Research

The overall research focus are the rights of First Peoples and the Law relating to their position in international human rights law and domestic law. There is a particular focus on Australia and the South Pacific, but we aim to include the Pacific Rim and to look farther afield in the Americas and Africa. The centre will aim to develop significant transnational links, both enhancing and exporting expertise into the area. These links will contribute to the academic and policy environment across the region.

Within this overall focus, there are numerous more specific issues, ranging from the wider socio-legal, political and policy matters to discrete legal issues. Examples include:

• How law and policy have contributed to disadvantage and discrimination against Indigenous peoples;
• Analyses of reforms required to better achieve sovereignty, self-determination, reconciliation and equality;
• Constitutional reform;
• Review of international legal regimes and law on domestic law and policy;
• Consideration of statutory governance bodies;
• Indigenous management of natural resources; (noting the link to Ecosystem Management);
• State-Indigenous co-management or community based management regimes; (link to Global Agri-Environmental Futures program);
• The role of customary law;
• Traditional knowledge;
• Land and water use rights; (link to Australian Centre of Agricultural Law);
• Indigenous conceptions of criminal law and justice, including methodologies to tackle the over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system; and
• To establish a post-graduate and undergraduate program within the Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business, and Law; as well as the new Graduate Research School.
  
  

  To continue to build the existing relationships with:

  AUT – Centre for Indigenous Rights and Law

  University of Wisconsin-Madison - Great lakes Indian Law Center

  University of Saskatchewan - Native Law Centre

  Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan