I'm Nyungar on my dad's side
and Nyiyaparli and Yamatji on my mum's side.
We're at Ellendale Pool today, and it's just
a really significant place to me because when I grew up as a young person,
my dad used to come down here with my mum and all of us family,
and it was just a nice place that we would gather and tell stories
and just be able to be down on country.
From humble beginnings growing up
in the Midwest city of Geraldton, Indigenous lawyer
Emma Garlett has gone on to win Australia's most prestigious overseas
postgraduate scholarship to study at Oxford.
This year, I was the 2020 recipient of the John Monash Scholarship.
It's the equivalent to a Rhodes scholarship
in the UK and it's equivalent to the Fulbright in America.
So it is very significant.
I feel very overwhelmed by it.
What I'm doing is not just something I want to do on my own.
It's something to make the future
better for Aboriginal people and for all Australians.
This urge to honour her
people has driven Emma since she was a child.
So I grew up in Spalding
and my first job was at Red Rooster,
and one of the things that was really, really important to my parents
is to make sure that I had a great education, so I was able to make a change
and make things better for Aboriginal people in the future.
While she has her sights set on big changes,
she's also all about the importance of being grounded
on country.
So it's important to be on country
because you need to practice your traditions and your customs
so you can stay connected to the land, and especially in a time where
there's an increase in Western culture and civilisation.
It's the stories of how the land was created,
and how we exist here today, but also why we're here.
And that's essentially why - it gives you purpose in life.
It gives you meaning.
Fired up to make a difference,
Emma decided to study law.
The main reason is because
the law we have here in Australia is Western law,
and it looks at it from a Eurocentric perspective
and it doesn't take into consideration Aboriginal first law
or any of the cultures we practice.
And that has caused a lot of problems for Aboriginal people
having to change the way they operate and change their whole culture
to fit into this framework on this Western
legal system.
Emma graduated as the first Aboriginal student
from the Curtin Law School and the Curtin Business School with a double degree.
She plans to start her scholarship in Oxford later this year.
It means I'll live in Oxford
for two years and study and a part of that, I'm going to hopefully
be able to conduct some significant research around
around involving Aboriginal people in mining strategy decisions.
With such research under her belt, Emma hopes to convince
private mining companies to step up and better respect Indigenous knowledge.
Private companies can play a massive part in advancing social issues
with Aboriginal people, and it's not just a government
responsibility, it's a community responsibility.
And so that's why I want to research that area.
How can we involve Aboriginal people in mining strategy
relating to environmental, social and governance?
Because Aboriginal people have a lot of science and knowledge
around natural resource management that we can include
in those areas.
She hopes her work will make
her ancestors and her elders proud.
A lot of my elders who have gone before me,
who have passed, even my dad has passed away as well.
I think everything that I've learned as a child and all of the stories they've told me
and the connection to land, culture and being able to pass it
on to generations to come, they'll be really proud that I'm able
to do work to do that.
I just hope I make a difference.
I hope I make things better.
I hope that there's more equality,
and I hope that decisions made are representative of all people.