Lawyer, First Nations Justice team

Meet Mera Sivanesan

From working on refugee and asylum seeker advocacy, mental health, homelessness and family violence, Mera is dedicated to helping communities.

Mera is a member of the Eelam Tamil diaspora and was raised on the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

She currently lives and works on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

At EJA, Mera focuses on supporting First Nations people exercise their rights and obligations caring for Country.

Before joining EJA, Mera worked as a lawyer at a national community legal centre assisting survivors of child sexual abuse in relation to their redress and compensation options.

Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

Honestly, I didn’t want to become a lawyer initially!

I was pretty set on following a career in teaching like my grandparents. I changed my focus in university when I got more involved in community and student organising and was given the tools and language to describe the systemic inequity that I had grown up around and that informs my family’s history as part of the Eelam Tamil diaspora.

It was then that I decided to pursue a legal career with the intention of trying to achieve systems change through the law.

What drew you to Environmental Justice Australia?

I had worked for over a decade in the community sector in Victoria before coming to EJA.

That work focused on supporting communities and people across the areas of refugee and asylum seeker advocacy, homelessness, mental health, family violence and child sexual abuse. This work was incredibly rewarding but I was keen to use the law in ways that could enact wider, systemic change.

After becoming a parent, it also became increasingly important to me to ensure that future generations inherit an Earth that is safe, stable and healthy. EJA presented me with a great opportunity to work towards both of these goals.

What do you do at EJA?

I’m a lawyer working in the Justice program at EJA where I support and advise First Nations clients on how to use the law to assert their rights and fulfill their obligations to care for Country.

What do you love about your job?

The best part of my job is working with my clients: First Nations communities who are on the front line of the global climate and ecological crises we are currently facing.

I draw great motivation from the many generations of stewardship in caring for Country that my clients and their communities are rooted in. I feel very privileged to be able to walk alongside them for part of that long journey.

I also love working at an organisation full of thoughtful, incredibly smart and passionate people who are working to make the Earth healthier for everyone.

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow a similar career?

Follow your gut and get involved! Apply to roles that speak to your passions and if you can’t find any, then see if any volunteer opportunities are available instead. There is no greater teacher than experience.

What's your hope for the future?

I hope for a future where people and governments take astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan’s words about the pale blue dot we call the Earth, to heart:

“That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering […] Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. […] There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than [the] distant image of our tiny world.

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

What do you love to do outside of work?

I love getting out with my family for a walk in nature. I’m probably my happiest walking in the Mountain Ash forests on Wurundjeri Country in the Dandenong Ranges.

I’m also a (very) amateur stargazer and a keen crafter. I love making things with my hands and can often be found crocheting or mending a well-loved piece of clothing!