Wilam Hall naming ceremony

Remarks by Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell, 18 November 2024.

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the unceded land on which the University works and learns. I also pay my respects to Indigenous Elders, past and present, and acknowledge all Indigenous colleagues and students here today.

I am honoured to be here, with you Dr Helen Lamb as Head of Wilam Hall, and with my close colleague Barry Judd, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), as we welcome and celebrate a new name for the unique community that lives in this place.

I also express my gratitude to the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Corporation which has gifted us the use of the new name, Wilam Hall.

Throughout my six years (and a bit) as Vice-Chancellor at Melbourne, I have been determined that the University will do all that it can to work respectfully in partnership with Indigenous communities and their leaders here in Melbourne, and indeed across Australia.

As an institution, we still have some way to travel, to change course away from the colonialist and condescending mindset towards Indigenous people and Indigenous knowledge that was (sadly) a feature of this University for much too long.

So it was a real pleasure for me to walk in here this afternoon and to see emblazoned on the front gate the words ‘Wilam Hall’ – a visual reminder today and for years to come that this small but important part of the University community has now embraced a forward-looking and progressive attitude as a defining part of its identity.

I also think ‘wilam’ is a great name for a University Hall of Residence! It means ‘home.’ What could be a better ideal to work for than building a home in which students from everywhere – all the states and all Indigenous country across Australia – and people from overseas as well, can come here to study and learn during an important part of their lives, and while doing so, to know that here they truly belong and have a home.

Everyone needs some sense of home, and after just over six years as Vice-Chancellor I can say that I am hugely grateful to those people at the University and in the wider community who have made me feel at home here through all these years, stranger from a foreign country though I was at first.

Among those who have made me welcome, Indigenous people have been very prominent. For example, I will never forget the welcome that I received at an afternoon tea during my first month as Vice-Chancellor, from a group of Indigenous leaders including Elders of the Boon Wurrung and Yorta Yorta peoples, who generously came visiting to the VC’s office explicitly to make we feel welcome.

That sense of welcome has been repeated by Indigenous leaders at many different places around Australia, and I appreciate it greatly.

If you have once been made to feel at home somewhere, that feeling remains in your memory, even if later times prove challenging in your life. It relates to the fact that as human beings, no matter our background, we all need some feeling of being at home, and to make home where we can.

Wilam Hall, I feel sure, is and will be such a place for many people, now and in years to come. Thank you for letting me be part of its history today.