Indigenous Knowledge Film Festival

Professor Anne Poelina is a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She is Chair of Indigenous Studies at the Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame as well as Chair of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council. Anne is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, and film maker. A respected academic researcher, she holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Indigenous Wellbeing) and Doctor of Philosophy (First Law). Anne is a Peter Cullen Fellow for Water Leadership and was awarded a Laureate from the Women’s World Summit Foundation. She holds membership to national and global Think Tanks and is a Visiting Fellow with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

Dr Natasha Fijn is an ethnographic researcher, observational filmmaker, and Director of the Australian National University’s Mongolia Institute. She has conducted extensive field research in remote places, including the Khangai Mountains of Mongolia and Arnhem Land in northern Australia, focussing particularly on multispecies anthropology and more-than-human sociality. In combination with text, observational films and photo essays form an integral part of her creative research output.

Associate Professor Lisa Palmer is an academic, writer, and filmmaker who teaches and researches at the University of Melbourne. She lives in Melbourne and regularly travels to Timor-Leste to carry out research and visit extended family. She has published widely in academic journals and is the author of two books: Island Encounters: Timor-Leste from the outside in (ANU Press, 2021) and Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, environmental governance and development (Routledge, 2015). She has made two films about the island of Timor: Wild Honey: Caring for bees in a divided land (Ronin Films, 2019) and Holding Tightly: Custom and Healing in Timor-Leste (Ronin Films, 2021).

Dr Erin O’Donnell is a water law and policy expert, focusing on water markets, environmental flows, and water governance. She has worked in water management since 2002, in both the private and public sectors. She has recently completed a consultancy for The World Bank on water markets and their role in water security and sustainable development. Erin is recognised internationally for her research into the ground-breaking new field of legal rights for rivers, and the challenges and opportunities these new rights create for protecting the multiple social, cultural, and natural values of rivers. In 2018, Erin was appointed to the inaugural Birrarung Council, the voice of the Yarra River. Since 2018, Erin has been working in partnership with Traditional Owners across Victoria to identify law and policy pathways to increase Aboriginal access to water.

Bernard Sullivan has worked with Wiradyuri people in various ways over twenty years. He has a background in filmmaking and animation. Bernard’s PhD, ‘How may cultural wisdom be understood and shared?’, was an exploration of how the cultural knowledge of First Nations people may be respectfully and collaboratively shared, intergenerationally, within Nations, and with the wider community. Past collaborative projects that Uncle Ray and Bernard have worked on with other Elders include the film ‘Yindyamarra Yambuwan’ and exhibitions at Wagga Art Gallery: ‘Burambabirra Yindyamarra: Sharing Respect 2016’ and ‘Ngiyanggarang: Beginning a conversation in the morning to awaken others 2018’.

Dr Balthasar Kehi lives in Melbourne and returns whenever he can to his homeland of Lookeu in Timor. He has worked in research internationally for various schools and academic institutions and was for many years a Research Fellow at the School of Geography at the University Melbourne. He holds a PhD from Columbia University, New York. His main field of academic interest included philosophy, psychology, and education.

Uncle Ray Woods is a Wiradyuri man dedicated to caring for Country, primarily the land and waters along the Murrumbidgee and Galari (Lachlan) Rivers around Hay. He is currently very concerned about a plan to raise the wall of Wyangala Dam which would be highly disruptive to flow of water to the wetlands of the lower Galari. Uncle Ray works collaboratively as a film maker with Bernard Sullivan and others to create videos that share understanding about Country and his concerns for it.