A symposium co-convened by Informit and CAVAL: Describe, apply, and amplify First Peoples’ Knowledges and publications
Program Agenda
| 8.45am | Registration | |
| 9am | Welcome to Country | Stacie Piper – Wurundjeri Traditional Custodian |
| 9.10am | Welcome from conveners | Jaime McCowan – CAVAL; Malcolm Neil – Informit |
| 9.20am | Keynote presentation Chair: Prof Gary Thomas | Dr Bianca Beetson AM – Queensland Museum Visibility, Voice and Return: Decolonising Museums and Archives through First Nations Cultural Authority, Sovereignty and Self-Determination |
| 10.20am | Morning tea | |
| 10.50am | Keynote presentation Chair: Jaime McCowan | Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher – University of Melbourne Healthy Country: re-writing the book on Australia |
| 11.50am | Presentation Chair: Dr Gretel Taylor | Professor Kirsten Thorpe & Dr Narissa Timbery – Indigenous Archives Collective Asserting the Right of Reply: From Position Statement to Practice in Libraries and Archive |
| 12.30pm | Lightning Talk Chair: Laki Sideris | Georgia Ensor – Hobsons Bay Library The Eagle and the Water Bug: Embedding Indigenous perspectives in children’s programming |
| 12.40pm | Lunch & Art Activity | |
| 1.40pm | Lightning talks Chair: Laki Sideris | Claire Kearns War Trophies, Indigenous Custodianship, and Australia’s Military Memory Pat Hannah – CSIRO Publishing Building from Story to Structure: A Framework for Indigenising Academic Publishing Sara Boyle & Stephanie Cusworth – RMIT University Library Are we qualified? Lauren Castino – University of Western Sydney Library A First Nations Student Partner Program at Western Sydney University Library Q&A for all presenters |
| 2.40pm | Presentation Chair: Sae Ra Germaine | Gari Tudor-Smith & Felicity Meakins – University of Queensland Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New |
| 3.30pm | Afternoon tea | |
| 4.00pm | Keynote presentation Chair: Malcolm Neil | Peter-Lucas Jones – Te Hiku Media Indigenous Knowledge Futures: Language, AI, and Sovereignty |
| 4.55pm | Closing remarks | Jaime McCowan – CAVAL; Malcolm Neil – Informit |
| 5.00pm | Closing drinks in Storey Hall Foyer |
Stacie Piper – Welcome to Country
Stacie Piper is a proud Wurundjeri, Dja Dja Wurrung and Ngurai illum-Wurrung woman. She is a curator, cultural educator and Djirri Djirri Dancer, and currently Treaty Engagement Officer for Wurundjeri Corporation. Stacie has served as Chairperson of the Victorian NAIDOC Committee and until recently worked as First Nations Curator for the State Library of Victoria, accountable for engaging with the Victorian First Peoples community for exhibitions and events to tell their stories. Stacie has a Master of Social Change Leadership with the Atlantic Fellows for Social Change, a great love for community, a desire to support and witness the progress of First Peoples, and a drive in protecting and healing Country.
Keynote: Dr Bianca Beetson AM
(Kabi Kabi and Wiradjuri), Executive Director, First Nations, Queensland Museum
Visibility, Voice and Return: Decolonising Museums and Archives through First Nations Cultural Authority, Sovereignty and Self-Determination
This paper reflects on the urgent work of decolonising museums and archives through First Nations cultural authority, sovereignty and self-determination. Grounded in the author’s leadership at Queensland Museum and shaped by the Kummargii Yulendji Symposium’s theme of Knowledge is Rising, it examines how making knowledge visible can operate as a form of cultural accountability, protection and institutional change. The paper considers the Museum’s responsibility to acknowledge and respond to the harms of past collecting practices through apology, reparative practice and the continuing work of repatriation, with particular attention to community-led research, cultural care and the return of Ancestral Remains and Cultural materials.
It also explores the decolonisation of metadata and archives, arguing that archival records are not neutral but are shaped by histories of collection, classification and institutional control. By centring community voices, archival storytelling, Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property, relationship agreements, reciprocity and cultural capability, the paper positions museums and archives as places of return, repair, healing and living knowledge. It calls for cultural and knowledge institutions to move beyond acknowledgement toward practical systems change led by First Nations voices, responsibilities and futures.
