David Selvarajah Vadiveloo is an Australian lawyer, education reformer and cultural safety consultant.
Vadiveloo received the 2005 Australian Human Rights Commission Award for Individual Community Achievement and was the youngest person to be Highly Commended for the Australian Human Rights Medal, recognising lifelong commitment and achievements in human rights. [1] Vadiveloo is currently the Superintendent of Schools for the North Slope Borough School District. Vadiveloo was the Founder and Executive Director of the social justice, media and education agency Community Prophets. He led the cultural safety and culturally responsive practice reform in schools in Victoria's juvenile justice system [2] and previously consulted to high-profile First Nations community and commercial organisations in Australia and North America, including the Mirarr Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation [3] and the Inupiat Education Department [4] in Alaska. Vadiveloo's social justice films have been nominated for Australian Film Institute Awards in both the drama and documentary categories.
Vadiveloo is married to Inupiat screen producer, education consultant and cultural broker Rachel Naŋinaaq Edwardson. [5]
Vadiveloo was born in Wagga Wagga, Australia, to a Tamil father and Anglo-Celtic mother. He holds a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia and a Graduate Diploma in Film and Television from the Victorian College of the Arts at University of Melbourne, Australia.
Vadiveloo's work in human rights, media and culturally responsive education saw him awarded the 2005 Australian Human Rights Commission Award for Individual Community Achievement, specifically for his work with Indigenous and marginalised peoples. [6] In 2005 he was also the youngest person to be Highly Commended for the Australian Human Rights Medal, recognising lifelong commitment and achievements in human rights. [1] Vadiveloo's films and interactive screenworks have received numerous nominations and awards including the 2002 Canadian Golden Sheaf Award for Best International Documentary, [7] the 2005 Australian Interactive Media Industry Association Award for Best Interactive Learning [8] and 2009 Australian Film Institute nominations in both Drama and Documentary. [9] [10]
Vadiveloo began work as a solicitor and barrister in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1994. He worked on the successful Central Land Council Native Title Application, Hayes v Northern Territory, [11] brought by the Arrernte people of the Alice Springs region.
In 1996, Vadiveloo was a policy advisor to the Federal Race Discrimination Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission. He facilitated national community consultations with Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities about the operation and effectiveness of the Australian Racial Discrimination Act . His consultations formed the basis of the 1996 State of the Nation Report. [12]
Between 2001 and 2003 Vadiveloo worked alongside former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti and Bill Barker, former Director of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Human Rights and Indigenous Issues section [13] as a trainer in the Australia-Indonesia Specialised Training Project II, [14] facilitating human rights training programs with Indonesian NGO's, military and government employees in areas of race discrimination, torture and conflict resolution.
Since 2007, Vadiveloo and wife Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson have facilitated culturally responsive practice and social justice media programs in partnership with Indigenous and marginalised youth in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria, NSW and Alaska. [15] [16] Their program in Cape York became the subject of the 2-part ABC Television documentary Voices From the Cape. [17]
In 2008 at the request of the Legal Aid Commission of NSW, Vadiveloo and Edwardson devised and facilitated the Burn project with marginalised youth from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds in inner-city Sydney. The six-month project was a crime prevention initiative that resulted in the production of the Australian Film Institute nominated Burn film. [18]
In 2013, Vadiveloo was Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation. [19] On behalf of the Corporation he drafted the landmark research agreement [20] used for the Madjedbebe archaeological excavation which has changed the scientifically accepted date of modern human occupation in Australia. [21] Vadiveloo continues his work as a consultant to the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation today.[ when? ]
In 2015 Vadiveloo and Edwardson devised and facilitated a culturally responsive education pilot program for youth in custody at the Parkville Youth Justice Facility in Melbourne, Australia. The program included a number of high profile artists including Archie Roach, Radical Son and Abdul Abdullah. [22] and resulted in Vadiveloo leading the cultural safety and culturally responsive practice reform implemented in all schools in youth justice facilities in the State of Victoria.[ citation needed ]
In 1998, after completing the Victorian College of the Arts Film and Television post-graduate degree, Vadiveloo returned to Alice Springs and established a media program at the Irrkerlantye Learning Centre, working with Aboriginal children from the Town Camps of Alice Springs and re-engaging them with schooling through media., [23]
Vadiveloo's documentary Trespass (2002), about the Mirrar leader Yvonne Margarula and her battle to stop the Jabiluka mine site, won multiple awards [7] and his documentary Beyond Sorry (2004) about Australia's Stolen Generations premiered on Australia's ABC Television and was a festival favourite at the 2004 Sydney Film Festival.
Vadiveloo directed and co-produced Us Mob (2005), the first Aboriginal children's television series in Australia and the first interactive Indigenous television series in the world.
