Presenters, Chairs and Facilitators

Session 1
» Professor Mick Dodson AM Chair
» Mr John Ah Kit MLA
» Professor Stephen Cornell
» Mr Neil Sterritt

Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9

Professor Mick Dodson AM
Professor Dodson is a member of the Yawuru people, the traditional Aboriginal owners of land and waters in the Broome area of the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia. He is the inaugural Chair of the Institute for Indigenous Australia at the Australian National University in Canberra, Chairperson of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and a Director of Dodson, Bauman and Associates, Legal and Anthropological Consultants.

Professor Dodson was Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. He holds a Bachelor of Jurisprudence and a Bachelor of Laws from Monash University, an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Technology Sydney and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of NSW.

Professor Dodson was formerly the Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. He was also the Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at the University of New South Wales and he has been a Director of the Northern Land Council. He is a member of the New South Wales Judicial Commission and the Western Australian Law Reform Commission. He is a board member of the Reconciliation Australia and Lingiari Foundations and he is the current chairman of the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre.

Professor Dodson is a vigorous advocate of the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples of Australia and the world, and in January 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to the Indigenous Community.

Minister John Ah Kit MLA
Minister Ah Kit is the Northern Territory Minister for Community Development, Housing, Local Government, Sport and Recreation and Regional Development. He is also the Minister assisting the Chief Minister on Indigenous Affairs. Minister Ah Kit has an Associate Diploma in Social Work from the South Australian Institute of Technology. He has been President and Coordinator of the Kalano Community Association, Director of the Northern Land Council 1984-90, Executive Director of the Jawoyn Association 1991-95 and has held the seat of Arnhem since 1995. In 2001, as a member of the Martin Labor Government, he was appointed as the Territory’s first Aboriginal minister.

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Professor Stephen Cornell
Professor Cornell is professor of Sociology and of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Arizona, where he also directs the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. His Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago. He taught at Harvard University for nine years and at the University of California, San Diego, before joining the Arizona faculty in 1998.

Professor Cornell has spent much of the last twenty years working with Indigenous nations in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere on governance and economic development issues. In 1986 at Harvard University, he co-founded the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, the most comprehensive effort yet undertaken to examine the conditions for sustainable economic development on Indian reservations. He continues to co-direct that project today. He also serves as a Faculty Associate with the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy at the University of Arizona.

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Mr Neil Sterritt

Mr Neil Sterritt has worked as a consultant in a range of Indigenous issues in Canada and overseas, and specialises in leadership development and issues of governance of Indigenous corporations (roles and responsibilities, emphasis on conflicts of interest, fiduciary responsibilities). As President of the Git'ksan-Wet'suwe'ten Tribal Council (1981-1987), he organised and coordinated Delgamuukw v. Queen aboriginal title court case. He was Co-chair of the 1992 Federal-Provincial constitutional round on Aboriginal issues (Work Group III), and Director of Self-government and Land Claims, Assembly of First Nations, Ottawa (1988-1991).

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