more than 28 years, he has had the privilege of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities across Australia on a wide range of land and water related matters.
Ed has extensive knowledge and understanding of the statutes relating to land administration, land use and environmental planning, Aboriginal land rights, native title rights and interests, environmental protection, natural resource management, cultural heritage protection and local government in every State and Territory jurisdiction in Australia.
Ed also has a long track record of working with local government across Australia as a policy officer and practitioner for the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA), the peak local government body for the 537 local governments in Australia. In that role Ed worked on developing Native Title and Agreement making resources for local government, integrated local area planning, local housing solutions, environmental management, waste management (including the development of Drum Muster), and natural resource management.
Ed's current research interests are in the intercultural contact zone between Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests (however defined by them) and the Crown’s land administration and land and environmental planning and management systems.
Event Details
- When:
- Time:
- 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM CST
- Location:
- Room 74, Law Building