2020 Fay Gale Lecturer Professor Maggie Walter

The Academy’s 2020 Fay Gale Lecturer Professor Maggie Walter FASSA is a Palawa woman from Lutruwita, Tasmania. She is a founding member of the Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance.

She is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and was the inaugural Pro Vice-Chancellor of Aboriginal Research and Leadership at the University of Tasmania 2015-2020. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Her lecture will focus on Indigenous Data Sovereignty which refers to the right of Indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership and application of data about Indigenous communities, peoples, lands, and resources. Its enactment mechanism Indigenous data governance is built around two central premises: the rights of Indigenous nations over data about them, regardless of where it is held and by whom; and the right to the data Indigenous peoples require to support nation rebuilding. The lecture will discuss the rationale for the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement, globally and in Australia, as well as the development of data governance tools including Traditional Knowledge Labels, Biocultural Labels and the CARE principles.