The AUT Law School has opened a Centre for Indigenous Rights and Law.

The Centre was launched on 5 April, with with attendees including former High Court of Australia judge Michael Kirby, Sir Edmund Thomas QC, Justice Christian Whata and a number of legal academics and practitioners.

Mr Kirby is on the Centre’s advisory panel alongside Professor Richard Monette of the University of Wisconsin Law School, and AUT Law School’s Professor Kris Gledhill.

AUT Senior Lecturer and Centre Co-Director Khylee Quince says the key focus of the Centre is to give prominence to indigenous law and laws affecting indigenous people both in Aotearoa New Zealand, but also across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

“We’ll also contribute to the teaching of both undergraduate and postgraduate law at AUT, doing that in a way that is appropriate, respectful, meaningful and useful to indigenous people, including us as tangata whenua,” she says.