The Dilin Duwa Dialogues

Indigenous Enterprising Conference

About the Dilin Duwa Dialogues

The Dilin Duwa Dialogues is a triannual global gathering of Indigenous business leaders, researchers, policymakers, and global partners convened by the Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership at the University of Melbourne. It is an Indigenous-led, global platform focused on advancing Indigenous economic empowerment through research, policy and enterprise in ways that are relational, place-based, and grounded in Indigenous authority.

The Dilin Duwa Dialogues is a new approach to Conferencing.

Built around six themes that are critical to Indigenous economic empowerment, we will convene six working groups to explore and co-create research projects that matter to the Indigenous business sector.

Each theme will be led by an eminent scholar in the field.

Read the 2025 report

Research themes

Indigenous Leadership

Chair: Professor Chellie Spiller

Roundtable members: Mitchell Hibbens, Dr Ree Jordan, Dr Lana Leslie, Dr Cindy Reese Mitchell, Pania Newton, Natasha Short

Indigenous Entrepreneurship

Chair: Professor Ella Henry

Roundtable members: Dr Tasha Brooks, Professor Stephen Cummings, Dr Admiral Manganda, Dr Peter Musinguzi, Jacqueline Paul, Steven Renata, Professor Deidre Tedmanson

Indigenous Business Ecosystems

Chair: Associate Professor Joe Gladstone

Roundtable members: Professor Jo Barraket, Professor Oana Branzei, Stella de Cos, Associate Professor Mary Beth Doucette, Dr Mark Jones, Mariaa Randall, Dr Roslyn Richardson, Dr Emily Salmon

International Trade

Chair: Professor Jason Mika

Roundtable members: Dylan Booth, Shelley Cable, Dr Gavin Clarkson, Mel Crossley, Bridget Donovan, Dr Dinah Hippolyte-Blake, Dr Tanya Jurado, Dr Jesse Pirini, Chris Rees, Dr Sisikula Sisifa, Tui Kaumoana Steedman, Carrie Stoddart-Smith

Indigenous Economies

Chair: Professor Ana Maria Peredo

Roundtable members: Caleb Adams, Selwyn Button, Associate Professor Rochelle Coté, Celia Karl, Professor Murdith McLean, Associate Professor Julie Moschion, Dion Peita, Associate Professor Cain Polidano, Professor Matt Roskruge, Professor Deen Sanders, Hillmaré Schulze, Dr Siddharth Shirodkar

Policy, Participation & Employment

Chair: Associate Professor Sharlene LeRoy-Dyer

Roundtable members: Dr Angela Chen, Matthew Denyer, Dr Christian Eva, Professor Andrew Gunstone, Jennifer Jardine, Simone Kenmore, Emma Olssen, Paul Paton, Melissa Riley, Xavier Walsh

Keynote Speaker

“The variety of people and perspectives - both academic and practitioner - was really powerful, and deeper dialogue emerged through the way the sessions were structured.”

2025 Dialogues Reflection Report

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“The event was really fantastic. I met passionate, knowledgeable people from around the world and formed connections I hope we can continue to build on.”

Call to data custodians

We are continuously looking to work with more data custodians.

We aim to continue building a more comprehensive picture of the contribution of Indigenous-led businesses and organisations by ensuring the data represents all sectors. The more organisations that are included, the clearer and more accurate the picture will become.

We welcome expressions of interests from organisations that:

Maintain a registry, membership list, or database of Indigenous-owned or Indigenous-led entities
Have established relationships with Indigenous communities or regional networks
Support ethical data governance and Indigenous data sovereignty principles
Are interested in collaborative partnerships, data-sharing frameworks, and/or ecosystem development initiatives

Examples may include:

Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations
Art centres in regional or remote areas
Chambers of commerce
Peak bodies and representative organisations
List of Indigenous businesses

Should you agree to participate we would ask you to confidentially share the Indigenous business data in your registry. This would include the business names, and if possible, Indigenous certification, industry/sector and dates of registration/de-registration.

How does participating benefit your organisation?

This project seeks to make a significant contribution to understanding the impact and influence of Indigenous businesses in the Australian economy. Research analysis of Australian businesses has been limited by the kind of data available. Therefore, your organisation will be contributing to the creation of new knowledge.

Statistics and data from the reports can be used for your own purposes with no cost. As a collaborator in this research project, you would be able to inform and shape the yearly Snapshot reports in terms of what information would be useful to publish. We can provide data back to you in a way that can be useful for your organisation’s reports or your pitches for funding. For each of the reports, we can provide you information on how your piece of the data compares to the national dataset. If you are providing services, we can provide data back to you to help you evaluate your program’s effectiveness.

Please complete the contact form below or email Dilin-duwa@unimelb.edu.au to discuss this opportunity.

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