 Thank you, everyone. It's a stunning day here in Ngunnawal and Negambri country. I just wanted to begin by acknowledging the ongoing custodianship to this very beautiful country at this time of year. For those of you who are not hearing in Canberra, the wattle is fully blooming. It is part of one of those signs in many parts of the Aboriginal country that we're well into first spring. I wanted to particularly acknowledge the country that you're all coming in from, and you can acknowledge appropriately. And to welcome you here to this breakfast forum on Indigenous Australia Global Outlook and part of the objective of this forum is to share with you some of our reflections on Indigenous engagement in a global world and perhaps some of the lessons that might have for governments. I wanted to introduce myself. So I'm Ian Anderson. I'm Deputy Vice Chancellor here at the Australian National University. My background as a public health physician, I have worked in government and also worked in the university sector for most of my professional life, mostly in the fields of Indigenous health. And education. I'm joined by Professor Maggie Water, a parable woman from the Parabana people, same clan groups as myself from Northeastern Tasmania and Maggie was the distinguished professor of sociology at the University of Tasmania and has recently joined a commission in Victoria, which she can tell you a little bit about in the introduction. And Professor Tony Drys, who is Provost Chancellor's First Nations Education Research, University of Southern Queensland, and Gamilaroi and Yelainli First Nations of Northwest New South Wales, and a renowned Indigenous later in policy and valuation, a research in the field of education. So I might just begin by making some broad opening remarks. You have a question. The housekeeping is posted in the chat channel and if you would like to ask a question at any point, we'll just get us through our first set of comments. If you raise your hand, and we can have a conversation. Okay. So, for well over half a century, Indigenous Australians Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples has been actively reaching out globally to learn from other Indigenous peoples from other peoples who are struggling with issues of equity, and to also shape global thinking. And to with a view to contributing to a global conversation around Indigenous issues for Indigenous peoples and other people who are confronted with rights and civil rights agendas. One of the first times this occurred was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where Indigenous activists, particularly in Redstone and Sydney and also in Melbourne, Victoria, began to talk to and engage with civil rights leaders, particularly in the in the Black civil rights movement in United States of America. There are a number of kind of all recorded. And for some people who are there will remember encounters between particularly between the Black Panthers, at the radical end of the North American civil rights movement and Indigenous activists. And in one of those exchanges, an idea was shared about health and welfare organizations that were run by the Black American community. This notion was called community control. And the idea of community control has become a very powerful part of the Indigenous movement here in Australia. And that gave rise to Aboriginal health services that were run and controlled by the Aboriginal community, education services and a whole range of other welfare and social services that were community control. Again, picking up an idea that came from North America. Today, that service sector is worth over a billion dollars. And when I was last in government, I read a reform of what was a co-ag, then co-ag, National Cabinet agreement called Close the Gap. And it was the community control sector working together that significantly changed the outcomes of that agreement. Essentially, arguing that if we were to move to, if governments were to move towards shared decision making, that Indigenous, represented by the community control sector, had to have a seat at the decision making table and be a part of the agreement and not just consulted in that agreement. And that agreement was recently ground shifting. It was the first time that an intergovernmental agreement, in my knowledge, an intergovernmental agreement in Australia had signatories, not only the Commonwealth Government and all the state and territory governments, but in fact a coalition of Aboriginal bodies representing Aboriginal, 50 Aboriginal community controlled pink organizations in the country. So that was, that was a movement and a sector that grew out of a reach out globally. That movement, a global movement has had a strong focus on rights, the UN declaration of Indigenous, the rights of Indigenous people signed in 2007 was developed over 20 years through various UN fora and represented a place where Indigenous leaders played a significant role in shaping the Indigenous rights agenda. And similarly in various professional movements, Mark Munds was in the Indigenous health movement. We began reaching out in the 1990s, quite deliberately from Australia to work with Maori peoples, First Nations people in the United States, Native Hawaiians and Canadian average on peoples on issues of health, health policy, health practice. And there are a number of kind of global associations that were set up. The one that I was most involved in was the Pacific