Professor Michael Dodson, AM. B Juris, LlB, LlD(HC) Lit D (HC) (Chairperson) is a member of the Yawuru peoples the traditional Aboriginal owners of land and waters in the Broome area of the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia. He is currently Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University. He is a Professor of law at the ANU College of Law. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Professor Dodson is also currently a Director of Dodson, Bauman & Associates Pty Ltd –Consultants. He is formerly the Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at the University of New South Wales, Kensington.

He was Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and he served as Commissioner from April 1993 to January 1998.

Professor Dodson is a member of the Publications Committee for the University of New South Wales’ Indigenous Law Reporter, a member of the Lingiari Foundation and a member of the Australian National Archives Advisory Council. In August 2011, he took up his six month appointment as the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard, Massachusetts, USA. He has been a prominent and long-standing advocate on land rights and other issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Professor John Maynard (Deputy Chairperson) is a Worimi man from the Port Stephens region of New South Wales. He is currently an Australian Research Council Australian Research Fellow (Indigenous). He was formerly Professor of Indigenous Studies and Director of the Wollotuka Institute of Aboriginal Studies at the University of Newcastle.

Professor Maynard was awarded the Aboriginal History (ANU) Stanner Fellowship (1996), and was the New South Wales Premier’s Indigenous History Fellow (2003), the Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow (2004), the University of Newcastle Researcher of the Year (2008) and the ANU’s Allan Martin History Lecturer (2010). He gained his PhD in 2003, examining the rise of early Aboriginal political activism.

Professor Maynard was a member of the Executive Committee of the Australian Historical Association, the New South Wales History Council and the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council and has worked with and within many Aboriginal communities, urban, rural and remote. He is the author of four books, including Aboriginal Stars of the Turf, Fight for Liberty and Freedom and The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe.

Born and raised in Perth, Emeritus Professor Robert Tonkinson took his Honours and Masters degrees in social anthropology at the University of Western Australia, where he later held the Chair in Anthropology (from 1984 until his retirement in 2003). He obtained his Doctorate in anthropology at the University of British Columbia (1972), and taught at the University of Oregon (1968–80) and the ANU (1980–84) before returning to Western Australia.

From the 1960s, Professor Tonkinson conducted research with Desert Martu people and in Vanuatu. He has been published extensively. In addition to four co-edited volumes, and a monograph on his Vanuatu research, he has had two books published, The Jigalong Mob (1974) and The Mardu Aborigines (1978/91). He has also published several edited volumes, and numerous articles on various aspects of Melanesian and Australian Aboriginal cultures. He has been active in land claim research on behalf of the Martu, who gained title to the bulk of their traditional homelands in 2002.

Ms June Oscar is from the Bunuba language group of the central Kimberley region of North Western Australia. She has a Bachelor of Business from Notre Dame University.

Ms Oscar is a strong advocate and activist for the recognition, rights, preservation and promotion of Indigenous Australian languages. She is Chair of the Kimberly Language Resource Centre, an Aboriginal community organisation directed by senior speakers of the 28 surviving languages of the Kimberley region, and a former co-chair of the Kimberley Interpreting Service. In addition, she is a member of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, comprising senior men and women who are the custodians and teachers of Aboriginal law, ceremonies, dance and songs.

She has previously held the position of Deputy Director of the Kimberley Land Council, the first woman to Chair the Marra Worra Worra Resource Agency (Fitzroy Crossing) and has represented the Kimberley Aboriginal community on a number of advisory positions and interests to the state and federal governments.
Ms Oscar is the Kimberley member of the Indigenous Women’s Congress (a state wide board of Indigenous women established to provide advice to the Minister for Women’s Interests), a member of the school council at Fitzroy Valley District High School and is involved in the Marulu Project focusing on research into Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. She is also a committee member on the Girl’s Academy – Fitzroy Valley and the Fitzroy Futures Forum and the local community radio station Wangkiyupurnanupurru and member of the Western Australian Pastoral Lands Board. She is presently the CEO of Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre.

Mr Dana Ober is from Saibai Island in the western Torres Strait. He is a linguist and has an expert knowledge of Torres Strait Islander culture and history.

