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Our Community Matters • 4 •
There are many different paths to community leadership, but probably none so rarely travelled as the one taken by Keenan Mundine.
From Redfern to the United Nations: Keenan Mundine on Indigenous leadership BY KERRYN BURGESS, EDITOR
Alcohol, drugs, violence and police presence formed the background to Keenan Mundine’s childhood on the Block in Redfern in the early 1990s. His mother died when he was six, and his father soon afterwards. Keenan and his two older brothers, all of primary school age but now orphans, were soon split up and sent to live with various relatives. By age 14, Keenan had spent his first of many nights in juvenile detention. By his late twenties, he had spent more of his life in prison than out of it. Our Community Matters caught up with Keenan, now 31, the week he returned from a trip to Geneva last month to address the UN Human Rights Council.
Our Community Matters: You were in Geneva to ask the UNHCR to pressure Australian governments to raise the age of criminal
responsibility from 10 to 14 years. How did that come about? Keenan Mundine: It’s in line with the advocacy work I do for Indigenous rights, particularly around the criminal justice system. I’ve worked with the Change the Record Coalition, which advocates and lobbies in Parliament for justice for Indigenous people, and looks for creative ways to go about it – not just imprisoning people and doing all of this stuff that has a very negative effect on the community and on people’s health. So people have heard my consistent voice and my consistent message. They wanted me to represent that message and be the voice of the people who are affected by the problem the most. I was very grateful to have that opportunity. You used that word “consistent” a few times.
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