We are NATSILS, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services. We represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (ATSILS) around the country. We strive towards true justice for our communities built on community, culture and empowerment.
We advocate at the national and international level to reimagine the justice system, for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within the justice system, and work to ensure that our people have equitable access to justice.
Our members have over 50 years’ experience in providing culturally safe legal help, community legal education, law reform and advocacy to our communities. Self-determination and cultural safety underpins everything we do.

NATSILS also works to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services are adequately funded and equipped to provide high quality and culturally safe legal assistance services.

What We Do

NATSILS advocates at the national and international level for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within the justice system, for an end to injustices and for our people to have equitable access to justice.

We collaborate and coordinate with the legal assistance sector, national coalitions like Change the Record and the Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Bodies

NATSILS calls for law reform and policy change like the implementation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommendations and the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Pathways to Justice Inquiry so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People are treated safely, with humanity and with dignity.

We coordinate and support ATSILS to provide community controlled, representative, high quality and accountable legal services that are culturally safe. This includes by sharing best practice and facilitating coordinated approaches.

NATSILS is the national peak body of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services who operate across Australia.

NATSILS members include:

Latest

NATSILS MEDIA RELEASE: Insufficient funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services will fail to close gap between need and help available

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) says the funding announced for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services today means no new services or representation will be possible.

NATSILS MEDIA RELEASE: Legal experts warn new NT Government’s punitive agenda will backfire and increase crime

The peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services has congratulated the incoming Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro for the Country Liberal Party’s clear victory, but warned that she is already on a path to make crime worse in the Northern Territory.

JOINT MEDIA RELEASE: Condemning the state sanctioned abuse and mass incarceration of First Nations children with disability

In the wake of horrific footage emerging of guards in an adult watch house in QLD violently forcing an Aboriginal child with disability into solitary confinement, The First Peoples Disability Network (FPDN), NATSILS (including QLD ATSILS) and SNAICC call for the end of solitary confinement and the over-incarceration of Aboriginal kids with disability.

NATSILS MEDIA RELEASE: Aboriginal legal services vindicated by government review recommending significant funding increase

After months of sounding the alarm on a funding crisis, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services are vindicated today by the findings of an independent review of the legal assistance sector commissioned by government.

NATSILS MEDIA RELEASE: Budget treats First Nations justice as an afterthought

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services across the country will have to continue getting by on a shoestring after the Federal Budget failed to provide meaningful relief.

NATSILS MEDIA RELEASE: State governments turn away from Closing the Gap and blindly implement failed ‘anti-violence’ strategies that increase violence

Responding to the announcement of a new youth curfew in Alice Springs, continued fearmongering and even threats of a new “intervention”, the national peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) says state governments around Australia have proven themselves incapable of a basic history lesson.