{"id":149,"date":"2021-07-01T04:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T04:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/debbiebargallie.au\/?p=149"},"modified":"2026-02-04T00:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T00:58:12","slug":"new-book-indigenous-legal-judgments-bringing-indigenous-voices-into-judicial-decision-making-edited-by-nicole-watson-and-heather-douglas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debbiebargallie.au\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous Legal Judgments: Bringing Indigenous Voices into Judicial Decision Making edited by Nicole Watson and Heather Douglas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Legal scholar Jennifer Nielsen\u00a0<\/a>and I published Chapter 9 titled\u00a0Commissioner of Corrective Services v Aldridge (No. 2) [2002] NSWADTAP 6<\/em>\u00a0in a new book: \u2013\u00a0Indigenous Legal Judgments: Bringing Indigenous Voices into Judicial Decision Making<\/a>\u00a0edited by\u00a0Nicole Watson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Heather Douglas<\/a>. This book was published in June 2021 by\u00a0Routledge<\/a>\u00a0and is a collection of key legal decisions affecting Indigenous Australians, which have been re-imagined so as to be inclusive of Indigenous people\u2019s stories, historical experience, perspectives and worldviews<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Nielsen and I chose to rewrite a 2002 NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal judgment, Commissioner of Corrective Services v Aldridge as an Appeal judgment heard by the NSW Court of Appeal. The case concerns Richard Aldridge\u2019s complaint of race discrimination against the NSW Department of Corrective Services, in relation to his removal from a position leading the Department\u2019s response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (\u2018RCIADIC\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We came to this work as situated knowers of and having experienced the culture and operations of the prison system and been ethical witnesses to its institutional toxicity, especially to Indigenous Australian peoples as prisoners, families, and employees. We used critical race storytelling and the Indigenous method of Yarning (Bessarab and Ng\u2019andu, 2010) to exchange our knowledge and stories as Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and share our personal and academic understanding of Aldridge\u2019s case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing especially on the works of\u00a0Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Professor Irene Watson<\/a>, our rewritten judgment privileged Indigenous voices thereby changing whose voices are central in this legal narrative. Our rewritten judgment brings vital attention to what is said and to what was not said in the original decisions through centring Richard Aldridge\u2019s knowledge and lived experience of racism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read our chapter below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n