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Marcia Langton AO (b. 1951), Foundation Chair and Professor of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of Queensland. Langton graduated in anthropology from the Australian National University in the 1980s and worked on the 1989 Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, writing the report 'Too Much Sorry Business'. In the 1990s she undertook her doctoral fieldwork in eastern Cape York Peninsula; commencing her university teaching career in 1995, she became Ranger Professor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Darwin. From 1992–98 she was the first woman to hold the position of Chair of the AIATSIS Council and was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for her service as an anthropologist and advocate of Aboriginal issues in 1993. Her work as an anthropologist, geographer and public intellectual spans almost five decades in the fields of political and legal anthropology, Indigenous agreements, engagement with the minerals industry, and Indigenous culture, filmmaking and art.
Juno Gemes photographed Langton, then in her early 30s, in Brisbane in 1982. In September and October that year, as the city hosted the Commonwealth Games, thousands marched in support of Aboriginal rights and wellbeing in spite of Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen having declared street marching illegal.
Purchased 2004
© Juno Gemes/Copyright Agency, 2024
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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.
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