Region Indigenous Doctors Congress, which began when there are only about 50 average on doctors in Australia. And it significantly accelerated the professionalization of Indigenous health, the development of Indigenous medical workforce and transformation of medical education and Indigenous health research in this country. So I'm going to turn, I'm going to ask two questions of the panellists. And then we might open up some questions and I'll come back to our final question about 10 minutes before close. But I'm going to go to Professor Walter first and actually ask her to reflect looking back over the last 20 years. What do you think has been some of the highlights for the engagement of average on Torres Strait Islander peoples globally? Yeah, I'm pulling it everybody. My name is Maggie Guldo as Ian said, I'm talking to you from La Mujanina country here in Luchtawita, Tasmania. And yes, just to follow up also on Ian's point, I'm Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania but now moving to America status, because I've taken up a role, a very important role as a commissioner on the Uruk Justice Commission, Australia's first truth telling Royal Commission. And we've just started our work, but it's a very exciting space. And I really commend the state of Victoria for actually having the foresight and the, and the willingness to go where the rest of Australia has not gone yet. So there's two things for me that have that I personally been involved with that have really been big shapers of my career but also big shape shapers of how we do Indigenous business here in Australia. The first is the academic one and that was the formation of the Native American Indigenous Studies Association. A strange name indicates to the starter by a small group of Native American scholars, but quickly became global. And that started in 2009. I was the first secretary and lots of other Australians have been involved with it. Ali Morton Robinson is the president-elect this year. Bronwyn Fredericks has been involved. But that brought together global Indigenous scholars from around the world, started with 100 people. It's now got well over 1000 highly contested places each each year that we can run it. And it has really become the site of high quality Indigenous scholarship and Australians are there. The second one is around data and especially Indigenous data sovereignty. So as you all know, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are culturally and linguistically diverse, but you wouldn't know it if you looked at the data. It's just about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. We are also culturally and diverse from Indigenous peoples in other nations. But again, you wouldn't know it if you looked at the data. So if you look at the data in New Zealand, in the US, in Canada, it has exactly the same tropes of Indigenous deficit and Indigenous need that are found here in Australia. And that is what sort of has brought together Indigenous peoples, Indigenous leaders, tribes, Iwi, First Nations to actually try and do something to make the data better suit the purposes of Indigenous peoples. But more importantly, better suit what should be the purposes of the nation's state. Because at the moment, the data that we're getting in all of these places, including Australia, doesn't really serve anybody. It's just a continuation of a pattern stuck on a permanent loop of 1996, really. It doesn't get improved from there. So the Indigenous data sovereignty movement was born really in 2016 at a workshop, an international workshop held at the ANU, but of course the complaints and the concerns go way back further than that. And everybody who came had the problem that we had an Indigenous data paradox. We had way too much of the data that's about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of First Nations or Māori that was negative, that was about need, how poor we were, how overcrowded our houses were, how low weight were the babies, and none of the data, or almost none of the data that we actually needed for nation building. And so that is the drive of that. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in the second question, so I'll hand over to Tony now. Thank you, Maggie. Yama, hello everyone. I join you today from Turrable Nation up in Brisbane, north side of Brisbane, pay my respects to other First Nations people here and to the nations of which you join this forum. So I'm going to provide a couple of examples of work that I've done principally in Indigenous education with international connections. I suppose the advent of technology particularly in a national transportation sounds like a novel idea nowadays, but through the advent of technology and of course international travel, we've been able to connect with First Nations groups throughout the world. Not only in inverted commas, the usual suspects as I might call them in terms of other colonised nations principally Canada, US, New Zealand, but also the Nordic nations, Sami nations, and increasingly first peoples closer to home in the Asia Pacific. And I want to share a couple of examples of work where first peoples have been a driving force. The first one is a project I was involved in when I was at the Australian Council for Educational Research. And that was with the OECD in a project led by Canada looking at promising practices in Indigenous education. Now, government was a big player, lead player in that simply by virtue of the