About the Fellowship
Model for First Nations community cultural development
Rachel’s fellowship is designed to impact both her local Arrernte community and all Indigenous people through intergenerational cultural revitalisation. Rachel will create a methodology for cultural knowledge transfer by undertaking a cultural mapping project to strengthen family connections, knowledge of country and identity for wellbeing, and facilitating learning workshops to revitalise women’s traditional ‘Awelye’ songs currently at extreme risk.
About Rachel
Rachel Perkins is an Arrernte/Kalkadoon with immigrant Irish and German ancestry.
Trained at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, she has was worked as a filmmaker across a thirty-year career. She directed the first series of Total Control and Mystery Road and her movies include Jasper Jones, Mabo, the musicals Bran Nue Dae and One Night the Moon and debut feature Radiance. Her TV work includes Redfern Now, the landmark documentary series First Australians and most recently, multiple award winner The Australian Wars. In 1992 she founded Blackfella Films, one of Australia’s leading creators of Indigenous screen content.
In the cultural heritage space, Rachel works alongside Arrernte women to sustain their song traditions. In the national arena, she led the preparation of a vision for Indigenous heritage (Dhawura Ngilan) across all jurisdictions in 2020. She currently works part time as the Director of Heritage with the National Native Title Council and in this role co-chairs the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance’s joint working group with the commonwealth, focused on the reform of national Indigenous heritage law.
She has served on numerous NGO and federal agency boards and was a founding board member of the National Indigenous Television Service. Rachel was a signatory to Uluru Statement from the Heart and was co-chair of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, which led the Yes Alliance. She currently chairs the Australian Film Television and Radio School, is deputy chair of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and is a member of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority of the Northern Territory.
She has directed major arts events, edited several books and in late 2024 launched her clothing label, ‘Atyene’ (precious). She lives between her ancestral country in Alice Springs and Sydney and is a proud mother to her beautiful son.