The Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation ― Non-indigenous People and the Responsibility to Engage

Tom Clark is the Discipline Group Leader for College of Arts staff teaching and researching in Writing, Communication, and Culture. His teaching at Victoria University has been at the forefront of developing studies in Public Speaking for the Communications curriculum in Australia. Tom's published research into rhetoric and poetic style focuses on analyses of political communication. It includes his 2012 book 'Stay on Message: Poetry and Truthfulness in Public Speech.' It also includes research into non-Indigenous attitudes towards Aboriginal reconciliation in Australia and Canada, and an on-going program of research into poetry teaching in Australian schools. Tom is the President of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association.

Sarah Maddison is an Australian author and Associate Professor of Politics in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. In 2009 she was joint winner of the Australian Political Science Association Henry Mayer Award for her book Black Politics: Inside the complexity of Aboriginal political culture. In 2009 she was also part of the Sydney Leadership Program ran by Social Leadership Australia at The Benevolent Society. Sarah’s research interests include reconciliation and conflict transformation, agonistic democracy, dialogue, and Australian social movements, including research on the Indigenous rights movement and the women’s movement. Sarah received a 2009 Churchill Fellowship to study models of Indigenous representation in the United States and Canada in 2010. She has been an ARC Discovery Project grant recipient for two completed projects, one considering new possibilities for Indigenous representation and one considering the evolution of social movements through a study of the Australian women’s movement, which produced the edited collection The Women's Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet: Australia in transnational perspective.

Ravi de Costa migrated to Canada from Australia to take up a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University. His PhD dissertation was a comparative study of treaty-making in Canada and reconciliation in Australia. During his postdoctoral work he broadened his research to include Indigenous politics beyond the nation-state and to examine Indigenous peoples’ activism both in transnational networks and in global institutions. His research and teaching interests are in comparative and global approaches to the legacies of colonialism and Indigenous politics, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as well as research that examines the conflicts and alliances between Indigenous communities and environmental actors.