Missing, Murdered, Ignored and Indigenous.
Why the Australian government is holding an inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children.
WARNING: the following article contains data, statistics, and information that many First Nations people will find distressing. Please proceed with caution if you choose to read on.
On August 4th, 2022, the senate referred an inquiry on the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee 1. On the 3rd of August 2023, the committee’s reporting date was extended to the 30th of June 2024. As is normal for such an inquiry, submissions were invited from the public and other interested parties/bodies. Submissions closed on the 12th of December 2022, and 86 were accepted as part of this enquiry. To date, there have been seven public hearings on the matter, the transcripts for which have been published on the inquiry’s public website, as have the Terms of Reference, Media Releases, and additional documents. This inquiry, which you may have never even heard about prior to this, investigates missing and murdered First Nations women and children.
Why? Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples only make up approximately 3.8% (984,000) of the population of Australia 2. One third of that 3.8% are under the age of 15 (324,720), and approximately half of that 3.8% (492,000) are women or girls. So, out of the total Australian population of 25.7 million people, First Nations women and children only make up approximately 654,360 in total. So, if only 2.55% of the Australian population are First Nations women and children, why should the Australian Government be launching a special investigation into their murders or disappearances?
According to data compiled by the AIHW’s National Mortality Database 3, between 2006 and 2019, 208 female Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ‘females’ (age not specified) were murdered. In the same time period, 703 non-Indigenous ‘females’ (age not specified) were murdered. This means that, despite only representing between 2.5-3.8% of the female population of Australia between 2006 & 2019, Indigenous women represent over 22% of female murder victims. According to the ABC’s Four Corners investigation into this matter back in 2022 4, Indigenous women were up to 12 times more likely to be murdered than the national average, and in some regions their deaths make up some of the highest homicide rates in the world.
While it is much more difficult to establish the exact number of missing persons, Martin Hodgson, senior advocate at the Foreign Prisoner Support Service, Human Rights Award Winner, and host of Curtain The Podcast, did a deep dive into the AFP’s missing persons database. In his podcast 5, Martin specifically sought information regarding women and children missing for more than 12 months, or where suspicions remain regarding their disappearances. Troublingly, though the database includes categorisation for ethnicity, it was not used to identify the Indigenous status of missing persons. In order to get a truer sense of the number of Indigenous women who were still missing/whose cases were under suspicion, Martin stated in his podcast that he had to search individually through the cases to discover whether or not the missing women were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. His analysis found that 20% of these missing women were Indigenous women.
And these are just the conclusions we can draw from the data we do have. In recent years, we have seen massive upheaval and trauma unleashed in First Nations Canadian 6 and American 7 communities thanks to the ongoing discoveries of mass graves for the children who were stolen from their families and taken to church and state run ‘schools’. The murders of these children went unreported by these ‘schools’ for decades. Similarly, in Australia, generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were stolen and taken to church and state run ‘schools’. How many missing and murdered Indigenous children in Australia were simply never recorded as missing or dead in the first place? After all, if they were stolen in the first place, how likely were the institutions who took them to report them as missing? Add to this the fact that Indigenous women are less likely to report being a victim of violent crime, how many murdered women or women who are ‘missing’ have already been murdered, and could have been kept safe if their abuser (and eventual possible killer) had been reported to the police? This is not at the fault of the victims; Indigenous women know that turning to the police does not necessarily guarantee any more safety than the person harming them. Criminology and law researcher Emma Buxton-Namisnyk stated in her 2002 article for the British Journal of Criminology 8:
“Findings show that most (Australian First Nations) women had domestic violence-related police contact before their deaths, and these interactions were frequently harmful. Harms resulted from police inaction, including failures to respond or enforce the law. Harms also resulted from police action, with policing enhancing state surveillance of victims’ families, eroding victims’ autonomy and criminalizing victims.”
What does that mean, in practice? Warning: The following example of the failures of the ‘justice’ system includes upsetting and disturbing information about the death of an Aboriginal woman. In June of 2022, acting coroner Elisabeth Armitage condemned the multiple failures of police and corrections services in the Northern Territory after the three-year coronial inquest into the murder of 28-year-old Aboriginal woman and mother of three, Roberta (full name not published per family request) 9. Her killer, Lorenzo Deegan, pled guilty to four counts aggravated assault and one count negligent manslaughter and received 10 years in prison. During the inquest, it was found that Roberta had made multiple calls to emergency services in the days leading up to her death. In these calls, Roberta stated that her ex-partner (Deegan) was threatening her and her family and breaching the conditions of his release by drinking alcohol10. Parole officers failed to respond appropriately to the fact that Deegan was sending death threats to Roberta, despite his parole specifying he was not allowed a mobile phone during his court-ordered rehabilitation. Police failed to respond to Roberta’s calls for helps in the days leading up to her death, despite his having physically assaulted her multiple times, as she stated to the triple-0 operators. Police failed to stop Deegan returning on multiple occasions, even after being shown her injuries. Finally, police officers told Roberta “Stop calling us”. Five days later, police were called to the house Deegan was staying, and found Roberta already deceased from multiple injuries and internal bleeding. In findings handed down in Darwin Local Court, Judge Armitage stated that the police “did nothing to help” and that more comprehensive supervision of violent offenders was needed, as well as better information sharing between police and corrections, to prevent this type of thing happening.
