Gavin Morris: Local hero on frontline of empowering Indigenous communities

After surviving a rough childhood, Gavin Morris has dedicated his life to working for community and raising the voice of those without one.

Alice Springs school principal Gavin Morris. Picture: Grenville Turner

As a child, Alice Springs school principal Gavin Morris felt like he had no voice.

He grew up between housing commissions and government care in Townsville, and had his first child at just 17 years old.

“My childhood was pretty rough, but after I went to university, became a teacher and worked at the NRL, I’ve always felt a burden to use the position I’ve had in life to advocate for people who don’t have a voice, because I guess I felt that as a kid,” he said.

Dr Morris became the principal of Yipirinya School in Alice Springs in 2021 and was elected by the community as a council member to the Alice Springs Town Council in 2022.

“I’ve always had a real hunger and passion to be really community driven and community minded in my work,” he said.

“I’m driven by frontline work on the ground with communities.”

Dr Morris’s tireless work to ­elevate the voices of remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory has secured him a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year.

In 2015, Dr Morris and his family made the decision to leave behind his lucrative contract with the NRL and their lives in Sydney, to move to Daly River in the Northern Territory.

“I really wanted to work with the community and I’d just completed a master’s in education at the University of Sydney, so when I arrived at Daly River they were at the point of truth telling and they needed someone to collect those stories” he said.

“They wanted to highlight that their community had the solutions to their own problems.”

Listening to the voices in community is the only way to obtain real change and better outcomes for Indigenous communities, Dr Morris said.

“In the referendum I voted no, but (in the Northern Territory) we live the Yes. We operationalise the Yes,” he said.

“Listening to Aboriginal community and voice, empowering it in a way that puts community in the centre, actually creates sustainable growth that is not dependent on non-Indigenous people parachuting in to save the day or plug-up holes.”

On Tuesday, it was revealed Yipirinya School submitted building plans to go ahead with building a boarding house on-campus for students and families in need of a safe place to stay.

“We are still working with federal Labor to get it funded. However, if that doesn’t happen we will fund it ourselves in partnership with philanthropy and crowd-funding,” he said.

Dr Morris is also a lecturer at Charles Darwin University and recently co-authored a book on truth-telling with activist, educator and the 2021 Senior Australian of the year, Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann.

Since starting his role at Yipirinya School, Dr Morris has greatly increased the number of Aboriginal people on staff.

“I see it as my role to develop the leadership structure through the Aboriginal community where we’ve now got 70 full-time Aboriginal staff,” he said.

“We’ve got two full-time Aboriginal assistant principals and I’m very confident one of those two people will step into the principal role in the foreseeable future.”

When this happens, Dr Morris said, he will continue to help create change through his role at Charles Darwin University.

“The tertiary sector excites me because you can create systemic change,” he said.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, which was first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the form above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Friday, January 19.