Two films written and directed by Vadiveloo were nominated at the 2009 Australian Film Institute Awards: the half-hour crime drama Burn (created with at-risk inner city youth) was nominated for Best Short Fiction Film and Voices from the Cape (which documented a program run by his company Community Prophets in the Aboriginal community of Aurukun in Cape York, Australia) was nominated for best documentary series. Vadiveloo received Best Director nominations for both films at the Australian Directors Guild Awards in 2010. [24]
Vadiveloo founded the social justice, media and education agency Community Prophets in 2005. The company facilitates culturally responsive practice reform and produces and teaches film and television in partnership with marginalised communities.
Jabiluka is a pair of uranium deposits and mine development in the Northern Territory of Australia that was to have been built on land belonging to the Mirarr clan of Aboriginal people. The mine site is surrounded by, but not part of, the World Heritage–listed Kakadu National Park.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is a permanent protest occupation site as a focus for representing the political rights of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. Established on 26 January 1972, and celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022, it is the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights in the world.
The Racial Discrimination Act 1975(Cth) is an Act of the Australian Parliament, which was enacted on 11 June 1975 and passed by the Whitlam government. The Act makes racial discrimination in certain contexts unlawful in Australia, and also overrides state and territory legislation to the extent of any inconsistency.
Wrong Side of the Road is a 1981 low-budget feature film made in South Australia. It is distinctive for being one of the first attempts to bring modern Australian Aboriginal music to a non-Indigenous audience, featuring all-Aboriginal rock reggae bands No Fixed Address and Us Mob.
Larissa Yasmin Behrendt is an Australian legal academic, writer, filmmaker and Indigenous rights advocate. As of 2022 she is a professor of law and director of research and academic programs at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney, and holds the inaugural Chair in Indigenous Research at UTS.
Bart Willoughby is an Aboriginal Australian musician, noted for his pioneering fusion of reggae with Indigenous Australian musical influences, and for his contribution to growth of Indigenous music in Australia.
Anne Barbara Deveson was an Australian writer, broadcaster and filmmaker who also worked in England.
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The Northern Territory National Emergency Response, also known as "The Intervention" or the Northern Territory Intervention, and sometimes the abbreviation "NTER" was a package of measures enforced by legislation affecting Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia, which lasted from 2007 until 2012. The measures included restrictions on the consumption of alcohol and pornography, changes to welfare payments, and changes to the delivery and management of education, employment and health services in the Territory.
Brian Gregory Syron was an actor, teacher, Aboriginal rights activist, stage director and Australia's first Indigenous feature film director, who has also been recognised as the first First Nations feature film director. After studying in New York City under Stella Adler, he returned to Australia and was a co-founder of the Australian National Playwrights Conference, the Eora Centre, the National Black Playwrights Conference, and the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust. He worked on several television productions and was appointed head of the ABC's new Aboriginal unit in 1988.
Robert James Randall, also known as Uncle Bob, was an Aboriginal Australian elder, singer and community leader. He was a member of the Stolen Generations and became an elder of the Yankunytjatjara people from Central Australia. He was the 1999 National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee NAIDOC Person of the Year. His 1970 song, "My Brown Skin Baby, They Take 'im Away," is described as an "anthem" for the Stolen Generations. He was known by the honorific "Tjilpi", a word meaning "old man" that is often translated as "uncle". He lived in Mutitjulu, the Aboriginal community at Uluru in the Northern Territory of Australia.
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Rachel Perkins is an Australian film and television director, producer, and screenwriter. She directed the films Radiance (1998), One Night the Moon (2001), Bran Nue Dae (2010), and Jasper Jones (2017). Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman from Central Australia, who was raised in Canberra by Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins and his wife Eileen.
Redfern Now is an Australian drama television series that first aired on ABC1 in 2012. It follows the lives of six Aboriginal Australian families living in the urban hub of Redfern, Sydney. The series provides insight into contemporary issues facing Aboriginal Australians, including lack of employment and mental illness, which are positioned as direct ramifications of colonialisation and the Stolen Generations. Produced by Blackfella Films as part of the ABC's Indigenous Department, the show is the first series to be 'commissioned, written, acted and produced by Indigenous Australians'.f5 in The series' release contributes to widespread public debate surrounding Indigenous representation in the Australian media.
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Andrew Pike is an Australian film historian, film distributor and exhibitor, and documentary producer and director. Pike formed Ronin Films, an Australian film distribution company, with his first wife, Dr Merrilyn Fitzpatrick, in 1974. With Ross Cooper, he co-authored the book, Reference Guide to Australian Films 1906–1969 and has produced and directed many documentaries since 1982. Pike has been honoured with numerous awards including a plaque on the ACT Honour Walk in Canberra City, appointed of the Order of Australia (OAM) and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Canberra.
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