Professor Anne Poelina is a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, film maker and respected academic researcher, with a second Doctor of Philosophy (First Law) titled, ‘Martuwarra First Law Multi-Species Justice Declaration of Interdependence: Wellbeing of Land, Living Waters, and Indigenous Australian People’ (Nulungu Institute of Research, University of Notre Dame, Broome, Western Australia). Anne is the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) inaugural First Nations appointment to its independent Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences (2022), and member of Institute for Water Futures, Australian National University, Canberra. Poelina was awarded the Kailisa Budevi Earth and Environment Award, International Women’s Day (2022) recognition of her global standing. Poelina is also an Ambassador for the Western Australian State Natural Rangelands Management (NRM) (2022).
As an Indigenous leader Poelina contributes towards National and Global Think Tanks. Poelina is an Adjunct Professor, College of Indigenous Education Futures, Arts & Society, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Visiting Fellow with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, Canberra Australia Water Justice Hub with a focus on Indigenous Water Valuation and Resilient Decision making. As signatory to the Redstone Statement (2010) she helped draft at the 1st International Summit on Indigenous Environmental Philosophy. She is a 2011 Peter Cullen Fellow for Water Leadership and in 2011, she became the Inaugural Chair of the National First Peoples Water Engagement Council and was elected to the Broome Shire Council, becoming Deputy Shire President in her first term of office. Poelina developed, managed and facilitated training courses in Kalgoorlie and Broome, lecturing in an alternate mode Aboriginal Health Worker Bachelor degree program at the Sydney University Lidcombe campus, before returning to Broome in 1989 to take the Principal position at the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services School of Health.
Over the last decade Poelina has written plays, poems, film scripts, distributing broadcast quality documentary films as Executive Producer and Cultural Advisor, through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) process as a researcher, advocate and community member. Over the last 30 years she has employed a powerful combination of public engagements, peer reviewed academic papers, podcasts, community meetings, poetry, and storytelling to share the lived experiences of Indigenous people. She has instigated and managed many cultural development projects with remote Aboriginal communities, championing the development of Nyikina language multi-media format resource kits for teaching, the Nyikina dictionary and film projects through which the sharing of Indigenous stories ensures the preservation and promotion of Nyikina language and culture.
Poelina is a leader in community development, building individual and community capacity as Managing Director of Madjulla Incorporated in remote Aboriginal communities, co-designing and managing the construction of the Majala Wilderness Centre in Balginjirr Aboriginal Community. This facility is now a central hub and home for remote education, training and conference facilities in the Kimberley region.
Poelina's current research focus explores First Law and its pathway into legal pluralism, and her global writings on ‘Voicing Rivers’, with the Martuwarra, Fitzroy River as lead author, champion ancestral personhood beyond nature-based earth rights. Her ‘Heal Country, Health Climate’ advocacy seeks investment and partnerships to build entrepreneurial ‘New Economy’ opportunities for Indigenous people along the National Heritage Listed Fitzroy River, in relation to green collar jobs in science, culture, heritage and conservation economies.
Poelina is exploring ‘Restoring not Extracting’ carbon as the next big story for the just energy transition required for planetary health and wellbeing. She believes everything is place-based and exists within a Commonwealth and global framework of Bioregions. This according to Poelina is the Law of the Land as the original Australians from the beginning of time have managed and nurtured the Australian Nation. Professor Poelina is a powerful public speaker, incorporating ancient and contemporary Indigenous Australian stories which illustrate traditional ecological knowledge, First Law and the rights of nature in regard to the solutions required for planetary health and wellbeing. Her enduring work is centred around her sacred ancestral being, the Martuwarra/Mardoowarra, Fitzroy River right to live and flow.
