First Nations women have called on Australian governments, policymakers and service providers to ensure they are at the centre of efforts to prevent violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children.
Research shows First Nations women are 32 times more likely to be hospitalised and 11 times more likely to die from assault than non-indigenous women in Australia. Family violence was also a big contributor to rapidly rising incarceration rates of First Nations women and a leading cause of the removal of First Nations children into the out-of-home care system.
June Oscar AO speaks at a forum during the Garma Festival at Gulkula in East Arnhem Land in July.Credit:Getty
“It is the responsibility of all levels of government to ensure our rights are protected by listening and acting on the solutions put forward by First Nations women, victim-survivors and specialist community-controlled organisations,” according to a statement that came out of The Wiyi Yani U Thangani Women’s Safety Policy Forum this week.
The forum stressed that First Nations women have always been central to providing care and doing the often unrecognised work of keeping family safe. Wiyi Yani U Thangani, means “women’s voices” in the Bunuba language from Western Australia’s Kimberly region.
“Getting this right, now, is critical to how the First Nations Voice to Parliament will respond to our
women and children’s unique needs and aspirations across all our vibrant nations,” the statement said.
The online forum was hosted by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar and the Australian Human Rights Commission and was the first gathering of its kind specifically designed for Indigenous women to speak on their own terms about addressing violence in First Nations communities.
The forum was also a response to recommendations made at the Australian Government’s
2021 Women’s Safety Summit, for First Nations peoples to lead in the design and implementation of responses to violence, and for the development of a separate First Nations plan.
“The solutions we need to end violence sit with us. We know what works and we know
what does not. I thank these women for their potent truth-telling and for their insistence
that real and lasting change can only happen when First Nations women are leading that
change,” Oscar said.
Also speaking at the forum, Federal Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said the Commission had “played an important role in making sure that our government’s ear is turned sharply to the needs of First Nations communities.”
Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney said the Albanese government had committed to delivering a dedicated national plan for First Nations people to
end family violence and violence against women.
“There is enormous work to be done and we will continue to support … the Wiyi Yani U Thangani
project,” Burney said. “What this offers is 36 years of collective First Nations women voices – it is a
seminal report that must be listened to for its wisdom, for its breadth, and what it brings
to the public debate.”
More than 150 specialist experts, researchers, women with lived experience of violence and frontline workers from around the country endorsed the statement, including Cheryl Axleby, Co-Chair, Change the Record; Catherine Liddle, CEO, SNAICC – National Voice for Our Children; academic and advocate Professor Marcia Langton; lawyer and academic Hannah McGlade; and Antoinette Braybrook, the head of Djirra, Victoria’s Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service.
The forum will deliver an Outcomes Report to the Australian government in October, partly to advocate for more effective violence prevention responses across the country.
The forum coincided with yesterday’s fifteenth anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which has been endorsed by Australia and to which Australia has obligations to respond.
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