Stabilising and sustaining Indigenous leadership in Australian universities

This chapter examines the impact of UNDRIP on supporting the acceleration of Indigenous participation in Australia’s universities. We problematise the concept of the leadership pipeline for accelerating employment of Indigenous people in Australia’s universities, exploring senior leadership and professional and academic roles in Australian universities from the perspective of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees. We argue that conventional organisational approaches practised by universities that assume a proper functioning ‘pipeline’ are unable to achieve the espoused Australian government targets for Indigenous employment growth to parity. More important, such approaches fall short of ever being able to address the aspirations of Indigenous People because the required institutional reforms envisaged by such mechanisms as UNDRIP cannot be achieved by the traditional pipeline approach. This chapter canvasses a number of key elements that will allow a more detailed examination of how quickly an Indigenous university cohort can develop for the purpose of accelerating Indigenous leadership in Australian universities.