Indigenous Studies

It’s Our Country edited by Megan Davis and Marcia Langton & The Forgotten People edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris

Item: It’s Our Country
Author: Kevin Bell

November 2016, no. 386

It’s Our Country: Indigenous arguments for meaningful constitutional recognition and reform edited by Megan Davis and Marcia Langton

Melbourne University Press, $29.99 pb, 206 pp, 9780522869934

The Forgotten People: Liberal and conservative approaches to recognising Indigenous peoples edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris

Melbourne University Press, $29.99 pb, 200 pp, 9780522869637

Indigenous Studies

It’s Our Country edited by Megan Davis and Marcia Langton & The Forgotten People edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris

by Kevin Bell •

November 2016, no. 386

Are you part of the non-Indigenous majority? Have you had too little contact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Do you feel that you do not fully comprehend their worldview, but wish you could? Is entrenched Aboriginal disadvantage eating away at your sense of Australia as a fair and united country? Do you still possess the recollection of your first encounter with an Aboriginal person, and wonder why it remains so enduring? Are you troubled by the time being taken to achieve constitutional recognition and frustrated that an apparently simple issue has become so vexed? If these questions resonate in your mind, you have much in common with many Australians and may benefit from reading these books.

Kevin Bell

The Hon. Kevin Bell AO KC is a baby boomer who grew up in social housing in the Melbourne suburb of Moorabbin – fittingly, in the language of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung, ‘Moorabbin’ means ‘resting place’ or ‘mother’s milk’. He graduated in Arts and Law from Monash University and worked at the Tenants Union of Victoria before practising as a barrister for twenty years, including in Victorian housing and residential tenancies law. As a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria for fifteen years, he wrote many influential judgments on human rights, including the right to housing and home. As a professor in the Faculty of Law at Monash University and director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, he similarly focused on housing, homelessness and human rights. He also served as a commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission and has a Masters degree in international human rights law from Oxford University. He is presently an adjunct professor at Monash and the patron of Tenants Victoria.