Treaties: Negotiating Nations

Fri 6 May 2022

Jackie Huggins + Whiti Hereaka + Cheryl Leavy

slq Auditorium 1, level 2, State Library

Country of Focus / Main Festival

#Performances

#About the event

Duration: 60 minutes

Should we conceive of Treaty as the end goal for Indigenous nations or as a strategy along the way? Aotearoa and Australia have very different legal histories, though our colonial storytelling is often similar. What can we learn from each other about pathways to justice? 

Panel: Jackie Huggins, Whiti Hereaka
Host: Cheryl Leavy

Event Sponsors

#Artists

Jackie Huggins

Dr Jackie Huggins AM FAHA is Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru. She is an historian and author and has worked many years in Aboriginal affairs across numerous areas. Her first book is Auntie Rita published in 1994 and her next book Jack of Hearts: QX11594 will be published in 2022.

Whiti Hereaka

Whiti Hereaka is an award-winning novelist and playwright of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Tuhourangi, Ngāti Tumatawera, Tainui and Pākehā descent, based in Wellington, New Zealand. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting) from the International Institute of Modern Letters.

In 2012, Whiti was the recipient of the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Her play Rewena, written during her writer in residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2012, has been performed nationally and was published in the anthology Here/Now in 2015.

During 2018 and 2019, Whiti worked as a scriptwriter on the second season of Pukeko Pictures' animated TV series: Kiddets.

She is the author of three novels: The Graphologist's Apprentice, and the award-winning YA novels Bugs and Legacy. In 2019, Legacy won the New Zealand Children's and Young Adult Book Award for YA fiction.
She is also co-editor, with Witi Ihimaera, of an anthology of Māori myths — Pūrākau — published in 2019.

Whiti's latest novel, Kurangaituku, retells the story of Hatupatu, from the ogress bird woman's point of view.

Cheryl Leavy

Cheryl is an Executive Director with the Queensland Government, and formerly Deputy Commissioner of Queensland Family and Children Commission. She has been a member of UPLIT’s Angel’s Palace Advisory Board since 2017 and is a Kooma Traditional Owner. Cheryl’s country is in southern inland Queensland between Cunnamulla and St George.