Maggie Kavanagh

2018 Cohort

Pronouns: she/her

Maggie is supporting Aboriginal people’s aspirations of greater agency in the governance and control of their desert communities and organisations by championing Anangu Women’s Law and culture continuance.

Maggie’s family is Irish and they migrated to Australia when she as a child to Newcastle NSW. She started her career in the early 1980s as a school teacher in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory where she learnt to speak Pitjantjatjara. Since then she has lived and worked in many remote Aboriginal communities in central and Western Australia and the East Kimberley.

This included 16 years as the CEO of the NPY Women’s Council in central Australia, as a capacity builder in Balgo WA and as the Coordinator of the Wiluna Regional Partnership Agreement, WA. The Wiluna work resulted in an a national Indigenous Governance Award. She was the recipient of a Churchill Fellow in 2006.

She is based in Alice Springs, Northern Territory and works as an independent consultant for numerous Aboriginal communities and organisations in the fields of community development, governance development support and training, capacity building and research.

Through her roles, Maggie has experienced first-hand the day-to-day reality of living in remote communities. She is passionate about supporting Aboriginal people to have more control in the governance and management of their communities and organisations.

“We must make greater efforts to get engagement right in desert Aboriginal communities. I have an unwavering belief that this can only happen by working the proper way - side by side - malparara. This is the power of mutually respectful relationships based on time and trust.”

Social change work

Working in partnership with Aboriginal people, Maggie still hopes to establish a leadership and governance knowledge centre in Alice Springs for Aboriginal people from remote desert communities right throughout central Australia. It would be a learning hub bringing people together to develop and strengthen two way knowledge, skills, practice and confidence in the governance of communities, organisations, councils, shires and other agencies.