fact that the partnership was with the OECD. However, through the development of that project, First Nations voices, whether directly or indirectly through literature and case studies was at the fore of the conversation as it ought to be. A further example of some of the deficit discourse that Ian and Maggie talked to or alluded to, nowhere is that more on show, if you like, than in the education sector. We talk about, you know, not only gaps, but deficits catching up, being behind. And often the measures are simply too crude. And I'm referring to standardized testing regimes. Now, there is ample evidence both domestically in Australia and internationally through PISA and other regimes. Yes, our children, our young learners, when measured in kind of Western measures are behind, so to speak. What we don't measure sufficiently is other aspects of the whole child of the whole learner. And through international work, you know, we've been pushing this case. If you look at a young learner, whether they, you know, black, white or brindle, what's important is seeing the whole child. And I think First Nations Educational Advocacy has been at the forefront of those conversations, particularly when you consider a young person needs to develop not only academically but physically, socially, emotionally, and indeed spiritually. And then there's a kind of parallel conversation, which is starting to emerge in international engagement and literature around First Nations education. And that is to challenge, if you will, non-indigenous learners about their understanding of history, of culture, and indeed learning that rounds them in kind of citizenship, which goes beyond 230 years. A second quick example of international engagement with First Peoples is some work that was once conducted. Unfortunately, the association's not active any longer, but for a good 20 years, Australia was engaged in a forum called the Asia Pacific Bureau of that old education. And it was looking at the provision of basic education and adult education to disadvantage peoples in the Asia Pacific. Now, we hear a lot in policy discourse about, and quite rightly, the inequities where it comes to gender, particularly in nations where the universal right to an education is often denied to girls and women, but equally in that kind of rights and equity based movement and argument, First Nations people have been at the forefront of that advocacy. The big challenge, however, in public policy, both here in Australia and in the nationally, I would argue in education is not the strength of the advocacy because it has grown year by year, year by year. But the monumental failure of policy implementation, and that remains kind of the big gap in my mind in terms of this kind of aspiration that nations pursue in Indigenous education and then the reality of implementation on the ground. For me, that's the gap. But anyway, there are a couple of examples I'll throw back to you here. Okay. So I'm going to ask a second question really about where do you both think that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have really shaped global thinking. Start by acknowledging I think particularly for me that most of my global engagement hasn't necessarily wasn't necessarily shaped up to change the globe, but was actually in some in some cases just quite simple reaching out to find colleagues, find people I could talk to, but I didn't have to explain the whole world to. And also find colleagues that you could feel safe with. So I remember very early on, it's one of the first Pacific region Indigenous doctors Congress, a meeting in Hawaii I think was about 2001 2000. And again, there were, were a small number of Aboriginal doctors by that point I had graduated at the University of Melbourne as the first Indigenous doctor there, one of the first couple in Australia. And I remember being at the closing plenary of this relatively small meeting of about 100 people, and just bursting in tears, because really for the first time I felt like I was in a professionally safe space, professionally safe space with colleagues, which was very different from a experience as in medical education, and as professional. But but I think to go to my reflection on where I think, in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have contributed global thinking is really about models of health care. And particularly growing out of the Aboriginal Community Control Health Services models of primary health care, and shaping thinking, not not just as contributors but also as learners and learners in a shared space, but particularly for some jurisdictions that hadn't had the luxury in history of growing up in that particular model of care such as in the United States. So there was a particular influencing piece that I think became very relevant to our Australian contribution as Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people into thinking and into policy and into health care practice, particularly in indigenous primary health care systems. I might go in the same order if that's right. So, Maggie, did you have a reflection on where you think Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have really shaped global thinking and practice? Yeah, again, and again, I'll bring back to indigenous data sovereignty because it is a movement which is now having serious impact right across the globe, including here in Australia. New Zealand now has an associate minister for Maori data and