Dr Bianca Beetson is a Kabi Kabi, Wiradjuri woman and practising artist, working across a broad range of visual media. In 2018 Bianca was awarded a Doctor of Visual Art from Griffith University, where she is currently Adjunct Associate Professor.
Bianca has a background in curation and community-engaged and collaborative arts practice including awards for her guest curation of “Myall Creek and Beyond”. She has lectured and directed the Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art degree at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University from 2007-2019, later becoming the Director of Indigenous Research Unit. From 2022 to 2024, Bianca was a member of the Interim Truth and Treaty Body Queensland and co-designed the ‘Path to Treaty Bill 2023’. In 2023 she became the inaugural Executive Director, First Nations at Queensland Museum. In 2026 Dr Bianca Beetson AM was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to Indigenous art.
Keynote: Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher
(Wiradjuri), Associate Dean of Science (Indigenous), University of Melbourne
Healthy Country: re-writing the book on Australia
Australia is routinely described as wilderness — a continent shaped by climate and lightning, where people left no lasting mark. That description was not discovered. It was written, by a particular culture at a particular moment, and it has been held in our records ever since.
But Country keeps its own archives. Sediments, pollen and charcoal accumulate continuously, and they hold a record of what happened here that no one edited. Drawing on sites across the continent spanning 60,000 years, I read those archives to ask two questions: what changed when Aboriginal people arrived in a place, and what changed when they were removed from it.
The answers are unambiguous, and they contradict the account Australia has kept of itself. Two archives, one landscape, and they disagree.
Which raises the question this symposium exists to ask: whose assumptions decide what counts as evidence, and who carries the burden of proof?
Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher (Wiradjuri) is Associate Dean (Indigenous) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne, and Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures. A geographer and palaeoecologist, he reconstructs long-term relationships between people, fire and vegetation across Australia. His work challenges the description of this continent as wilderness, showing that landscapes read as natural were made and maintained through cultural burning, and that their disruption after invasion drove the fire and biodiversity crises we face now. His recent books include Cultural Burning and Plants: Past, Present and Future.
Keynote: Peter-Lucas Jones
(Te Aupōuri, Ngai Takoto, Ngāti Kahu), CEO, Te Hiku Media
Indigenous Knowledge Futures: Language, AI, and Sovereignty
Every two weeks, the world loses a language. With it disappears a unique philosophical world view. Indigenous languages are living knowledge systems that carry cultural memory, values, relationships, and connections to place. In te reo Māori (the Māori language of Aotearoa New Zealand), words, idioms, and place names hold deep understandings of our environment, our tūpuna (ancestors), and our responsibilities to whenua (land).
This keynote shares how Te Hiku Media, the tribal broadcaster based in Aotearoa New Zealand’s very Far North, developed Indigenous owned speech recognition technology for te reo Māori. Grounded in more than 35 years of community gathered language data and Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles, this work demonstrates how artificial intelligence can amplify Indigenous Knowledges while retaining community authority over language, data, and cultural knowledge. The future can speak Indigenous languages when Indigenous peoples remain the authors of that future.
Peter-Lucas Jones (Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto) is Chief Executive of Te Hiku Media, leading its work at the intersection of Indigenous language revitalisation, technology and media. Under his leadership, Te Hiku Media has gained international recognition for developing te reo Māori language technologies, including automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis and pronunciation modelling. Peter-Lucas was named to TIME’s 2024 list of the 100 most influential people in AI for advancing te reo Māori speech recognition technology and Māori data sovereignty. He received the Te Tihi Award at the 2025 Te Taitokerau Māori Business Awards and serves as Chairman of Te Rūnanga Nui o Te Aupōuri and Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori (The Māori Radio Network)
Professor Kirsten Thorpe & Dr Narissa Timbery
Indigenous Archives Collective
Asserting the Right of Reply: From Position Statement to Practice in Libraries and Archive
The Indigenous Archives Collective’s Position Statement on the Right of Reply to Indigenous Knowledges and Information Held in Archives (2021) asserts the rights of Indigenous peoples to challenge and respond to records about them held in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. The Right of Reply, being the right to enhance, correct, update, critique, or withdraw Indigenous knowledge in collections, proposes a participatory model that repositions Indigenous peoples as active respondents to the record rather than its subjects, and situates this work within truth-telling, self-determination and Indigenous Data Sovereignty.
