Jim Berg

A Gunditjmara Elder from south-west Victoria, whose ancestors have lived on the land for more than 60,000 years. He's been a Justice of the Peace for nearly 50 years.

In 1984, he won a legal injunction forcing the university to repatriate Aboriginal ancestral remains it held. as a result of this injunction, he was not welcomed back on campus for 35 years, until 2019, when he was invited to present at a research colloquium on Indigenous cultural recognition. That colloquium is where he issued the challenge that became the seed of Dhoombak Goobgoowana (Truth Telling): he pushed the institution to give "a fuller account of its role as an instrument of colonisation." He later became a member of the project's steering committee.

Other public work: co-author of The Power and the Passion: Our Ancestors Return Home, about the repatriation battles; poet, with his poetry archived as part of his Yoorrook Justice Commission submission alongside historical material on the Aboriginal Protection Act and the 1967 referendum; and a subject of the documentary short Walk the River.

Family: his son Rueben Berg has followed a related path — Indigenous affairs work, chair roles on water and environmental heritage bodies, and a seat on the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria — and has said publicly that his father is the person who's most shaped his own choices.