Amy Pettifer

Amy Pettifer holds the position of Administrator at the Pascua Yaqui Tribe-University of Arizona Microcampus, working directly with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Education Department and theIndigenous Peoples Law & Policy Program to administer programs, policies and operations for UA’s first Tribal Microcampus. She is currently completing her Masters of Professional Studies in Indigenous Governance, set to graduate in 2024.

Amy is a settler-descended Australian from Narrm/Melbourne, residing for most of her life on Wurundjeri Country. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Global) from Monash University and a Master of International, Urban and Environmental Management from RMIT University, graduating with the Vice Chancellors Award for Academic Excellence 2020. Since 2017 she has held numerous roles working on Indigenous land, cultural and human rights projects across different teams in First Peoples-State Relations Division of the State Government of Victoria, managing projects on legislative reform, land rights programs and best practice relationship building and engagement between First Nations without federal recognition and the State. In 2020 she wrote a minor thesis which presented an interpretive policy analysis on the Parliamentary debates on the passage of the Aboriginal Lands Act 1970, using a critical legal geography and critical race theory lens to explore how ‘progressive’ colonial land rights laws still uphold and reinforce the logic of white possession of Indigenous lands, people and futures.

Amy’s work and research interests lie in the social impact of colonial legal systems and how they interact with the inherent sovereign rights of First Nations to govern their own land and people. She is interested in pursuing her JD after completing the MPS in Indigenous Governance.