The World Indigenous Legal Conference 2014 was hosted by the Indigenous Lawyers Association of Queensland, and held at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, from 24-27 June 2014. The conference brought together over 250 delegates from the academy, legal practice, and community and government organisations, representing a diverse range of Indigenous nations from Australia, Aotearoa, the Americas, Pacific Islands, Asia and Africa to discuss issues of importance to the survival of Indigenous peoples worldwide.

Legal education in Australia is traditionally focused on teaching the ‘Priestley 11’ core areas of legal knowledge and the skills necessary for legal practice. More recently, a range of factors have prompted a shift in legal education towards exploring the ‘broader context’ in which legal issues arise, which may include a range of socio-legal considerations, such as race, culture, gender and Indigenous perspectives. Yet to do so, legal educators need to move beyond doctrinal methods of teaching law, so that they can engage law students in a meaningful way, as well as in a way that can work with and through ‘wicked’ problems.

The Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program (ICCLAP) aims to increase the inclusion of Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) in legal education with a view to improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes in law and developing cultural competency in all students. ICCLAP is a cross institutional project involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal academics from five universities: University of New England, University of Technology (Sydney), RMIT University, Australian National University, and Queensland University of Technology. Our vision is to create a cohort of cultural competent legal academics to support the inclusion of Indigenous cultural competency in legal education, in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academics and legal service providers. The ICCLAP project is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training for a period of two years, concluding in April 2018.

The Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program (ICCLAP) aims to increase the inclusion of Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) in legal education with a view to improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes in law, and also leading to better legal service delivery for Indigenous communities. An important step towards achieving this goal is to enhance legal academics’ knowledge and understanding of the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Anglo-Australian legal system, and to build the capacity of legal academics to create incorporate Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) into law curricula, thereby improving ICC in all students. ICCLAP is a cross institutional project involving five universities: University of New England, University of Technology (Sydney), University of Melbourne, Australian National University, and Queensland University of Technology. The project is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training for a period of two years, concluding in April 2018.

Since the early 1990’s there have been repeated calls for the improvement of service delivery to Indigenous communities by raising the cultural understanding and awareness of professionals. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that professional services provided to Indigenous communities largely operated in a ‘neo-colonial framework’ and that professionals were mostly ignorant of Indigenous cultural values and worldviews, histories and contemporary circumstances, and lacked practical skills and strategies for working effectively with Indigenous peoples.1 Over the past thirty years the need for legal professionals to become culturally competency have been repeated in numerous reports and inquiries.2 In the higher education sector the need for graduates to attain Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) as an integral part of their university studies has also been promoted by the former Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, Universities Australia, and both the Bradley and Behrendtreviews.3 However until recently there has been limited evidence to show that these calls had been taken up by law schools or that ICC has been embedded into legal education. There is also strong evidence to suggest that the completion rates for Indigenous law students are significantly lower than their non-Indigenous counterparts.4 Therefore the need for ICC (or its many variations) to be embedded in legal education and practice is regarded as essential to Indigenous student success, and to build ICC in all students – with a view to improving service delivery to Indigenous communities in the long term.

This chapter will consider the position of First Peoples' engagement with higher education from the perspective of the embracing of Indigenous knowledge. This necessarily involves the taking of a wider view, to look through the lens of the administration of justice, and in so doing to attempt to develop more sophisticated and effective practices of inclusion. The authors argue for improving the methodological approach of including Indigenous knowledge so as to more effectively resolve matters that come before the law, as well as addressing historic and ongoing colonial injustice. They will explore methodologies for social inclusion within the legal order, framed within the context of inclusion in higher education. Critiques have led to programs for inclusion ofIndigenous knowledges and experience. Similarly, commitments to social justice have led to acceptance of the need for reform to formal law, administration and education. However, beyond inclusion of First Peoples! in governance projects, there has been no attention to developing appropriate methodology. This oversight has meant Indigenous knowledges are misrepresented or co-opted even while being included. Judith Butler asks: 'How do we understand those sets of conditions and dispositions that account for the "state we are in" (which could, after all, be a state of mind) from the "state" we are in when and if we hold rights of citizenship or when the state functions as the provisional domicile for our work?' For First Peoples, these questions have a particular theoretical resonance and practical implication. How do First Peoples express and retain an Indigenous identity within the state? Many First Peoples assert that we are subjects in international law, while the state asserts we are their Indigenous Peoples and exist within the domestic paradigm of the state.

Indigenous Legal Relations in Australia is a welcome and refreshing addition to the current literature on Indigenous legal issues. Written by a team of highly qualified Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics who share a long term commitment to Indigenous legal and social justice issues, this book provides a clearly written and accessible introductory text for tertiary students and general readers alike who are seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the Anglo-Australian legal system.

The words of Jeanette Blainey, good friend and 'sister' of Elaine Walker - the mother of a 16 year old Aboriginal child who disappeared from Bowraville Aboriginal community in September 1990 - are a chilling reminder of the huge cultural divide between Aboriginal communities and the mainstream AngloAustralian legal system:
my sister her and I went in and spoke to the prosecutor about the problem that we saw happening with the way the [Aboriginal] witnesses were being heard, the way they were being questioned, the way the witnesses were experiencing it... [He] had such a sense in which he knew all this and did not need anybody to tell him. I do not like thinking about it as racism, but it is in a way. It is not seeing people for who they are, the stories they are telling, the feelings they are sharing.¹
The NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the Famili/ responses to the murders at Bowraville (2014)² documents the experiences of the families of three Aboriginal children who disappeared in suspicious circumstances between September 1990 and February 1991, and highlights the cultural insensitivity of police and the legal system in the investigation and two subsequent murder trials.³ These failings prompted the NSW Parliament to recommend the inclusion of 'Aboriginal cultural awareness' training as a compulsory element of legal education and accreditation, and to investigate the merit of requiring lawyers and members of the judiciary to undertake similar professional development training.⁴

The professional development needs of early career academics (ECAs) are increasingly subject to scrutiny. The literature notes writing groups can be successful in increasing research outputs and improving research track records - a core concern for ECAs. However, the pressure on ECAs to publish takes the pleasure out of writing for many. We argue writing groups, created by and for ECAs, can provide an environment for ECAs to (re)produce pleasure in writing and participation in the processes of academic review and debate. In addition, our experience of a writing group was that it provided a platform of social and emotional support contributing to our personal well-being and professional development.