CPICL Hosted Seminar titled "Lores of War: International Humanitarian Law from Indigenous Australian Society – A Yolngu Case Study"
On 11 October 2024, CPICL, in collaboration with the Australian Red Cross, hosted a seminar titled "Lores of War: International Humanitarian Law from Indigenous Australian Society – A Yolngu Case Study." Presented by Dr. Samuel White (the Adelaide Law School) and Fauve Kurnadi (Australian Red Cross), the seminar explored the relationship between modern-day laws of war and the pre-colonisation rules and customs of the oldest living cultures in the world – Australian First Nations.
About the speakers
Dr Samuel White is a Senior Lecturer at the Adelaide Law School. He is concurrently the Army Visiting Fellow at the Australian War Memorial, a Visiting Fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy and a non-resident fellow at the United States Military Academy. Samuel has served as both an Infantry Corps and an Australian Army Legal Corps officer for the past 13 years across a range of tactical, operational and strategic level postings. He is the editor of a multi-volume series, called The Laws of Yesterday’s Wars (Brill Nijhoff) which critically questions how international the laws of war are. This arose from his military service, and later work as a Senior Legal Officer in the Office of International Law - Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department.
Fauve Kurnadi has been a Legal Adviser in the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Division at Australian Red Cross since 2015. She has primary responsibility for the organisation’s engagement with corporate actors, academic circles and university students on matters of IHL. In March 2022, Fauve was named one of Pro Bono Australia’s Impact 25 Award winners for her work in interpreting IHL for the private sector. Fauve has also worked as a researcher in the field of Aboriginal truth and reconciliation – contributing to the Tasmanian government’s ‘Pathway to Truth-Telling and Treaty’ process in 2021. Fauve holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland and a Master of Public and International Law from the University of Melbourne.