He is currently the chief executive officer of Saibai Council and is currently working at Tagai State College on Thursday Island. He was previously a lecturer at the Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. He speaks three languages fluently: Kalaw Kawaw Ya, Yumplatok and English.

His main areas of interest are the development and maintenance of Australian Indigenous languages and human rights, particularly Indigenous rights. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in linguistics and sub-major in anthropology, from the ANU.

Ms Robynne Quiggin is a Wiradjuri lawyer based in Sydney. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney, Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales and a Graduate Diploma in Practical Legal Training from The College of Law in Sydney.

Ms Quiggin has worked as a solicitor, senior policy officer and lecturer on a range of Indigenous law issues, including: Indigenous intellectual and cultural property; use of biological resources; heritage; native title; human rights; consumer issues; media; criminal justice; and other social justice issues. She has participated in several United Nations Indigenous, human rights and biodiversity forums, and is a member of the editorial boards of the Indigenous Law Bulletin, Balayi and the Journal of Indigenous Social Policy.

Ms Quiggin ran a legal practice and consultancy in Sydney for seven years. During that time she wrote the Indigenous Women’s Business Toolkit, developed the National Indigenous Intellectual Property Toolkit, published articles and chapters in a number of books and journals.

She is currently managing the Australian Securities & Investments Commission’s Indigenous outreach program, which assists Indigenous consumers with financial service issues, and liaises with financial service industries to improve services for Indigenous consumers.

Adjunct Professor Sandy Toussaint is an anthropologist who has worked with Aboriginal people since the early 1980s. She has undertaken both applied and academic research with a range of Indigenous groups but especially with Walmajarri, Juwaliny-Walmajarri, Gooniyandi and Wangkajunga families in the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia, and with Noongar groups in the state’s south. Professor Toussaint worked for inquiries such as the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Aboriginal Land Inquiry, and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group. She has also worked for organizations such as the Kimberley Language Resource Centre and Marra Worra Worra.

She lectured in anthropology for eighteen years at the University of Western Australia, and has written and reviewed many socio-cultural, environmental and health reports, and published widely in journals such as Aboriginal History, Anthropology Today, the Australian Journal of Social Issues, Oceania, Social Analysis, Practicing Anthropology, Australian Aboriginal Studies, Anthropological Forum, Meanjin, and the Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker. Her books include Phyllis Kaberry and me: anthropology, history and Aboriginal Australia; Crossing boundaries: cultural, legal, historical and practice issues in native title (editor); A jury of whose peers? The cultural politics of juries in Australia (co-edited with Kate Auty); Applied anthropology in Australasia (co-edited with Jim Taylor); and Kimberley Stories (editor).

Professor Toussaint is the Australian trustee of the Phyllis Kaberry Collection (lodged at AIATSIS), co-trustee of the Catherine Berndt Estate, and a member of the Berndt Foundation Advisory Board. Coordinator of the 2012 Jimmy Pike’s Artlines Exhibition, Professor Toussaint is on the editorial board of the journal Collaborative Anthropologies, and dedicated to the value of collaborative work with Indigenous communities and organisations.

Dr Mark Wenitong is Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Tropical Public Health at James Cook University, and is from the Kabi Kabi tribal group of South Queensland. He is the Senior Medical Advisor to Apunipima Cape York Health Council, and is the Aboriginal Public Health Medical Officer for the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation in Canberra.

He was the Senior Medical Officer at Wuchopperen Health Services in Cairns for the previous nine years, and he has also worked as the medical advisor for the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in Canberra. He is founder and a past president of the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association.
Dr Wenitong chairs the Andrology Australia (Monash), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Male Reference group.

He is a member of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council. He is also a member of the National Lead Clinicians Group (part of the national health reforms) as well as a member of the national Independent E-Health Advisory group, and a ministerial appointee on the NHMRC Preventative Health Committee.

Dr Wenitong has been heavily involved in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workforce issues and sits on the Council of Australian Governments’ Australian Health Workforce Advisory Council. He is involved in several National Health and Medical Research Council funded research projects.

He has worked in prison health, refugee health in East Timor, as well as studying and working in Indigenous health internationally. He was a member of the Northern Territory Emergency Response review expert advisory group in 2008.

Dr Wenitong received the 2011 Australian Medical Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Healthcare, and the 2010 Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council Hall of Fame award.