Just 17 years ago, no Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person had studied at Oxford, Cambridge or King's College in London.
In 2026, a cohort of eight scholars will make 95 First Nations people who have been awarded scholarships to study at institutions like these through the Aurora Education Foundation.
Aurora provides pathways and programs to support Indigenous education, including the Charlie Perkins and Roberta Skyes Scholarships to provide funding to mob who want to study overseas.
This years Perkins and Sykes cohort are the largest group awarded in a single year, with studies focusing on criminal justice, public policy and health equity.
'Our generation can go over and set the agenda'
The "opportunity to join a lineage" of trailblazers is part of the reason Wiradjuri and Wemba Wemba man Will Smith wanted to apply for the Roberta Sykes Scholarship.
"These institutions have done research about us and on us for so long, and unfortunately we haven't been a part of those conversations," he told NITV.
Undertaking a Masters of Philosophy in Health, Medicine and Society at Cambridge, he wanted to maintain a connection to community while researching how to integrate Indigenous knowledge into mental health services.
"Being able to carry that spirit forward was really important, and being a part of a lineage, but pushing it in my own field," he said.
"I think about all the policies that were made without our voices. I'm hoping that this ability for us to be in these conversations now is [First Nations people] being able to be recognised internationally."
'I wanted to be accountable to Aboriginal people'
For Gurindji woman Emma King, applying for the Charlie Perkins scholarship felt like it "made natural, logical sense" to support her study at Oxford.
She told NITV that she's excited to research international perspectives on criminal justice through her Master of Criminology and bring knowledge back to Aboriginal communities for system reform.
"I get this question a lot [from community], why would you need to go to England to understand anything about what you want to do for Aboriginal people? Which I think is a completely fair question," she said.
"But Australia is not the centre of the universe, and we have so much to learn from the ways that different racialised, colonised people around the globe are responding every day to settler colonialism and the way that they are thinking about reform."
Expanding horizons for cross-cultural connection
For Jaiden McGregor, a man with strong family connections and ancestry to Nyikina people and Country, the opportunity to relocate to the "big city" at University College of London will be a significant change from growing up in Darwin.
"If you grow up in remote parts of Australia it can be quite easy to go down just a bit of tunnel vision in terms of the way you view cross-cultural interactions," he told NITV.
Focusing on regional and remote natural disaster response through his International Development major, he wants to learn how Northern-Australian and South-East Asian remote communities can support each other.
"[Studying overseas] opens up so many different lenses, and you can just view your home... in this whole different lens, and all of a sudden, you're able to make a lot more impact in your community," he said.
