Roberta Sykes Harvard Club Scholar announced

THE roots of Tim Goodwin's fascination for the law and his identity as a political Aborigine lie in his elders' loss of their native language.

THE roots of Tim Goodwin's fascination for the law and his identity as a political Aborigine lie in his elders' loss of their native language.

As an impressionable 15-year-old schoolboy, Mr Goodwin, now 27, attended the World Indigenous Youth Conference, held in Waitangi, New Zealand, where the Maori people signed a treaty of rights with the British Crown in 1840.

Against this backdrop, indigenous people from around the world gave thanks in their native tongues -- except for the Australians, who could not because their elders were not fluent. "It was this stark contrast for us to be speaking English while all the other indigenous people weren't," he said. "It made me realise comparatively how other indigenous people were doing, and how much they were ahead of us."

It was then that Mr Goodwin's political identity began to form, and soon afterwards he realised he could fight using instruments of the law.

"It really opened me up to the law as being a tool for social justice for indigenous people," he said.

Mr Goodwin will be announced today as the inaugural Roberta Sykes Harvard Club Scholar, a scholarship formed in honour of the indigenous activist, poet and Harvard graduate who died last year.

In August, Mr Goodwin will begin a Masters of Law at Harvard, and plans to examine how the Australian Constitution might recognise indigenous Australians.

"The amount of indigenous lawyers that are out there and able to lend an indigenous voice to the constitutional debate we're having now, they weren't there in the 1967 referendum. That just proves how far we've come," he said.

Mr Goodwin, who hails from a long tradition of Aboriginal activists, said his parents and grandparents were great believers in the transformative power of education, and his family and community were incredibly proud of him. "I think this achievement is going to be by all of them as much as it is me, because family is so important to indigenous people," he said.

Mr Goodwin encouraged his compatriots to reject stereotypes that sold them short.

"Particularly, there's this stereotype of indigenous people not being ambitious, or indigenous people being happy not doing well. It's just not true," he said.

"This community ownership of my achievement is real proof of that, and it's really great to see."