Megan Davis | |
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Born | 1975 |
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Website | https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-megan-jane-davis |
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Megan Jane Davis FAHA FASSA FAAL is an Aboriginal Australian activist and international human rights lawyer. She was the first Indigenous Australian to sit on a United Nations body, and was Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Davis is Pro Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous, and Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of New South Wales. She is especially known for her work on the Uluru Statement from the Heart .
Megan Jane Davis [1] was born in Monto. Her family moved along the Queensland Railway. Her ancestry is Aboriginal Australian (Cobble Cobble, from south-east Queensland [2] ) and South Pacific Islander. [3]
She was brought up by a single parent, and one of her earliest interests was the United Nations General Assembly. [4] She attended the University of Queensland, earning a law degree. [5] In this period she met and was mentored by Jackie Huggins, who convinced her to work for the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) in Brisbane, which led her to apply to the United Nations Fellowship. [5]
Davis was an international lawyer at the United Nations, where in the period from 1999 until 2004 she helped work on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including providing legal advice to ATSIC Commissioners during the drafting stages. [5] [6]
In 2010, she became the first Indigenous Australian woman to be elected to a United Nations body when she was appointed to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues [7] which is based in New York. holding that position from 2011 to 2016. [3] She has been a member of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) since 2017, and in July 2021 she was appointed its chair. [6]
Davis was on the Australian Government's expert panel on the country's Indigenous people in 2011, and was a member of the Prime Minister's Referendum Council from 2015-2017. [2] [8]
As a member of the Referendum Council, Davis was instrumental in assisting the development of the Uluru Statement From the Heart, designing the deliberative dialogues and chairing the Council's sub-committee for the First Nations regional Dialogues and the First Nations Constitutional Convention in 2017. [9]
Davis was the Director of the Indigenous Law Centre (part of the UNSW law faculty) from 2006-2016. [10] She was subsequently appointed the university's Pro Vice-Chancellor in 2017, [10] [11] Indigenous and the Indigenous Law Centre's Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law in 2020. [9] [12]
In 2023 she wrote "Voice of Reason: On Recognition and Renewal" which was published by Quarterly Essay. [13]
In 2017, Davis was appointed a Commissioner on the Australian Rugby League Commission. [14] In 2020 she was reappointed for another term. [15] Davis has described growing up in a "crazy rugby league family", and wanting to "give back to a game that gave so much to me and my family". [14]
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.
Indigenous Australian self-determination, also known as Aboriginal Australian self-determination, is the power relating to self-governance by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. It is the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to determine their own political status and pursue their own economic, social and cultural interests. Self-determination asserts that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should direct and implement Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy formulation and provision of services. Self-determination encompasses both Aboriginal land rights and self-governance, and may also be supported by a treaty between a government and an Indigenous group in Australia.
The Indigenous Law Centre (ILC), formerly the Aboriginal Law Research Unit and Aboriginal Law Centre, is part of the Law Faculty at the University of New South Wales. It develops and coordinates research, teaching and information services in the multi-disciplinary area of Indigenous peoples and the law, and publishes two major journals: the Australian Indigenous Law Review and the Indigenous Law Bulletin. It is the only Indigenous law research centre in Australia.
Graham Hingangaroa Smith is a New Zealand Māori academic and educationalist of Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Apa and Ngāti Kahungunu descent. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Leonie Eileen Pihama is a New Zealand kaupapa Māori academic.
Merata Kawharu is a New Zealand Māori writer and academic active in the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and the Māori Heritage Council. Her principal research is on the concept of kaitiakitanga within Māori culture.
Linda Waimarie Nikora is a New Zealand psychology academic. She is Māori, of Te Aitanga a Hauiti and Ngāi Tūhoe descent. She is currently professor of Indigenous Studies and co-director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga at the University of Auckland, having moved in 2017 from the University of Waikato where she had been a professor of psychology and the founding Director of the Maori & Psychology Research Unit in the School of Psychology.
Jacinta Arianna Ruru is a New Zealand academic and the first Māori professor of law. Ruru is currently a professor at the University of Otago.
Patricia Audrey Anderson is an Australian human rights advocate and health administrator. An Alyawarre woman from the Northern Territory, she is well known internationally as a social justice advocate, advocating for improved health, educational, and protection outcomes for Indigenous Australian children.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a 2017 petition to the people of Australia, written and endorsed by the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders selected as delegates to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. The document calls for substantive constitutional change and structural reform through the creation of two new institutions; a constitutionally protected First Nations Voice and a Makarrata Commission, to oversee agreement-making and truth-telling between governments and First Nations. Such reforms should be implemented, it is argued, both in recognition of the continuing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and to address structural "powerlessness" that has led to severe disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These reforms can be summarised as Voice, Treaty and Truth.
Taiarahia Black is a New Zealand academic, who rose to a full professor at the Massey University. He is Māori, of Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Whānau a Apanui, Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Ngāi Te Rangi descent.
Pare Areta Keiha is a New Zealand academic whose research is in the areas of Māori development, corporate governance, competition law and policy, and intellectual property law. He is Māori, of Whānau-a-Taupara / Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki and Rongowhakaata descent, and as of 2019 is a full professor, pro vice-chancellor and dean at the Auckland University of Technology.
Chellie Margaret Spiller is a New Zealand academic and is of Māori descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, also known as the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the First Nations Voice or simply the Voice, was a proposed Australian federal advisory body to comprise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to represent the views of Indigenous communities.
Joanna Kidman is a Māori sociology academic of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington.
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians refers to various proposals for changes to the Australian Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians in the document. Various proposals have been suggested to symbolically recognise the special place Indigenous Australians have as the first peoples of Australia, along with substantial changes, such as prohibitions on racial discrimination, the protection of languages and the addition of new institutions. In 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was released by Indigenous leaders, which called for the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament as their preferred form of recognition. When submitted to a national referendum in 2023 by the Albanese government, the proposal was heavily defeated.
Neil Richard Balnaves was an Australian media executive and arts philanthropist. His production companies were responsible for bringing Big Brother and Bananas in Pyjamas to Australian television screens.
Amokura Kawharu is a New Zealand legal academic and barrister. Kawharu was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2021. She is the first woman and the first Māori to be president of the New Zealand Law Commission.
Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NPM) is New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE). It was established in 2002 and is hosted by the University of Auckland with 21 research partners and is funded, like other CoRE's, by the Tertiary Education Commission. The mission was to conduct research for, with and by Māori communities which leads to transformation and positive change.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Te Hononga Pūkenga - 'the connection of experts', was created by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga to make Māori and Indigenous research expertise, location and contact information readily available...