Education is the key to reconciliation – and Professor Jackie Huggins AM (DipEd ’88, BA(Hons) ’90) says it starts with Indigenous Australians succeeding in higher education, and then educating all Australians about Indigenous social justice issues.
Active in the reconciliation movement since she was a teenager, Professor Huggins entered university as a mature-age student, at 26, because she felt a need to elevate her position and status through a higher-education degree.
“University education provided my liberation and wider understanding of the world, establishing my voice for my people in the community,” says Professor Huggins, who is now Director of Indigenous Research in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Queensland.
She says her time as a student at Flinders University in the 1980s – especially studying for an Honours Degree in Women’s Studies under the guidance of Professor Lyndall Ryan and Professor Susan Sheridan – galvanised her objective thinking and critical analysis skills, which emboldened her leadership ambitions to reach for greater reconciliation objectives.
“It was only through my time at university that I learned I was a writer – and now I’ve written seven books – but it also gave me the confidence to be a better leader, with a more considered understanding of the politics that surrounds issues affecting First Nations people. It gave me the skills to think deeply and find solutions through both policy and practical action.”
It served as a springboard for Professor Huggins to play more prominent roles in the Indigenous reconciliation movement, which she pursued with zeal.
From 2017 to 2019, Professor Huggins was co-chair of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, a representative body of 10,000 members and 180 organisations to provide a leading voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
In 2000, she received the Queensland Premier’s Millennium Award for Excellence in Indigenous Affairs, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her service to Indigenous people in 2001.
She helped create the First Nations Australia Writers Network in 2012 and remains its patron. She is also patron of Reconciliation Queensland, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Women’s Alliance, Sisters Inside (which advocates for the rights of incarcerated girls and women), and Black Rainbow, which supports Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people who identify as LBGTQ+.
“I think there is a clear obligation that when you have education, when you have any kind of elevated role in the community, it is incumbent upon you to give back to community,” she says.
“I’ve always felt that’s been a very strong focus in my life, and the purpose of why I do what I do – because I know I’m a privileged Aboriginal person now. I’ve worked damn hard, to make myself comfortable in my own skin, also in terms of my economic power, and I want that for all my people.”
Her inspiration to drive positive change is propelled by worrying statistics, especially that 85% of the people in Australia say they have never met or had a conversation with an Indigenous person. She believes it’s only education of the emerging generations – from kindergarten to university – that can change this situation.
“If you give logical arguments to people who know nothing about First Nations people, you educate them – and I’ve seen many people transformed once they get information and education about our people. We all have to listen deeply to what Aboriginal people are telling us.”
In April 2025, Professor Huggins was appointed as the inaugural ABC Elder-in-residence, to serve as a mentor and advocate for Indigenous ABC staff members. She is delighted that as a mentor and role model, she is helping to guide the next generation of Indigenous leaders, who are operating across wider areas of business, government and organisations to achieve improved social justice for First Nations people.
“I carry on the reconciliation work started decades before. I had the good fortune to learn from Lowitja O’Donoghue and Charles Perkins, and benefitted from their guidance. Now, I can do the same, by encouraging more truth-telling and saying this can be a better place for all of us – Aborigines, migrants, non-First Nations people – under the broad umbrella of reconciliation.”
Professor Jackie Huggins AM has been awarded the 2025 John Moriarty AM Impact Award for exceptional leadership in the Australian reconciliation movement and commitment to creating an equitable future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.