Article text size: This control adjusts article text size. For broader accessibility options, please use your browser or device text scaling settings. “Law, like story, is always an act of translation – between worlds, languages and ways of knowing.” Guided by the Euahlayi world view of interconnectedness, Larissa Behrendt’s Finding Justice: From Courtroom to Country draws on decades of working across law, academia and governance to explore our understanding of justice. Alongside personal anecdotes about her experiences of love, loss, grassroots activism in Redfern, international scholarship and the holistic principles that govern her award-winning creative practice, Behrendt deconstructs Australia’s foundational architecture using community testimony and historic legal cases. The reading is defiant and dynamic, a living, breathing experience of a purpose-filled life. Behrendt articulates how the Australian nation is organised around the assumption of white ownership, authority and truth. This logic, which privileges the power of the state over Country, shapes our institutions: universities, courts, cultural bodies and government agencies. Through examples across generations, Behrendt demonstrates how this Western legal tradition prioritises order over fairness and precedent over truth. In 2007, then minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough offered the representatives of Alice Springs town camps, the Tangentyere Council, “funding for basic housing repairs in exchange for long-term leases over their land”. One week after the offer was refused, ABC’s Lateline program reported it had received evidence from an anonymous local youth worker about widespread child sexual abuse in the camps, sparking a media-fuelled moral panic. In the following months, the army was deployed, land expropriated and Australia’s first federal human rights law, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 , was suspended. The unsubstantiated allegations were revealed to be from an adviser to Brough. The devastation of dispossession and false allegations continue to impact Northern Territory communities. Behrendt invites us to rethink strength, time and leadership. Her critical analysis about the role of colonial storytelling in the distribution of power and the shaping of belief is reconciled by core Euahlayi principles. The concept of Baluwaa , she writes, “restores the rhythm of balance. It asks us to move through our work, leadership and advocacy with the composure of a river: persistent, adaptable, unyielding to arrogance, shaping the land quietly but forever”. First Nations knowledge systems are embedded with community self-determination and justice that heals and atones. In our crisis of climate change and social disconnection, Behrendt calls for constitutional reform where justice is practised through honouring relationships, care and accountability. Through listening and collective responsibility, Behrendt’s lifework shows us how we can build a stronger national portrait. Finding Justice offers us a blueprint. When you purchase a book through this link, Schwartz Media earns a commission. This commission does not influence our criticism, which is entirely independent. Monique Grbec is a writer, critic and multidisciplinary artist. An extraordinary admission by the Reserve Bank governor on Tuesday afternoon shocked borrowers, economists and many in the backrooms of the government. It shrouded the decision to lift interest rates in uncertainty, raising the prospect of unnecessary and risky monetary policy. The truth behind The Resilience Project and its founder, who sells schools a wellbeing program with a surprising lack of empathy and evidence base
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