Special Issue Editorial: Indigenous Cultural Competency in Law

Abstract

Since the early 1990’s there have been repeated calls for the improvement of service delivery to Indigenous communities by raising the cultural understanding and awareness of professionals. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that professional services provided to Indigenous communities largely operated in a ‘neo-colonial framework’ and that professionals were mostly ignorant of Indigenous cultural values and worldviews, histories and contemporary circumstances, and lacked practical skills and strategies for working effectively with Indigenous peoples.1 Over the past thirty years the need for legal professionals to become culturally competency have been repeated in numerous reports and inquiries.2 In the higher education sector the need for graduates to attain Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) as an integral part of their university studies has also been promoted by the former Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, Universities Australia, and both the Bradley and Behrendtreviews.3 However until recently there has been limited evidence to show that these calls had been taken up by law schools or that ICC has been embedded into legal education. There is also strong evidence to suggest that the completion rates for Indigenous law students are significantly lower than their non-Indigenous counterparts.4 Therefore the need for ICC (or its many variations) to be embedded in legal education and practice is regarded as essential to Indigenous student success, and to build ICC in all students – with a view to improving service delivery to Indigenous communities in the long term.