Coral Bell School Inaugural Annual Lecture on Indigenous Diplomacy

Indigenous peoples have a long history of conducting international diplomacy, from their relations with one another across the continent for tens of millennia, their engagement with peoples outside Australia, and their contributions to the current international political system.

What makes Aboriginal Australian international relations unique? Why in modern Australia are such approaches and worldviews important? And what can we learn from such unique ways of knowing, being, and doing?

Such questions have rarely been explored by International Relations Scholarship. In the inaugural Coral Bell School Annual Lecture on Indigenous Diplomacy, Dr Mary Graham and Associate Professor Morgan Brigg will explore these issues in a wide-ranging discussion on Aboriginal Australian political ordering and relationality in international politics.

The inaugural Coral Bell School Annual Lecture on Indigenous Diplomacy is the first and only national event in Australia celebrating and exploring First Nations peoples and their contributions to international relations, diplomacy, foreign policy, and political thought.

Speakers

Dr Mary Graham is a Kombumerri person (Gold Coast) through her father's heritage and affiliated with Wakka Wakka (South Burnett) through her mother's people. She has worked across government and universities, teaching Aboriginal history, politics and comparative philosophy, and incorporating Aboriginal knowledges into curricula. She is one of the foremost writers on Aboriginal Australian knowledges, and philosophy.

Dr Morgan Brigg is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland. His research develops ways of knowing and working across cultural difference which draw upon Indigenous approaches to political community. Current projects examine ways of recuperating Indigenous forms of governance and conflict resolution, and how relationality can make the field of conflict resolution a genuinely global endeavour.

A reception will be held in the Research School of Physics foyer at 5 pm, followed by the lecture at 5.30 pm.

Jointly supported by ANU First Nations Portfolio, Tjabal Centre and Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs