Indigenous violence ‘is femicide’, says women and children’s advocate

Australia must face the reality extreme family violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities amounts to femicide, according to one of the nation’s top experts.

‘If white women in the city were being killed like this it would be national outcry’, says Dr Hannah McGlade. Picture: Tony McDonough

Australia must face the reality extreme family violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities amounts to Indigenous femicide, according to one of the nation’s most experienced advocates for women and children.

Noongar researcher Hannah McGlade – who has worked with victims and studied violent and sexual crimes against Indigenous women and children for 30 years – said race, gender and poverty were all at play when Indigenous women and children were bashed, sometimes fatally.

Dr McGlade said it was significant that Northern Territory Supreme Court judge Judith Kelly had spoken publicly about the epidemic of violence trapping Indigenous women in Australia’s north. Judge Kelly told The Weekend Australian some women who had tried to escape had been effectively kidnapped and dragged to tiny outstations to be beaten and raped.

Others had endured years of often drunken, jealous violence inflicted by “hopeless” men, only to be killed in the company of ­bystanders who did not try to help.

“It’s very important that Judge Kelly has highlighted the severity of violence and murder we believe that what is happening is Indigenous femicide,” Dr McGlade said.

“So many Aboriginal women are being murdered and the state is in no way innocent because it has failed to listen to us and work with us to address the violence. Our knowledge and leadership has not been properly respected.

“Women, a great many, often mothers, have been brutally slain as a result.”

Indigenous leader Marcia Langton has called on the Albanese government to take advice on the issue of Indigenous family violence from a permanent working group of people who know the causes and understand proven preventions. Professor Langton accused the women’s sector of “dithering” on irrelevant topics while Indigenous women died.

Dr McGlade, a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues, said while state and federal governments had heard the cries of non-Aboriginal women for new laws against “coercive control”, there had been not enough regard for what Aboriginal women say about the urgent need to prevent violent bashings and murders. In fact, Aboriginal women had serious concerns coercive control laws would actually be used against victims.

“We know research in Queensland showed more than half of the women murdered were previously misidentified by police as the perpetrators,” Dr McGlade said.

“We are talking about racial profiling of Aboriginal women victims that costs them their very lives.”

Australia could learn from work being done to prevent violence against Indigenous women in other countries. Dr McGlade believes Indigenous women’s rights to life, equality and self determination were being ignored.

“If white women in the city were being killed like this it would be national outcry, “ she said.

Dr McGlade co-authored the first international case study of Indigenous femicide including confronting data: Indigenous people are 3.4 times more likely than non-Indigenous people to be the victims of sexual assault in Australia and Indigenous women were 17.5 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of family violence.

“We must all increase our voices and ensure that Aboriginal women’s lives matter now. Our women’s lives matter, our children’s lives matter, and our voices must not be silenced any more,” Dr McGlade said.