Dubbed "the father of reconciliation" for his national leadership in pursuit of a new understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, Patrick Dodson has been a towering figure in indigenous affairs for decades. A Yawaru man from the Kimberley, he is a former director of the Central Land Council and the Kimberley Land Council, served as a Commissioner into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1989, and spent the six years to 1997 at the helm of the reconciliation movement as Chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.  He has since established the Lingiari Foundation to provide research and leadership on indigenous rights.  When he stepped down from the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation a decade ago, his assessment of the prospects for the movement was bleak. "I fear for the spirit of this country," he warned. But on the day that Australia stops to watch a new government say sorry to the stolen generations of Aboriginal children and seek to repair the wounds of the past, he offers a fresh assessment of Australia's prospects for a united future.