Content Warning: discussions of racism

The University of Melbourne has published Dhoombak Goobgoowana: A History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, Volume 2: Voice, a follow-up to 2024’s Volume 1: Truth. The two open access books constitute an institutionally authorised truth-telling that first documents colonial harm and then explores how Indigenous leadership, scholarship and partnerships have transformed the University. 

Edited by Distinguished Professor Marcia Langton AO, Dr Ross L Jones and Dr James Waghorne, Voice argues that Indigenous presence at the University was long “ignored and quietened” yet persisted and “broke through.” The volume highlights three areas where this shift is evident–“Museums and Collections”, “Staff and Students” and “Working Together”—and frames inclusion as “imperfect, overdue and often painfully slow” but cumulatively transformative. 

Volume 1: Truth assembled a forensic account of the University’s complicity in racial science: eugenics in medicine and the social sciences, the collection and concealment of Aboriginal remains, and the celebration of scholars implicated in frontier violence. That reckoning was presented not as a matter of reputational management but as a necessary precondition for justice, and the University formally submitted the volume to the Yoorrook Justice Commission as part of Victoria’s truth-telling process.  

Volume 2: Voice shifts the analytical focus from exposure to agency. 

In “Museums and Collections”, contributors demonstrate how holdings—ranging from stone tools in the Leonhard Adam holdings and the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum to the Donald Thomson Collection—are being reframed from objects of Western study into living expressions of identity and sovereignty, with parallel obligations around access and repatriation. The section’s method is explicit: community-led curation is the remedy to extractive collecting.  

The “Staff and Students” section traces the gradual emergence of Indigenous cohorts and scholarship from the mid-20th century to today. It highlights the journey from early activism and support schemes like Abschol to developing research centres and academic programs. It includes reflections by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) Professor Barry Judd on the effort to create space for Indigenous leadership in systems “not built for us”.  

In “Working Together”, the book follows partnerships beyond Parkville—including Gurindji collaborations, Yolŋu ranger initiatives and the Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. The key message is both a warning and a celebration: engagement that fails to share budget, authorship and authority risks recreating old asymmetries under new branding. Genuine co-production, the editors emphasise, must be adequately funded and community-led.  

The release of Voice sits within Murmuk Djerring, the University’s Indigenous strategy, where truth-telling and justice are key focuses, helmed by an Indigenous-led steering committee chaired by Professor Judd. The University has also announced an Indigenous-led Centre for Truth-telling and Dialogue, with executive leadership appointed, and the centre is scheduled to open in early 2026—marking an effort to embed the work structurally rather than leaving it as a one-off.  

In public remarks marking the launch, Professor Langton placed Voice within a fifty-year timeline of Indigenous staff and students “turning the University of Melbourne towards respect for Indigenous knowledge”. 

Professor Judd described the new volume as “a timely and necessary continuation” of the process, focusing on who has the right to speak and be heard. 

Vice-Chancellor Professor Emma Johnston positioned the series as affirming “the central place of Indigenous knowledge and leadership” in creating a fairer institution.  

Despite record Indigenous enrolments in 2023, Indigenous students made up about 1.27 per cent of the student body (well below population parity), and staffing targets remained unmet. The repatriation of remains collected by University affiliates has advanced but remains incomplete.

Both volumes are open access through Melbourne University Publishing, accessible online through free PDF and EPUB downloads.

Read together, the volumes insist on a sequence: Truth before Voice. Truth supplies the evidentiary foundation—naming practices, people and policies—on which Voice evaluates reforms across collections, curricula, hiring and governance. 

The second volume’s introduction recognises that ideals have sometimes outpaced institutional support. However, it documents a half-century of cumulative change driven by Indigenous communities within and alongside the university.  

The University has submitted the books to Yoorrook and is establishing permanent infrastructure for truth-telling; students and staff can now assess whether resourcing, authorship and authority align with the rhetoric. Ultimately, that is the test Voice sets for the institution—and the measure by which this truth-telling will be remembered.