analysis
How much longer must Aboriginal women be maimed and murdered by domestic violence before Australia listens?
The death of A Haywood in a house fire lit by her partner was one case investigated at the inquest. How many more Indigenous women are at risk from domestic violence? (ABC News)
There is a sense of foreboding and desperate frustration in a call to action from the Northern Territory coroner — how much longer must we see Aboriginal women repeatedly maimed and murdered before Australia listens?
On Monday, the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage, released a detailed and lengthy investigation into the deaths of four unique women who shared a common fate in northern Australia.
Each was killed by men in their lives who purported to care for them, each was killed in the most brutal and disgusting of ways.
Ms Armitage also writes about scores of other First Nations women killed in the same fashion.
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She describes the deaths of dozens of Indigenous women in agonising detail: they were beaten to death with rocks, sticks and bottles, stomped on and stabbed with knives, shot with crossbows, run over repeatedly in car parks, kicked and set alight, left bleeding to death in broad daylight.
This "unrelenting horror" is our national shame, says Ms Armitage, and she warns "there is a real risk that as a community we may become desensitised to the violence".
Eight more Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory are dead this year alone, and there has barely been a pip in parliament or in the national media.
If Australia is not already at the point of desensitisation, we must be perilously close.
Shelters are full, men's behaviour-change programs in the NT are underfunded and in their infancy, and Aboriginal women who fear their partners may kill them are often just as fearful of police.
Dedicated medics, officers and family violence support workers are traumatised, the coroner writes.
Urgent funding is needed now, the Coroner found, as emergency services in the NT buckle under the weight of a crisis expected to worsen over the next decade.
The coroner's report landed on the same day the government released its response to an inquiry into the national prevalence of Aboriginal women who have been killed or whose bodies are deemed missing.
Loading...An important moment in time
Not all Aboriginal women who have spent years advocating for more attention to these deaths were satisfied by the inquiry and its scope.
But Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy told News Breakfast that this week marked an important moment in time.
"This is a national scourge that we have across our country, impacting First Nations women and children. And not only the Northern Territory, but the whole of the country has to act."
Of the 10 recommendations the national inquiry made to the federal government, eight have been "noted", the minister says.
It's unclear what that means in practical terms.
The government insists it will work with state and territory ministers to discuss some of the ideas for reform, including standardising reform in police forces to see that families can trust that adequate investigations will be followed through.
The media has a role
The constancy of violence against Aboriginal women rarely makes headlines, few editors of major media organisations paste the horrifying deaths of black women to their front pages or to the top of news bulletins.
More importantly, these women, their stories and their legacies, get virtually no humanisation or national remembrance, which seems so cruel to their families and friends.
Both the coroner and the senate inquiry found this lack of national media coverage to be a factor in the lack of systemic change enacted to keep Aboriginal women safe.
Senator McCarthy, herself a former journalist who has reported the murders of Indigenous women and girls, says First Nations families felt "completely ignored" by media outlets.
"There has to be a change in the culture of the media, in the reporting and the way it's reported."
Clearly a change in culture in all levels of government is needed, too.
If the repeated, urgent and passionate calls from Aboriginal women continue to be met with apathy and delay, the NT coroner is certain she will preside over many more inquests of young Indigenous victims of violence.
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