Justice

Cheryl Axleby, Co-Chair of Change the Record writes of the crisis of the overrepresentation of First Nations children in incarceration. We need to raise the age of criminal responsibility.

The coverage on the Rolfe trial could make a reader question who is the one really being judged – the deceased or the police officer standing trial?

Social media has allowed community to tell their stories their way, but non-mob must recognise cultural growth and adaption as well as tradition

Mililma May, Larrakia/Tiwi woman and co-founder of Uprising of the People writes about rest as resistance during a global pandemic and rise of white supremacists anti-vax groups.

Our children’s innocence is stolen, and the system presents them with a life in and out of prison

In our communities, we all know someone that has been impacted by the criminal justice system in a harmful (often devastating) way.

This is not a numbers game. These are people, Aboriginal people, whose lives have been snuffed out in the ongoing machinery of colonisation and the carceral State.

If we collectively support the families’ calls and call on governments to act, we can end this injustice once and for all. We cannot, and must not, wait another generation for change.

Wiyi Yani U Thangani – Securing Our Rights, Securing Our Future Report 2020 marks new beginnings for our First Nations women and girls, and for…

On the 22nd September Victorian State Coroner Judge John Cain released a practice note outlining changes in the conduct of coronial investigations into Aboriginal deaths in custody in Victoria.

It is not so radical to say we need to defund police and pour much needed funds and resources into areas that improve social issues such as housing, health, education and employment. These, in turn, reduce the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people and reduces the over-reliance of degrading and dehumanising punitive measures such as prisons.

We spent 14 days in court hearing evidence outline the indifference of police and the mistreatment of our mum.

The years of assimilation are slowly coming undone with the resurgence of our cultural identities and a returning to our traditional ways after generations of beatings by the hands of state-sanctioned violence.

With many Aboriginal people in detention having underlying health issues, COVID-19 will almost certainly lead to more Aboriginal deaths in custody.

The struggle for self-determination in justice must move beyond platitudes and develop mechanisms which translate principle into practice. Self-determination can be achieved at all levels of justice.

As the oldest living culture on the planet, both First Nations and first-raced, we have a distinct articulation of the global Black Lives Matter movement, one which was best captured at the rally convened by the Brisbane Blacks (Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance and Stop Black Deaths in Custody Committee) on Friday 4th July 2020 in Meanjin.

On May 25th, 2020 in Minneapolis Minnesota, a black man by the name of George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight. Giana, his beautiful black six-year-old daughter will grow up fatherless because of the collaborative act of homicide by three men.

In watching the videos of Mulrunji, Mr King and the footage I have seen publicly of Ms Dhu, Tanya Day and Mr Ward, the common element is the complete disregard that is shown for their life. A sense of them being less worthy of humane treatment because they are Aboriginal, than would be applied to someone else in those circumstances.