MARK MCMILLAN

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2009 Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship
sponsored by the Department of Education, Employment & Workplace Relations

“The topic of Indigenous identity is a vexing issue in the theory of Australian law. The courts and bureaucrats have been hesitant in making final determinations as to who is and isn’t Aboriginal. The logical conclusion is that non-Indigenous decision makers are making decisions they are not comfortable making, about an issue that is so intrinsic to those individuals concerned, which is human identity. This study will explore the complex matrix of the content involved, the decision makers and the structure. Ultimately, this study seeks to provide a possible avenue for decision makers to include Indigenous perspectives into the decision making process.”

Mark McMillan has received the 2009 Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship sponsored by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Mark, who is a senior researcher at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney, will go to the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law to undertake to the newly established Doctor of Juridical Science in the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program.

Mark’s proposed study will build on the strong research relationship between Indigenous legal scholars in the USA and Australia.

“A better understanding of why and how judicial officers are making such determinations and the system in which they are required to adjudicate them is really what I am trying to achieve. Combined with this aim is the desire to better appreciate why Indigenous people actually seek to use the legal system to have determinations made.”

“The theory that is now being used within the University of Arizona will assist me in looking at this topic with a different lens for the Australian context,” Mark said.

Mark has a Bachelor of Laws from The Australian National University, a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from The Australian National University, a Master of Laws from the University of Arizona, and a Certificate II Indigenous Leadership from the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre. He also won the Lester Bostock Initiative Award (Indigenous filmmakers Award) in 2007, has received a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship, Black Women’s Action in Education Foundation Scholarship and an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Study Award 1999/2001.

Upon his return to Australia, Mark will continue to work with Jumbunna, which has established a cohort of emerging legal scholars focusing on Indigenous issues.