From Yirrkala Bark Petitions to Treaty

Clare Wright (Naku Dharuk) and Inala Cooper (Marrul) discuss the impact of First Nations activism.

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CLARE WRIGHT OAM is an award-winning historian, author, broadcaster and public commentator who has worked in politics, academia and the media. Clare is currently Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University and Chair of the National Museum of Australia Council. In 2020, Clare was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list for “services to literature and to historical research”. She is the author of five works of history, including the best-selling The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and You Daughters of Freedom, which comprise the first two instalments of her Democracy Trilogy. Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions is the final instalment of the trilogy and was published in 2024. Clare hosts the ABC Radio National history series, Shooting the Past, and co-hosts the LTU podcast Archive Fever. She is popular public speaker, panellist and interviewer and makes frequent appearances at literary festivals, in television documentaries, on radio talk shows and generally anywhere someone will pass her a microphone.

INALA COOPER is a Yawuru woman with German and Irish heritage, from Rubibi/Broome in the Kimberley in Western Australia. She grew up on Gunditjmara land in south-western Victoria and has lived on the land of the Kulin nation in Melbourne for over twenty-five years. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Drama/Contemporary Dance) and a Masters in Human Rights Law, and has long been an advocate for Indigenous rights, access to education, and social justice. Inala is a regular contributor on ABC News Breakfast and The Drum, and is also a director on a number of not-for-profit boards, including Culture Is Life, Jesuit Social Services, State Library Victoria and the Adam Briggs Foundation. Inala is currently the Director of Murrup Barak, the Melbourne Institute for Indigenous Development at the University of Melbourne.