David Unaipon Lecture 2018: Aboriginalising Australian Centres of Power

The recognition of Indigenous peoples has been a subject of vigorous debate in international law and relations for more than five centuries. In contemporary times, it remains unresolved.

This irresolution persists even though the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) sets out minimum standards for Indigenous rights.

In this insightful lecture, Professor Watson explores the historic and contemporary relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous and examines how those relations continue to be shaped by the dynamics of colonial power – dynamics that centre western knowledges and understandings.

How might the resulting power imbalances be redressed? Might an approach which re-centres Aboriginal knowledge and ways of being, become a way forward?

Professor Irene Watson

Professor Irene Watson is Pro Vice Chancellor Aboriginal Leadership and Strategy, and Professor of Law, at the University of South Australia Business School. Professor Watson belongs to the Tanganekald, Meintangk Boandik First Nations Peoples, of the Coorong and the south east of South Australia.

She holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and a PhD in Law from the University of Adelaide, and was awarded the Bonython Prize for best Law Thesis in 2000. She has previously held academic positions at the University of Adelaide and Flinders University Law Schools. Irene was a post-doctoral fellow with the University of Sydney Law School before taking up an appointment in 2008 with the University of South Australia at the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Research and Education and has provided independent academic opinions to First Nations Peoples across Australia for some 30 years.

Professor Watson is a peer reviewer in the law discipline for the Australian Research Council (ARC) and is also an External Assessor for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has written numerous journal articles and book chapters, and is the author of Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism, and International Law: Raw Law (Routledge 2015), and Indigenous Peoples as Subjects in International Law (Routledge 2017).