Indigenous domestic violence ‘invisible amid focus on women’

A group of senior Indigenous women leaders says a national plan is required to deal with violence towards Aboriginal women and children.

Human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade.

A group of senior Indigenous women leaders says a national plan is required to deal with violence towards Aboriginal women and children, which they say is being “rendered invisible” despite a huge national media focus on ­violence perpetrated on non-­Aboriginal Australian women.

The group says it has met Our Watch, the leading agency in the primary prevention of violence against women and children in Australia, and received support for a specific national action plan to tackle violence against Indig­enous women.

Human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade said the meeting, led by senior academics Marcia Langton, Marlene Longbottom, Bronwyn Carlson and herself, was a response to violence that is “not properly being seen, and even rendered invisible”.

“We urgently need a council on violence against Aboriginal women, and Our Watch supports this and will work with us to put this position to the federal government,” Dr McGlade said.

Professor Langton said extraordinary rates of violence against Aboriginal women and children required a nationally co-ordinated approach across all jurisdictions. “We are recommending a council of senior and expert Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women advising all Australian governments,” she said.

“No more cone of platitudes or racism; too many lives are being lost.”

The group said a multitude of issues elevated Indigenous females’ risk of interpersonal violence, including racial bias and a discriminatory justice system.

Other risk factors are a national housing crisis that leaves mothers vulnerable if they are not able to leave violent relationships.

“There is a lack of investment into culturally appropriate responses, especially women’s groups,” Dr McGlade said.

She said a new national ­approach would be consistent with the historic declaration that Australia supported in the Human Rights Council in 2016, which committed to “accelerated efforts to address violence against women, including Indigenous women”.

Dr Longbottom, a Yuin woman and a research fellow at the University of Wollongong, said she and others were calling for a separate meeting because issues that greatly impact Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islander women were hardly ever prioritised.

“Much less are they heard. The violence that Indigenous women and children experience differ greatly to that of other population groups, requiring a systems level response that takes into account the multilayered issues,” Dr Longbottom told The Australian.

“The research that I have conducted show, that experiences of discrimination are a leading cause of why Indigenous women do not seek support from mainstream service providers. Not only do Indigenous women encounter various typologies of violence, they also contend with violence and intersected issues related to race, gender expression, sexuality, disability. This is much more than the experiences of interpersonal violence at the individual level, it is systemic and structural.”

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