Maori data sovereignty is part of that her purview. So it is entered the lexicon, but in Australia and Australian activists, leaders and scholars have been there right through and are still right there in leading and working on this advocacy. So just to remind people, indigenous data sovereignty is defined as the right of indigenous people to own, control, access and possess data that drives from them and which pertains to their members, knowledge systems, customs, resources and territories. Now that's a global definition. And that's one of the first benefits, because by having a global definition, it not only gives the concepts and legitimacy, it also thwarts the tendency of some non-indigenous policy advisors and others to take indigenous derived concepts and reshape them and reframe them to what makes sense to them and also into something that's more amenable to their own aspirations. So by having that global definition, that's it, you can't change it, you can't call it. If you want to do something else, do something else, but don't you dare call this indigenous data sovereignty. We're also being a leader in the, so my name Naira Wingara, the Australian indigenous data sovereignty collective, we are one of the four main networks, networks, so we have and we formed up in 2017. We're very active in the leadership space in the intellectual leadership space and we're moving now more into the accreditation space, developing courses, etc. But we work hand in glove with the US Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network, with the First Nations Indigenous Governance Centre and with the Tamana Oranga Maori Data Sovereignty Network. And the benefit there is that we actually can leverage off what other groups are doing in their various things to actually inform what we do and vice versa. So for example, in 2019, we all came together with our smaller affiliates from Mexico, Sami nations, the Basque Country, and a few other places to form the global Indigenous Data Alliance. And that moves us that one step ahead. And, you know, we benefit from things like, you know, in New Zealand, we've got the Titanga in technology project out of what University of Waikato, that's looking at transforming data ecosystems, and looking at how Maori customary protocols and Indigenous knowledges inform the construction of digital identities. So we're part of that. In the US, we've seen how the data network there has worked with the tribes to actually get the US Census Bureau to publish the data that tribes want, not just what the government wants, and also not publish the data that tribes don't want made public. And here we've actually ran a summit just to finish off in 2018, where we have 50 Indigenous leaders from across Australia. We developed up a set of Indigenous Data Sovereignty protocols for Australia. And that set of principles is now being used as an exemplar by the other Indigenous Data Sovereignty Networks. So we are leading, but we're also benefiting from our global connections. And the work is moving a pace. Thanks, I'll hand it to Tony. Thanks, Maggie. I think what you have just shared highlights the role of universities in collaborating and providing spaces for First Nations peoples to connect and exchange information and knowledge, etc. I would suggest there are other parts of our society that could learn from that and do a lot more in the space. And I'm particularly thinking of schools education and through the work I've done, including the project with the OECD, I saw both some strengths of international collaboration, but also sizable room for improvement, particularly in connecting practitioners in schools education is the area I was looking at. There is sizable scope for that connection. But returning to the, if you will, academic side of things, the, as well as the strengthening of Data Sovereignty Networks that you've been at the forefront of. As a researcher, one of the real benefits of that international connection is, of course, insights into First Nations methodologies. And the, that has allowed, I think, First Nations peoples to find voice within the research community and conducting research activity in a way that fits the purpose, not to, of course, overlook the fact that something that's far more culturally safe and indeed culturally robust. There's been a national engagement that you kind of come across pearls and gems like one study in anthropology that came from Canada, and it is the single most memorable paper title that I could recall and the title of the paper was a year shared drinking tea. And what the paper in fact highlighted, and it was the First Nations researcher, early career researcher in Canada, was the fact that before any data can be collected, you've got to establish relationship. And so her paper, she called it a year spent drinking tea, because before she conducted interviews with the First Nations groups that she was working with, she, of course, had to establish trust and a relationship. And then you can collect data and it makes perfect sense, but what it highlights to me in terms of a key lesson to us in the scholarship community is that you've got to give First Nations research time. And time is of the essence, but in a different way. So that's been the key learning for me and it could only come through international engagement. The other thing I'll add very quickly in terms of the strength of these international collaborations. I recall the times that I've engaged