Josephine Amy Cashman is an Aboriginal Australian lawyer and entrepreneur, of Warrimay heritage. Cashman was an inaugural member of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council.
Career
Cashman is a lawyer and businesswoman, and was an inaugural member of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Indigenous Advisory Council in 2017. She addressed a UN Human Rights Council session focussing on violence against Indigenous girls and women. Cashman's book, Lani's Story, was launched by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2013 when Cashman sent a copy to his office following her publisher being unable to fund a book launch. Cashman is the chair of a public benevolent institution named Big River Impact Foundation. It aims to establish a learning centre focused on building confidence with improving literacy, writing and public speaking skills. This is likely to improve the confidence of Aboriginal women and has the potential to encourage positive lifestyle choices, stable employment and/or generate enhanced business opportunities and outcomes for these women and their communities. On 8 November 2019 Cashman was appointed to Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt's Senior Advisory Group responsible for planning an "Indigenous voice to government". In late 2019, Cashman challenged author Bruce Pascoe on his Aboriginal identity claims. She said that he had benefited financially from falsely claiming to be Aboriginal, and requested that Peter Dutton investigate the matter. On 24 December 2019, Dutton referred the issue to the Australian Federal Police, who determined no offence had been identified. On 28 January 2020, Wyatt removed Cashman from the Senior Advisory Group after she was found to have provided a letter, alleged to be from Yolngu elder Terry Yumbulul, supporting Cashman and denouncing Bruce Pascoe and his book Dark Emu, to conservative commentator Andrew Bolt. Bolt published it on his Herald Sun blog on 26 January 2020. The next day, Yumbulul released a statement saying that he had not authored the letter, nor given permission for anything to be published under his name. Cashman said she helped Yumbulul write the letter at his request, and he had multiple communications with her about its content. Cashman has called for a formal register to assess people's Aboriginality. Wyatt rejected the idea of a national register and said the government should play no role in determining a person's Aboriginal identity.