All of this, information is, obviously, upsetting. And this without even examining the rates of homicide among First Nations men, nor black deaths in custody. In the same 2006-2019 time period, AIHW reports (3) state that 312 Indigenous men were murdered, meaning over 21% of murdered ‘males’ were recorded as being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Following the Royal Commission into deaths in custody, data collected between January 1st, 1980, and June 30th, 2011, showed us again why Indigenous Australians feel unsafe with the police. Over these two decades of data, it was found that at least 17% of people who died in prison were Indigenous 11. Over the same period, 23% of deaths in ‘police and police-custody related operations’ were Indigenous deaths (11). And finally, in the same two decades, 44% of the deaths in juvenile justice custody were deaths of Indigenous children (11). This is not a resolved issue, it was not solved after June 30th, 2011. Over the 2021-22 financial year, Indigenous people made up 19% of deaths in prison custody, and over 36% of deaths in ‘police custody and custody-related operations’ 12. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, 28% of deaths in prison custody were Indigenous deaths, and exactly 1 in four deaths in ‘police custody and custody-related operations’ were Indigenous deaths 13. And so far, between date of writing (March 2024) and July 1st, 2023, over 36% of deaths in custody have been Indigenous deaths 14.
In summary, we need this inquiry. We need multiple inquiries. Our Aboriginal women and children are under constant threat of death, and our country has historically failed to protect them. Failed to protect us. As an Aboriginal woman, as the loving aunt of a bunch of gorgeous Aboriginal children, as a sister/daughter/niece, I am afraid. For my kids, for my brothers and sisters, for myself. Our people, especially our men, are dying at the hands of the police and ‘justice’ system at frankly terrifying rates. We’ve already had a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody; the findings and recommendations were released over 35 years ago. And still, we are dying in custody/during ‘custody related operations’ at extremely disproportionate rates.
To put it simply, I want to live in a country where my family are just as safe from being murdered as everyone else. But I don’t. Will an inquiry solve this? No. But if it means bringing light to the issue? If it means putting better safeguards in place to ensure that women do feel safe seeking help from authorities when they are abused? If it means more intense and stringent policing of the police and prisons (or abolition of both, but that’s a conversation for another day)? If it means that the rest of the country has a chance to open their eyes to the historical and ongoing violence against my people? If it could lead to justice for those already passed, and possible safety for those of us here today and future generations? Why on earth wouldn’t we want that?
Missing and murdered First Nations women and children – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au) https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/FirstNationswomenchildren
Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 30 June 2021 | Australian Bureau of Statistics (abs.gov.au)
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/estimates-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-australians/latest-release
2.10 Community safety - AIHW Indigenous HPF
https://www.indigenoushpf.gov.au/measures/2-10-community-safety
The killings and disappearances of Indigenous women across Australia is a crisis hidden in plain sight - ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-24/murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women-four-corners/101546186
Curtain The Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Canadian Indian residential school gravesites - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_gravesites
US identifies more than 50 Native American boarding school burial sites | US news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/11/native-american-children-schools-abuse-burial-sites
Domestic Violence Policing of First Nations Women in Australia: ‘Settler’ Frameworks, Consequential Harms and the Promise of Meaningful Self-Determination | The British Journal of Criminology | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/62/6/1323/6430028?login=false
NT coroner calls for more supervision of violent offenders in inquest of woman killed by her ex-partner - ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-10/coronial-inquest-roberta-findings-darwin-local-court/101141340
NT coroner examines death of a woman at the hands of ex-partner out on a suspended sentence for assault - ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-17/death-inquest-domestic-violence-nt-darwin-court/101072312
Deaths in custody in Australia to 30 June 2011 (aic.gov.au)
https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/mr20.pdf
Deaths in custody in Australia 2021–22 (aic.gov.au)
https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-12/sr41_deaths_in_custody_2021-22_v2.pdf
Deaths in custody in Australia 2022–23 (aic.gov.au)
https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/sr44_deaths_in_custody_in_australia_2022-23.pdf
Deaths in custody in Australia | Australian Institute of Criminology (aic.gov.au)
https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/deaths-custody-australia