in research with other First Nations people and the overwhelming sense of relief. I had when I found out that a lot of our experiences whilst unique in Australia. And I found relief in that not, not because of the fact that, you know, to discover pain or firsthand kind of recounts of some, you know, really troubling stories internationally, but the fact that we're not alone. And that's a very, very strong thing to embrace that we do have some shared experiences, not withstanding unique learnings. The other, the beauty of international collaboration I've found is that when you get to meet elders from other countries. I recall when I was in Edmonton in Canada, and I went to shake an elder's hand. He was a chief. He said no Tony left hand. And he wanted to shake me by the left hand. And I was a bit puzzled and he said, this way you're closer to my heart. So you wanted to shake on the left. And it's just one small example of, you know, finding these knowledge elders, you know, throughout the world, which is a big plus. But I want to quickly come back before we're going back to you in to where I started. Whilst there are these emerging networks that I think are going to benefit first peoples here in Australia and internationally. There are still sizeable gaps, particularly in key areas of practice. And I would include schools education in that. One of the kind of one of the true legacies of indigenous global data movement is to point locally to point locally to the need to produce data and information that indigenous leaders can use on the ground to make changes in their community at home. And there were a number of times where I thought that was kind of for me where the practice of that was just reshaping my entire thinking. There was a there was a moment and I'll make this my final comment and I'll go to Megan Tony for you to make some final comments. Community meeting in the audio country in Shepparton, where the Victorian Education Department chose to release for the first time after collecting data on indigenous outcomes, disaggregating data on indigenous outcomes to actually start to release that data to indigenous communities in Victoria. And they did that regionally. And I still think that was profoundly troubling that over 20 years I didn't think was ethically inappropriate to collect data without releasing it back to indigenous communities. They were having a conversation and the conversation while we were leading with about 40 indigenous leaders from across the community was on the difficult issues for transitioning from year 12 to employment. For that very small part of the indigenous community that weren't going on to take education, why she larger part in Shepparton for TAFE or to university. And one of the predictors of success was recently well established was actually the number of Aboriginal kids that would take up broader employment preparation in upper secondary schools such as prep for interviews, getting driver's licenses, all that stuff and someone commented the Education Department said to all 50% of the Aboriginal children in this region do not have that education in part of their high schooling. And the room were kind of deeply troubled by that. Until somebody actually said, so you're telling me for the first time that this is a, this is a problem in our community. Can you tell me how many kids you're talking about? And the bureaucrat went down and said, okay, well, 20, 20 kids, 20 kids every year are not getting access. And then suddenly the problem became manageable, rather than a meaningless percentage. A was the first time that that information was shared and B became a manageable problem and that's the power of information being provided locally. But again, also the power of the thinking around indigenous data sovereignty. So Tony, did you have any, we're going to pop off in about two minutes. Yep, thank you in and thanks everyone for joining. I would just quickly take this opportunity to run people that data is not just numbers. It's not just statistics and we can't overlook the fact that data also include the narrative and story, which that and that provides meaning and is more likely to be contextually kind of important to first nations people. So when we say data, let's not think let's not limit it to numbers and there are many, many stories out there that ought to be heard the improving policy outcomes. Thank you. Maybe Look, just to finish data is the lens by which indigenous populations are made visible. It tells nation states and tells us what can be seen and also what can't be seen. And I think Ben's point about the community lens that's the benefit of indigenous leadership is that we would not do anything that was not community linked. It's a different way of thinking different way of doing data, and the benefits are enormous. So welcome. Thank you. So everyone. Thank you all. It's been a great way to start a spring morning. We started a journey talking about the history of indigenous engagement with the globe. Some of the impactful areas in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have contributed to global thinking. And then finally, to reflect on what governments might learn, what the Australian government might learn from some of that and then finally, we, we've found our way back from the global right down to the local and the power of local data. So thank you everyone. It's been a great conversation and go well for the rest of the leadership forum.