Jan Richardson

Jan Richardson is a retired CDU lecturer and University Fellow, College of Indigenous Futures, Education and the Arts. Practicing community development philosophy, she has lived and worked for 15 years with Indigenous communities in remote areas of Western Australia’s Pilbara and Kimberley regions and in NT. To theorise this work, she completed a research Master’s thesis at NTU on the Indigenous women’s work to establish family support systems, 1975-1980, and her role as collaborator. To examine some activists’ work and it effects, she completed a Ph.D at CDU researching community transformation strategies in the Kimberley 1975-1980. Focussing on the role of activists, she undertook a Ph.D at Monash University researching the life of Don McLeod. McLeod was the white man who assisted Indigenous pastoral workers in the Pilbara to organise the longest strike in Australia and subsequently gain independence from the State government legislation controlling them. She is now writing the biography of Don McLeod and researching and writing a biography of Stan Davey, co-founder of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, for which he worked over ten years, and co-founder and General Secretary of FCAATSI (Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders) for which he worked over ten years. She is supported by the research facilities provided by CDU and the office at ANU’s Darwin campus, the North Australia Research Unit.