Mick Gooda is an Aboriginal Australian public servant. He has particularly served as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2016 and as Co-Commissioner of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory from 2016 to 2017. He is a descendant of the Gangulu people of Central Queensland. [1] [2] [3]
Gooda was previously the chief executive officer of the Aboriginal Health Cooperative Research Centre. [4] He was also a long-serving officer with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. [3]
He was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2016. [5] [6]
In 2016, Gooda and Margaret White were appointed as co-Commissioners for the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory. [7]
Gooda was appointed as a member of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2010 and appointed to the Referendum Council in 2015 by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. [8]
In 2015 he was appointed the chair of the Queensland Government Stolen Wages Reparations Taskforce. [9] In 2018 he was appointed the inaugural First Nations Housing Advisor to the Queensland Government. [10] In 2019 he was appointed to the Eminent Panel for the Queensland Government's Indigenous treaty-making process.[ citation needed ]
In November 2019, it was announced that Gooda would be one of 20 members of the Senior Advisory Group to help co-design the Indigenous voice to government set up by Ken Wyatt, the Minister for Indigenous Australians. The group is co-chaired by Wyatt, Marcia Langton and Tom Calma. [11]
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) (1990–2005) was the Australian Government body through which Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were formally involved in the processes of government affecting their lives, established under the Hawke government in 1990. A number of Indigenous programs and organisations fell under the overall umbrella of ATSIC.
The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but operating independently of, the Australian Government. It is responsible for investigating alleged infringements of Australia's anti-discrimination legislation in relation to federal agencies.
Reconciliation Australia is a non-government, not-for-profit foundation established in January 2001 to promote a continuing national focus for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It was established by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, which was established to create a framework for furthering a government policy of reconciliation in Australia.
A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. Truth commissions are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship marked by human rights abuses. In both their truth-seeking and reconciling functions, truth commissions have political implications: they "constantly make choices when they define such basic objectives as truth, reconciliation, justice, memory, reparation, and recognition, and decide how these objectives should be met and whose needs should be served".
Michael James Dodson is an Aboriginal Australian barrister, academic, and member of the Yawuru people in the Broome area of the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia.
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.
Bringing Them Home is the 1997 Australian Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. The report marked a pivotal moment in the controversy that has come to be known as the Stolen Generations.
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common; 812,728 people self-identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the 2021 Australian Census, representing 3.2% of the total population of Australia. Of these Indigenous Australians, 91.4% identified as Aboriginal; 4.2% identified as Torres Strait Islander; while 4.4% identified with both groups. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag have been among the official flags of Australia.
Land councils, also known as Aboriginal land councils, or land and sea councils, are Australian community organisations, generally organised by region, that are commonly formed to represent the Indigenous Australians who occupied their particular region before the arrival of European settlers. They have historically advocated for recognition of traditional land rights, and also for the rights of Indigenous people in other areas such as equal wages and adequate housing. Land councils are self-supporting, and not funded by state or federal taxes.
The National Congress of Australia's First Peoples was the national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Planning to establish National Congress was undertaken by a committee established by then Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Tom Calma. The organisation was announced in November 2009. Its first elected co-chairs were Jody Broun and Les Malezer. Subsequent chairs included Kirstie Parker, Jackie Huggins and Rod Little. It was registered as a charity in December 2012, but in June 2019 went into voluntary administration.
Mick Miller was a notable Aboriginal Australian activist, politician, and statesman who campaigned for most of his life seeking greater social justice, land rights, and improved life opportunities for Aboriginal Australians in North Queensland and the rest of Australia.
Indigenous Australians are both convicted of crimes and imprisoned at a disproportionately higher rate in Australia, as well as being over-represented as victims of crime. As of September 2019, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners represented 28% of the total adult prisoner population, while accounting for 2% of the general adult population. Various explanations have been given for this over-representation, both historical and more recent. Federal and state governments and Indigenous groups have responded with various analyses, programs and measures.
Indigenous land rights in Australia, also known as Aboriginal land rights in Australia, relate to the rights and interests in land of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, and the term may also include the struggle for those rights. Connection to the land and waters is vital in Australian Aboriginal culture and to that of Torres Strait Islander people, and there has been a long battle to gain legal and moral recognition of ownership of the lands and waters occupied by the many peoples prior to colonisation of Australia starting in 1788, and the annexation of the Torres Strait Islands by the colony of Queensland in the 1870s.
Thomas Edwin Calma,, is an Aboriginal Australian human rights and social justice campaigner, and 2023 senior Australian of the Year. He is the sixth chancellor of the University of Canberra, a post held since January 2014, after two years as deputy chancellor. Calma is the second Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person to hold the position of chancellor of any Australian university.
The Closing the Gap framework is an Australian government strategy that aims to reduce disadvantage among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, based on seven targets. From adoption in 2008, after meetings with the Close the Gap social justice campaign, until 2018, the federal and state and territory governments worked together via the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) on the framework, with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet producing a report at the end of each year analysing progress on each of its seven targets.
The Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory is a Royal Commission established in 2016 by the Australian Government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to inquire into and report upon failings in the child protection and youth detention systems of the Government of the Northern Territory. The establishment of the commission followed revelations broadcast on 25 July 2016 by the ABC TV Four Corners program which showed abuse of juveniles held in the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in Darwin.
Kirstie Parker is a Yuwallarai journalist, policy administrator and Aboriginal Australian activist. From 2013 to 2015 she served as the co-chair of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples and during her tenure pressed for policies that allowed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians to gain the ability for self-determination.
Aboriginal Australian identity, sometimes known as Aboriginality, is the perception of oneself as Aboriginal Australian, or the recognition by others of that identity. Aboriginal Australians are one of two Indigenous Australian groups of peoples, the other being Torres Strait Islanders. There has also been discussion about the use of "Indigenous" vs "Aboriginal", or more specific group names, such as Murri or Noongar (demonyms), Kaurna or Yolngu, based on language, or a clan name. Usually preference of the person(s) in question is used, if known.
Close the Gap (CTG) is a social justice campaign focused on Indigenous Australians' health, in which peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous health bodies, NGOs and human rights organisations work together to achieve health equality in Australia. The Campaign was launched in April 2007. National Close the Gap Day (NCTGD) has been held annually since 2009.
The Indigenous Voice to Parliament is the proposed new advisory group containing separately elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, enshrined in the Constitution of Australia, which would "have a responsibility and right to advise the Australian Parliament and Government on national matters of significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".