It’s been over 30 years since I was on the steering committee for the Aboriginal Women’s Task Force, one of a number of proud and strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who led a nationwide consultation with our women, publishing our findings in the 1986 Women’s Business Report.
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We wanted our voices heard and governments to take action.
Since those years, we’ve had some wins but more losses. We have seen change, but the pace has been glacial. It is simply not enough. To my mind, it is unacceptable.
No one today is responsible for what the colonisers did to us. For the violence, the dispossession, the massacres, the rapes, the Stolen Generations, and the brutal, systematic attack on our culture, our families, our communities, our vitality. But every single person who lives in Australia today is living on black land and owes us a debt of gratitude. They have benefitted from our dispossession.
Yet, the needs and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are continually systematically ignored. We continue to face very significant challenges, and the governmental response continues to be characterised by inaction and apathy.
While we represent 3% of the Australian population, we represent 34% of the 2,600 female prisoners in Australia. We are the fastest growing prison demographic in the country, if not the world. We hear so much of the prison population in the United States, but our incarceration rate clearly surpasses theirs
