Heather Goodall

Professor Emerita Heather Goodall, an award-winning Sydney historian, first researched with Indigenous people on land issues in Aboriginal politics (From Invasion to Embassy, 1996). She later researched for the Pitjantjatjara Council in Central Australia for their case to the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing. Heather has since published on cultural and environmental relationships in rural and urban areas, including, in south-western Sydney, with Indigenous Australians, Arabic-speakers, Vietnamese Australian and Anglo-Irish residents along the Georges River. Most recently she has researched collaboratively with Tranby Aboriginal Adult Education Cooperative and continues working in south-western Sydney with community activists defending wetlands.

Heather Goodall reviews ‘Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions – How the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian democracy’ by Clare Wright

May 2025, no. 475 • 25 April 2025

The Yirrkala Bark Petitions were intensely significant in Australian politics, contributing not only to major changes in race relations in Australia but to the way Australians understood their country’s history and its future. Clare Wright’s Näku Dhäruk is a lucid, accessible, and engaging account of those 1963 Yolngu1 Petitions from the Yirrkala region of Arnhem Land: her book will des ... (read more)