BIOGRAPHY

Professor Anne Poelina is a Nyikina Warrwa and Warlunguru woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. he is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, filmmaker and respected academic researcher, with a second Doctor of Philosophy (First Law) titled, Martuwarra First Law Multi-Species Justice Declaration of Interdependence: Wellbeing of Land, Living Waters, and Indigenous Australian People (Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia, Broome, Western Australia).

As an Indigenous leader, Professor Poelina contributes to national and global policy, research and advocacy initiatives. She is Professor, Chair and Senior Research Fellow in Indigenous Knowledges at the Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia, an Adjunct Professor in Indigenous Education Futures, Arts & Society at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia, Perth. She is also a Visiting Fellow with the Water Justice Hub at The Australian National University, Canberra, where her work focuses on Indigenous water valuation, water justice and resilient decision-making.

In 2025, Professor Poelina was appointed a Global Commissioner for the World Health Organization (WHO) Lancet Commission on Sea Level Rise, Health and Justice (2025–2028). She also serves as Commissioner (Water) for the National Water Initiative with the Productivity Commission, Commonwealth Government (2024), is a member of the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water Indigenous Advisory Committee (2024), and is the inaugural Executive Chair of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, a position she has held since 2018.

Professor Poelina contributes to numerous national advisory bodies on water, environment, Indigenous heritage, justice and equity. She is the Murray–Darling Basin's inaugural First Nations appointment to its Independent Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences (2022), and was a founding member of the Western Australian Government Aboriginal Water and Environment Group (AWEG) in 2019.

Professor Poelina's leadership has been recognised nationally and internationally. In 2024 she was awarded the Geoethics Medal by the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), together with the Bessie Rischbieth Conservation Award from the Conservation Council of Western Australia in recognition of her outstanding commitment to the Western Australian environment. In 2023 she was co-winner of the Women Taking Climate Action Award presented by the Zonta Club of Melbourne on Yarra and the Zonta International District 23 Zonta Says NOW team. She received the Kailisa Budevi Earth and Environment Award on International Women's Day in 2022 in recognition of her international leadership and contribution to environmental stewardship. In 2017 she was awarded a Laureate by the Women's World Summit Foundation in Geneva, and in 2011 became a Peter Cullen Fellow for Water Leadership.

As a signatory to the Redstone Statement (2010), Professor Poelina contributed to the drafting of the declaration at the First International Summit on Indigenous Environmental Philosophy. In 2011 she became the inaugural Chair of the National First Peoples Water Engagement Council and was elected to the Broome Shire Council, becoming Deputy Shire President during her first term of office. Earlier in her career she developed, managed and facilitated Aboriginal Health Worker education programs in Kalgoorlie and Broome, lecturing in the alternate-mode Aboriginal Health Worker Bachelor Degree program at the University of Sydney's Lidcombe campus before returning to Broome in 1989 to become Principal of the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services School of Health.

Over the past three decades Professor Poelina has written plays, poems and film scripts, while producing and advising on broadcast-quality documentary films through participatory action research as a researcher, advocate and community leader. Her work combines peer-reviewed research, public engagement, podcasts, community meetings, storytelling and poetry to share the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples and advocate for environmental and social justice.

Professor Poelina has initiated and managed numerous cultural development projects with remote Aboriginal communities, championing the preservation and promotion of Nyikina language and culture through multimedia educational resources, the Nyikina dictionary and documentary film projects. She has also played a leading role in community development through her work as Managing Director of Madjulla Incorporated, co-designing and managing the construction of the Majala Wilderness Centre at Balginjirr Aboriginal Community, which continues to serve as a regional centre for education, training and conferences throughout the Kimberley.

Her current research explores First Law and its pathway into legal pluralism, while her internationally recognised work on Voicing Rivers, with the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) as lead author, advances ancestral personhood beyond nature-based rights frameworks. Through her Heal Country, Heal Climate advocacy, Professor Poelina promotes investment and partnerships that create Indigenous-led opportunities in science, culture, heritage and conservation along the National Heritage-listed Martuwarra Fitzroy River.

Professor Poelina is also exploring "Restoring not Extracting" carbon as a foundation for a just energy transition that supports planetary health and wellbeing. She believes all life is place-based and exists within interconnected bioregions governed by the Law of the Land, reflecting the knowledge systems that Indigenous Australians have upheld since time immemorial. As a powerful public speaker, she brings together ancient and contemporary Indigenous Australian stories to demonstrate how traditional ecological knowledge, First Law and the rights of nature provide practical pathways towards planetary health, climate resilience and environmental justice. Her enduring work remains centred on her sacred ancestral being, the Martuwarra/Mardoowarra (Fitzroy River), and its inherent right to live and flow.

All publications available at ORCID - https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6461-7681