Lisa Watts

Dr Lisa Watts is a documentary filmmaker, political ecologist, academic and music manager.

Documentaries written and directed by Lisa include Sammy Butcher: Out of the Shadows, broadcast on Imparja and ABC, and Mer Rwker-akert (Brooks Soak Country), also broadcast on the ABC.

Lisa is the Executor of The Estate of the late GRB, and has a strong and solid relationship with the family built over 25 years. She is the manager of Sammy Butcher, founding member of Warumpi Band, and the Tjupi Band who are descendants of the Warumpi Band.

Lisa Watts is nationally renowned for forging Warlpiri and Anmatyerr water rights of the Central and Western Desert. Her groundbreaking work in this field includes developing Indigenous groundwater modelling and applied approaches to Anmatyerr and Warlpiri struggles for environmental justice.

In 2000, Lisa completed the first joint masters in an Australian University with Simon Fisher, a Warlpiri man from Yuendumu. She gained an Australian Post Graduate Award (APA) and subsequently completed her doctorate on the political ecology of Warlpiri water rights in 2009 under the University of Melbourne.

Lisa also facilitated the Stolen Generations movement of the Northern Territory that formalised the Central Australian Stolen Generations & Families Aboriginal Corporation CASG&FAC). Her work involved addressing the struggles of the Stolen Generations people of the NT, instigating narrative therapy within this framework, and facilitating many healing summits and films, including Beyond Sorry and Case 442, and the book Alone on the Soaks: the life and times of Alex Kruger by Alec Kruger and Gerard Waterford' which won the inaugural Human Rights Commission prize in 2008.

Lisa wrote her first manuscript Pikilyi: water rights – human rights which was accepted by Charles Darwin University Press.

Filmography

	SAMMY BUTCHER: Out of the Shadows [from the CAAMA Collection] » Sammy Butcher is renowned as one of the best guitarists in central Australia and one of the leading figures in the Indigenous music scene...
	BIG NAME, NO BLANKET » The life and music of George Rrurrambu and the Warumpi Band. WINNER! Audience Award for Best Film at the Stronger than Fiction Documentary Film Festival, Canberra...