IN BRIEF
- The lawyer says race and culture should not be conflated, arguing there is no single "white culture".
- Nyuon previously began returning her OAM as part of what she called her "slow and certain" departure from Australia.
Lawyer and human rights advocate Nyadol Nyuon has defended her claim that there is "no white culture" after remarks she made turning a televised debate drew criticism.
Nyuon appeared on the ABC's National Forum on migration on Monday, where she rejected the idea Australia was historically monocultural and said she had "no intention of assimilating".
But she stressed that did not mean rejecting Australia, its laws or the country she says she "deeply" loves.
She argued that describing Australia as an "Anglo-Celtic culture" risked creating the impression there was a single "white culture" migrants were expected to adopt.
"There is Italian culture, there is French culture, there is Argentinian culture, but there is not this notion of sort of a white culture that is being threatened," Nyuon told the forum.
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The discussion came amid a broader national debate about migration, multiculturalism and what it means to be Australian.
Following criticism of her remarks, Nyuon expanded on the argument in a social media post on her LinkedIn account.
'No white culture'
"Apparently, saying there is no white culture has offended some people," she wrote on Tuesday.
"There is no white culture as there is no black culture."
Nyuon argued that race and culture should not be treated as interchangeable, pointing to the cultural differences that exist between people who may otherwise be grouped together according to skin colour.
"Black is a colour, not a culture. There are Black people. There is Ethiopian culture," she wrote.
Nyuon also defended her argument that Australia had never been monocultural, pointing to the hundreds of First Nations that existed before colonisation as well as the long histories of Chinese migrants and Afghan cameleers in Australia.
A debate over belonging
During the forum, former deputy prime minister John Anderson argued there were legitimate concerns among Australians about social cohesion and whether some groups respected Australian culture and values.
Anderson described those values as including individual dignity, equality before the law and the separation of the secular and sacred.
Nyuon acknowledged Australians had a right to be concerned about threats to social cohesion but challenged the way the issue was being framed.
She argued the migration debate could become a proxy for conversations about race and questioned why a person's appearance should influence perceptions of their belonging.
"Whenever we attempt to speak about how our belonging can look like, you meet such resistance, and the majority of the time that resistance comes from how you look," she said on Monday.
'I love this country'
Nyuon also spoke about her complicated relationship with Australia and her previously announced intention to begin the process of renouncing her Australian citizenship.
The lawyer, who was born in a refugee camp in Ethiopia after her family fled the Sudanese civil war, came to Australia as a teenager.
In April, Nyuon revealed she had written to the governor-general's office to begin returning the Medal of the Order of Australia she was awarded in 2022 for "service to human rights and refugee women".
"This is the first step in my slow and certain process of leaving Australia and releasing my connections to this country," she wrote at the time.
Nyuon said she remained "so grateful" to Australia and would "always be indebted to it", but linked her decision to her experiences with Victoria University and WorkSafe Victoria.
Nyuon resigned from Victoria University in 2025, after overseeing an $800,000 WorkSafe Victoria project aimed at preventing workplace gendered violence, which was plagued by delays, strained relationships and resourcing issues.
An independent evaluator later found instability and mismanagement meant it could not properly assess the program's success.
Speaking on National Forum, she said she loved Australia but was conscious that political circumstances could affect whether she and her children felt they could remain.
"Many migrants deeply, deeply love this country. I love this country," she said.
In her subsequent LinkedIn post, Nyuon maintained her comments about culture were not intended as an insult.
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