Aboriginal leader to receive peace prize

BY MICK ROBERTS

Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson will be the recipient of the 2008 Sydney Peace Prize.
Director of the Peace Foundation, based at the University of Sydney, Professor Stuart Rees said the jury was impressed with the Aboriginal activist’s work for reconciliation internationally as well as by his creative leadership of the Lingiari Foundation and as inaugural chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.
‘In the history of this Peace Prize, Patrick is only the second Australian recipient,’ Prof Rees said.
In 2001, former Governor General Sir William Deane was recognised for his work with Aboriginal Australians. On that occasion he was presented with the Prize by the Reconciliation chair, Mr Dodson.
Mr Dodson said he was honoured to receive the Sydney Peace Prize.
‘I thank the jury for considering me and my work worthy of such recognition,’ he said.
Other distinguished recipients of Australia’s only international prize for peace have included previous Nobel winners Professor Muhammad Yunus (1998), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1999), and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson (2002), the Indian author and human rights campaigner Arundhati Roy (2004) and, last year, the Swedish diplomat and disarmament advocate Dr Hans Blix.
Patrick Dodson will give the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture on November 5 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House. On the following evening, November 6, he will receive the 2008 Peace Prize at a gala ceremony in the Great Hall of Sydney University.