Professor Marcia Langton AO (b. 1951), anthropologist, geographer and academic, is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of Queensland. Since 2000 she has been Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, where she is Associate Provost. Langton began her advocacy career as the General Secretary of the Federal Council for Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in 1977. After studying at the Australian National University in the 1980s, she spent five years as an anthropologist with the Central Land Council in Alice Springs. From 1989 to 1992 she worked on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, writing the report 'Too Much Sorry Business'. She was a member of the Aboriginal negotiating panel influencing the passage of the Native Title Act through the Federal Parliament in 1993. Her Macquarie University doctoral fieldwork was conducted in eastern Cape York Peninsula during the 1990s and in 1995 she became Ranger Professor of Aboriginal Studies at the Northern Territory University. Langton has published widely on Aboriginal land tenure, agreement-making, art and film in publications including Burning Questions: Emerging Environmental Issues for Indigenous Peoples in Northern Australia (1998), Settling with Indigenous People (2006) and Welcome to Country: A Travel Guide to Indigenous Australia (2018). In 2010 she delivered the Mabo Lecture, Native Title, Poverty and Economic Development; in 2011 she was a member of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians; in 2012 she delivered the ABC Boyer lectures, The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom. Langton is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia and a frank and forceful presence in the Australian media.
