Joanna Cruickshank - History, Law and Treaty-Making with Indigenous Peoples in Australia

History & Policy

Joanna Cruickshank (Deakin University, Melbourne): History, Law and Treaty-Making with Indigenous Peoples in Australia

In February 2016, the Victorian state government became the first Australian jurisdiction to announce its intention to work towards a treaty with Indigenous people. As of late 2018, the treaty process is well underway. In this paper I discuss an Australian Research Council-funded project that is providing context for treaty processes between Australian governments and Indigenous people, by researching the history of lawful relations in Australia since colonization. By making accessible this history through a diversity of outcomes, the project is informing policy and seeking to educate the broader community about the practical activities of conducting lawful relations in the present.

Joanna Cruickshank is Senior Lecturer in History at Deakin University and a Chief Investigator on the ARC-funded project Indigenous Leaders: Lawful Relations from Encounter to Treaty. Recent publications include 'Colonial Contexts and Global Dissent' in The Oxford History of Dissenting Traditions (2017). Her book White Women, Aboriginal Missions and Australian Settler Governments will be published by Brill in 2019.

History & Policy exists to put historians in touch with policy makers, encourage historically informed comment in public policy debate and put excellent history at the heart of policy making. Although we are the only project of our kind in the UK we are far from being the only one in the world. For this conference, which will be open to policy makers and the public, we are partnering with the American Historical Association and Australian Policy & History for a day of panels and discussion to explore how history informs public policy debate in different countries. What are the success stories, how do policy makers vary in their receptiveness, what can historians learn from each other and from the policy makers they talk to, and have particular topics got more traction in some places than others?