This paper traces the development of the statement, from the earlier symposium and issues paper through to its release and its subsequent take-up across the sector. We discuss the importance of Indigenous Data Governance as a mechanism for enacting the Right of Reply, with a specific focus on the opportunities available for libraries. Finally, we will reflect on what it means to put the Right of Reply into practice, considering the challenges and tensions we see across the sector and the ongoing work that remains.
Dr Kirsten Thorpe (Worimi, Port Stephens) is Professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney, where she leads the Indigenous Archives and Data Stewardship Hub, advocating for Indigenous rights in archives and data. Her scholarship and advocacy in Indigenous archives and digital cultural heritage have influenced practice across Australia and internationally, advancing decolonising approaches across the GLAM sector. She advocates for the ‘right of reply’ to records and for Living Indigenous Archives on Country. Her recent book, Living Indigenous Archives (Routledge, 2025), brings together the theoretical and practical foundations of this agenda.
Dr Narissa Timbery (Yuin Nation). Narissa is a senior lecturer and DAATSIA Fellow in the Department of Human Centred Computing, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. She is a researcher on the Monash Indigenous Data Sovereignty & Living Archives Initiative and Cybersecurity for Indigenous Communities project. She is a trained archivist and left practice to engage in research that works towards the return or care of archival records in accordance with Community protocols.
Georgia Ensor
Hobsons Bay Library
The Eagle and the Water Bug: Embedding Indigenous perspectives in children’s programming
A Hobsons Bay case study developed with Jaeden Williams-Briggs of Biik Bundjil explored how public libraries can embed Indigenous perspectives in children’s programming through respectful, place-based and relational practice. Children connected with local Seasons, waterways, animals and landscapes through sensory learning, storytelling and artmaking, culminating in five collaborative artworks exhibited at The Substation gallery. This talk will consider how partnerships, resources and program design can support families to engage with Country, moving Indigenous perspectives into everyday library practice.
Georgia Ensor is the Early Years lead for the Family Engagement and Learning team at Hobsons Bay Libraries. Bringing teaching experience from tertiary, specialist, early years and primary education to her library programming role, she thrives on developing and delivering innovative community-centred library programs with a focus on sustainability and inclusion.
Claire Kearns
War Trophies, Indigenous Custodianship, and Australia’s Military Memory
This presentation examines Australian war trophies through an Indigenous framework of custodianship, memory, and Country. Drawing on Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung perspectives, it argues that these objects are more than symbols of military victory—they reveal colonial systems that shaped what was collected, preserved, and forgotten. Using the Righetti family alongside Indigenous servicemen’s experiences, the research explores how institutional archives have marginalised community histories. It proposes that Indigenous concepts of custodianship offer a more ethical approach to interpreting military heritage by reconnecting fragmented histories and challenging silences within Australia’s national remembrance.
Claire Kearns (Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung) is a historian researching Australian war trophies, Indigenous knowledge, and military heritage. Her work draws on Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung perspectives to examine how material culture, archives, and community histories reshape understandings of remembrance, custodianship, and Australia’s military past.
Pat Hannah
CSIRO Publishing
Building from Story to Structure: A Framework for Indigenising Academic Publishing
CSIRO Publishing addresses the exclusion of Indigenous Australian knowledge from academic literature, where existing protocols weren’t built for the protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. We present a three-stage initiative currently underway at the publisher, Indigenous-led Traditional Knowledge collections, first-hand accounts from participants navigating peer review, and resulting structural change, alongside simple actions already underway ahead of a formal framework.
Pat Hannah, a journal manager at CSIRO Publishing with a PhD in Plant Biochemistry, has been investigating barriers Indigenous authors face in academic publishing. Collaborating with First Nations editors and authors, he aims to develop pathways within and beyond existing systems to support Indigenous scholarship, broadening academic dialogue and elevating diverse knowledge systems.
Sara Boyle and Stephanie Cusworth
RMIT University Library
Are we qualified?
As libraries undertake reparative description work, many staff grapple with uncertainty about their knowledge, authority, and role in addressing harmful and outdated metadata. This presentation will share the approach that RMIT University Library is taking as we build confidence through our collaborative cataloguing efforts that prioritise discussion and sharing knowledge. We argue that reparative description work is not just the sole task of ‘experts’, but an important and ongoing shared responsibility for all librarians.
