Patrick Dodson (b. 1948), Indigenous advocate and senator for Western Australia, is a Yawaru man who was born in Broome but spent most of his childhood and early schooling in the Northern Territory. Having been orphaned, in 1961 he was sent (with his brother, Mick) to Monivae College in Victoria. There, he became school captain and a top footballer. On leaving school he trained for the priesthood; when he was ordained into the order of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in May 1975, he became Australia’s first Aboriginal Catholic priest, but he left the priesthood a few years later. In 1977 he was the founding chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. He joined the Central Land Council in 1981 and was appointed its director in 1985. In this period he played a key role in negotiating the return of the Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park to traditional owners. In 1989, he was appointed as one of the commissioners of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
In September 1991, with bipartisan parliamentary support, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (later Reconciliation Australia) was created. Patrick Dodson was its first chairperson and served for six years up until the Aboriginal Reconciliation Convention in May 1997. He was a lead negotiator in the leadup to the Yawuru Agreements, officially registered by the National Native Title Tribunal in August 2010. At the same time, in 2010–12 he co-chaired the expert panel on the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. He has since become chair of the Yawuru native title company Nyamba Buru Yawuru Ltd.
Tirelessly active in West Australian Indigenous health, leadership and men’s issues, he has been involved with the University of Melbourne’s Cranlana Programme for ethical leadership, and has delivered major lectures at Trinity College and Newman College at the University of Melbourne. Inaugural Director of the Indigenous Policy, Dialogue and Research Unit at the University of New South Wales, he is the first Indigenous Australian to be appointed to the council of the Australian National University. He has honorary doctorates from the University of New South Wales and the University of Melbourne.
