- Girl, 27, from eastern Australian Gumbaynggirr tribe achieves MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge
- Lilly Brown had won places at both Oxford and Cambridge
- Now teaching about indigenous cultures at University of Melbourne
- Says she wants to tackle prejudice in Australian education
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Lilly Brown won a scholarship to the highly competitive Trinity College, where she completed an MPhil in Education.
The 27-year-old, from the Gumbaynggirr tribe of the mid-north coast of eastern Australia, was also offered a place at the University of Oxford - something she says she never expected.
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| Dreaming spires: Lilly Brown, the 27-year-old who has become the first Aboriginal to graduate from the University of Cambridge |
She has now returned to teach at the University of Melbourne.
She says she hopes to increase awareness and change common perceptions of her ancestors.
Her success makes her the first in her extended family to complete an undergraduate degree.
Miss Brown said today: 'I would hope that my success would inspire young Indigenous Australians to chase their dreams, and all young Australians in general.
'I feel absolutely blessed by this opportunity as I did not expect that one day I may undertake study at one of the most prestigious learning environments in the world.
'It’s about telling my story, and the struggle I went through in getting to where I am and then making it that little bit easier for other to follow in my path.
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| Back to basics: Miss Brown researched her family from the Gumbaynggirr tribe to form the basis of the course she will teach at the University of Melbourne |
Miss Brown, who grew up in Western Australia, said she was proud to have English and Scottish ancestry mixed with her Gumbaynggirr background.
As a child, she said, she learned about the history of her ancestors from her grandmother - and the discrimination they faced.
'My Nan was taken away from her mother, and like many Aboriginal people during this time, raised as a ward of the state,' she said.
'Government policies aimed at the assimilation and absorption of Aboriginal people into the mainstream Australian community sanctioned my Nan’s removal.
'They have since come to be known as the Stolen Generations.'
Miss Brown became enraged when the entire history of her culture was granted just a single page at the back of her history textbook.
She was horrified to discover that, in Western Australia, just 15 Aboriginal students graduate high school each year who are eligible for university.
She has now researched her ancestors to help her build her indigenous studies course at Melbourne.
'One of the primary motivations behind my aspirations to attend Cambridge was so my perspective would be respected and my voice would be more readily listened to.
“I also felt that it would be useful to learn more about the theory and philosophy that underpin the education system within much of the Western world, and that perhaps this would also contribute to furthering my understanding of why the exclusion of Aboriginal people continues to occur within this space.”
Lilly was awarded the Charlie Perkins scholarship, named after Australia’s first Aboriginal university graduate who finished his degree in 1966.
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| Finals flush: Miss Brown was awarded the Charlie Perkins scholarship, which was set up in honour of the first Aboriginal to graduate from a university in Australia |
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