Sara Boyle is a librarian at RMIT University, working across acquisitions and cataloguing. She has contributed to guidelines and workflows for culturally sensitive materials that challenge colonial descriptive frameworks. Her interests include improving subject access, metadata quality, and the visibility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works in library collections.
Steph Cusworth is the Senior Librarian, Subscriptions at RMIT University. She has been in academic libraries since 2011, with a focus on Subscriptions since starting at RMIT in 2016. Steph has a particular interest in some of the more complex aspects of technical services, including access, processes/procedures, discoverability, analysis, and knowledge-sharing.
Lauren Castino
University of Western Sydney Library
A First Nations Student Partner Program at Western Sydney University Library
Academic libraries can genuinely partner with First Nations students to create resources that benefit local communities. Lauren will share the story behind Western Sydney University Library’s new First Nations Student Partner Program, which is supported by the Informit First Peoples’ Lens Cultural Fund. This lightning talk will introduce the program, outline the development of a Truth-Telling Library Guide co-created with student partners, and reflect on key learnings so far. Lauren will also share insights into partnering with students to create more inclusive, culturally responsive library services and resources.
Lauren Castino (Wiradjuri & Gamilaroi) is an Indigenous Partnerships and Engagement Librarian at Western Sydney University. With over a decade of experience as a teacher and a background in both First Nations education and librarianship, Lauren leads innovative First Nations focused library programs for tertiary students and researchers.
Gari Tudor-Smith & Felicity Meakins
University of Queensland
Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New
Australia’s linguistic diversity is truly breathtaking, with over 440 languages and many more dialects. Sadly, European invasion has had severe consequences for language vitality. Amid devastating loss, there has been the birth of new languages such as English-based Creoles and Aboriginal Englishes, and today there is a renaissance of communities reawakening their original languages. Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New tells this story, from the earliest documentation to today’s reclamations. In this talk, Gari Tudor-Smith and Felicity Meakins discuss making the book, why we should care about First Nations languages, and the renaissance of languages.
Gari Tudor-Smith is a Gangulu, Barada, Yiman and Gureng Gureng linguist, whose work centres on Indigenous language and culture revitalisation. They are a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland and a member of the Research Unit for Indigenous Language at The University of Melbourne, working on Gangulu language and culture. Gari is a lecturer in the Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Language Revitalisation and a co-author of Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New.
Felicity Meakins is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Queensland. She is a non-Indigenous field linguist who specialises in the documentation of First Nations languages in northern Australia and the effect of English on these languages. Felicity Meakins has written 22 books with different Indigenous communities on their languages, including Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New. She has worked as a community linguist as well as an academic over the past 25 years, facilitating language revitalisation programs and conducting research into First Nations languages.
Informit and CAVAL would like to express our gratitude to:
Informit’s First Peoples’ Lens Steering Committee – Professor Lyndon Ormond-Parker (Principal Research Fellow, RMIT), Cathy Doe (RMIT Library), Maurice O’Riordan (Batchelor Institute Press), Jaime McCowan (CAVAL), Dr Gabrielle Murray (RMIT Office for Indigenous Education, Research and Engagement).
RMIT Storey Hall for the Symposium venue and excellent venue staff.
The Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund for their support.
Social Sciences Week for including the Symposium in their program.
The RMIT Enabling Impact: Social Change Platform for their support.
Speakers: Dr Bianca Beetson, Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Peter-Lucas Jones, Professor Kirsten Thorpe, Dr Narissa Timbery, Georgia Ensor, Claire Kearns, Pat Hannah, Sara Boyle, Stephanie Cusworth, Lauren Castino, Gari Tudor-Smith & Felicity Meakins.
Convening team: Jaime McCowan, Malcolm Neil, Sae Ra Germaine, Laki Sideris, Sara Davidsson, Liam Ryan, Dr Gretel Taylor, Olivia Triglavcanin, Kate Moschetti, Eleanor Frank.
Informit and CAVAL staff.
Wurundjeri artist Lewis Wandin-Bursill, for artwork: Birrarung Biik (Yarra River Country).
Kummargii Yulendji means ‘Knowledge is Rising’ in Boon wurrung, named by N’Arwee’t Professor Carolyn Briggs AM.
Informit and CAVAL acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi wurrung and neighbouring Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands on which Kummargii Yulendji Symposium is based. We pay deep respect to their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples presenting at and attending Kummargii Yulendji Symposium 2026.