We are pleased to announce that the 2025 J P Thomson Medal will be awarded to Emeritus Professor Richard Howitt AM. The J P Thomson Medal is the most prestigious award given by The Royal Geographical Society of Queensland. It was established in 1900 to honour Dr James Park Thomson, the Society’s founder. The award recognises Iain's high qualities of scholarship and his contribution to the discipline of geography.
Following the medal presentation, Richard will deliver the Thomson Oration -Business-as-usual: still-colonizing in the 21st Century - Why is it so hard for Indigenous people to exercise their rights to self-determination?
The first United Nations Decade of Indigenous Peoples (1995-2004) produced much discussion of Indigenous rights – but the 21st Century has seen limited progress in securing, advancing and implementing those rights. Indeed, in many places understanding of and support for protecting Indigenous rights has reduced. Reflecting on extended engagement with Indigenous experience in Australia and Taiwan, I ask a fundamental question - Why is it so hard for Indigenous people to exercise their rights to self-determination.
Dominant approaches to ‘business-as-usual’ in domains of education, planning, heritage, law and economy reinforce still-colonizing structures, practices and values. Rejection of ‘treaty, voice and truth-telling’ has been normalized in ways that reiterate the power of the still-colonizing state and still-colonizing settler society to determine what is best for First Nations citizens. In reducing such reforms as mere rhetorical flourishes, business-as-usual approaches to the internationally recognized ‘right’ to self-determination reinforce existing patterns of disadvantage, disenfranchising, erasure and marginalisation of First Peoples. In failing to support First Peoples’ right to self-determination and meeting the complex challenges of how to integrate it into our contemporary governance structures, reinforces, amplifies and renews the trauma of colonization and not only damages First Peoples but eats away at democratic values and our opportunities to learn to belong-together-in-Country. This presentation will argue that citizens, scholars and educators are all obliged to overturn ‘business-as-usual’ in order to secure more just, equitable and sustainable futures. First Nations exercising their right to self-determination threatens only those who imagine they should continue to colonize and rule in dangerously outmode and unjustifiable ways.
Biography: Richie Howitt is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Macquarie University, Sydney and Yushan Fellow and Chair Professor in Geography at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei. Since retiring from Macquarie University in 2018 he has been a Director of Dharug Strategic Management Group, a Dharug-led and managed not-for-profit that protects the heritage-listed Blacktown Native Institution in Western Sydney. Richie is a passionate geographer and a committed educator. In 1999 he was awarded the Australian Award for University Teaching (Social Science). He was appointed as a Fellow of the Institute of Australian Geographers in 2004, and received the Geographical Society of NSW’s Macdonald Holmes Medal for contribution to geographical education in 2011, a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Postgraduate research supervision in 2013 and the Institute of Australian Geographers’ Australia-International Award in 2017. In 2023 he was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (General Division) for services to higher education and the Indigenous community.
Photo credit: M Howitt (used with permission)
Please note: If you registered to attend the lecture via Zoom, the meeting link will be emailed to you closer to the lecture date. This lecture may be recorded. If you have any questions, please email us at info@rgsq.org.au.
