Panelists and special guests of Indigenous empowerment student event
The Power of One: Indigenous student empowerment
On 4 July 2018, the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and the Fenner School of Environment & Society co-hosted a special Indigenous student-led panel event, convened by Dr Virginia Marshall ANU Inaugural Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with RegNet and Fenner School of Environment and Society. The event was created to provide ANU Indigenous students and staff an opportunity to engage with special visitors of the Forum- Mr Fernand de Varennes (UN Special Rapporteur for Minorities) and Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Professor of Education and Maori Development at the University of Waikato). The student panel consisted of three ANU students who’s bios are provided below:
Maeve Powell is a Ngiyampaa woman from Sydney and Canberra, with links to western NSW. She completed a Bachelor of Arts/Economic at ANU and a Master of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies from the Arctic University of Norway in Tromso. I am currently a Research Associate and PhD scholar at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies. My research interests are in using Indigenous Methodologies and participatory action research to look at Indigenous belonging in cities, treaty and recognition, wellbeing, and Indigenous higher education.
Kate Harriden is a PhD scholar in Fenner School and current holder of the Icon Water Aspi Baria Scholarship. Her research trials in-channel interventions to improve hydrological outcomes in storm water channels. Two bodies of indigenous science are sources of potential interventions – Wiradjuri water science and Thailand’s ‘local wisdom’. With a history of independent research and public service employment, she absolutely prefers the former. Kate came into her indigenous heritage as an adult. As a child, she attended a primary school that had a significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student body. It seemed to her that the smarter they were, the more trouble the school administration gave them.
Braedyn Edwards is the ANUSA Indigenous representative and currently undertaking a Bachelor of Laws/Arts majoring in human rights at the ANU. His interest in human rights stems from his time in high school studying both humanities and specialising in legal studies in his senior schooling. He moved from Brisbane to the ANU because of the University’s reputation in the humanities, and because of its broad range of law electives in the areas of international law and human rights. His passion is around the rights of Indigenous peoples- “particularly our mob here at home”- and the sex slave trade of young peoples around the world.
