Lores of War: International humanitarian law from Indigenous Australian society - a Yolngu case study

Abstract: 

International humanitarian law is a critical tool in protecting civilians from the horrors of war, but it, and the way we use it, is far from perfect – we need to supplement these laws with new ideas, not only to clarify and reaffirm the ongoing relevance of IHL to contemporary armed conflicts, but also to strengthen efforts towards peacebuilding and reconciliation within nations, including Australia.

One of these innovative ideas, and the topic of this seminar, is examining 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. The many independent First Nations communities in Australia co-existed for more than 60,000 years – not because of an absence of conflict, but through careful management of conflict and attention to achieving reconciliation within societies. First Nations had sophisticated approaches to conflict restraint and resolution, which are rooted in complementary principles of contemporary IHL, but which also provide a unique case study for modern warfare that has few equivalents outside of Australia. With British colonisation, many First Nations’ customs and norms were lost.

Recent work across a range of fields has begun to combine existing fragments of customary knowledge  for uses such as assisting with land management and post-colonial cultural osmosis. Yet, beyond bushfire relief and the improvement of health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Indigenous Australian thinking can also be applied to questions of sovereignty, armed conflict and deterrence. Moreover, a correlation between traditional and modern-day behaviours in and attitudes to war offers evidence of the universality of IHL, and confirmation of its continued applicability in armed conflicts today.

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Registration

The Zoom link: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/83800325015

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.