Dr Jackie Huggins AM FAHA is Bidjara and Birri-Gubba Juru from central and north Queensland.
Dr Huggins is an Historian and Author. Her latest books are Sister Girl and Jack of Hearts: QX 11594 in 2022 and Auntie Rita in 2023.
She has made her career, over four decades in areas of reconciliation, history, the arts, environment, leadership, education, prison reform, domestic and family violence, health, housing, literacy, disability, human rights, women’s issues and other social justice initiatives.
Dr Huggins is a former Co-Chair, Reconciliation Australia, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Co-Chair of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples. The latter was elected from First Nations peoples across Australia, and whereby she also represented her people at the United Nations. She served as the Chair of the Queensland Domestic Violence Council, Board Australian Institute Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Director for the Qld State Library and Commissioner for Queensland for the National Inquiry Into The Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children From Their Families (The Stolen Generation).
She worked at the University of Queensland for 14 years in the 1990s-2000s and is a part of the Indigenous Leaders and Cultural Advisors Group, Pou, Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity, University of Melbourne. Dr Huggins is an Honorary Professor at Australian National University, School of History. She was a participant in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart at Uluru.
Current positions include Co-Chair National Apology Foundation, First Nations Peoples Strategic Advisory Group member Disability Royal Commission, First Nations Advisory Committee Australian War Memorial, First Nations Messaging Project Australian Progress, National Patron Justice Reform Initiative. Referendum Working and Engagement Groups, Director National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth and Justice at Victorian Federation University.
She was the Co-Chair Treaty Advancement Committee, and prior to this Co-Chair, Eminent Panel and Treaty Working Group, Pathway to Treaty, Queensland.
She has devoted her life to ensuring a just and equitable outcome for her people and to reconcile a just and fair Australia in which we all enjoy the benefits.
