- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2190
Tjala Women’s Collaborative, Museum and Art Gallery of The Northern Territory. Photo: Geoff Whalan – flickr.com (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The alleged brutal sexual assault and murder of five-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby in Alice Springs has raised the question of how the police and the government are dealing with murdered and missing Indigenous women and children in Australia. Northern Territory Child Protection Minister Robyn Cahill asked the Children’s Commissioner to investigate the case. This is the most recent incident in a long history of missing and murdered Indigenous children.
The Australian Institute of Criminology found that 476 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were murdered between 1989 and 2023. The 2022 ABC’s Four Corners investigation identified at least 315 Indigenous women who have gone missing, murdered, or died in suspicious circumstances since 2000.
A major problem is that there is no single, comprehensive national database. A 2024 literature review by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), concluded that reliable research is extremely limited, and available evidence suggests missing, murdered, and wrongfully incarcerated Indigenous women “number in the hundreds, if not thousands.”
Australia has never fully confronted the scale of violence against Indigenous women who experience homicide rates up to seven times the national average. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and families of victims have repeatedly called for a permanent national database and better missing persons protocols. They have also long demanded independent investigations, coronial reform, and a full national inquiry similar to Canada’s inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).
Indigenous women scholars and activists such as Hannah McGlade, Celeste Liddle, and Pat Anderson argue that violence against Indigenous women must be understood through colonisation, intergenerational trauma, economic inequality, over-incarceration, and systemic racism. The present focus on criminal justice without addressing housing, health, education, and community wellbeing will not solve the problem.
Many Indigenous women leaders find that mainstream systems have failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women because they are designed without Indigenous community control. Indigenous women must lead the solutions, rather than having policies imposed on them by governments and non-Indigenous institutions.
Djirra, the Aboriginal community-controlled organisation supporting Aboriginal women facing family violence, has pushed for culturally safe support services, stronger legal protections, housing security, trauma-informed policing, and long-term funding for Indigenous-led programs. Many Indigenous women’s groups have adopted campaigns similar to Canada and the United States around MMIWG, using slogans such as ‘No More Stolen Sisters’ and ‘Black Women Matter.’
Indigenous women’s actions are led by mothers, aunties, grandmothers, and sisters of victims. These gatherings often combine mourning with political demands for justice, better policing, and violence prevention. Indigenous women have organised vigils, marches, memorial events, social media campaigns, and community forums across Australia.
The impact of family and domestic violence in Indigenous communities was examined by the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee and the findings released in August 2024. The response was tabled in Parliament in November 2024, with the government committed to supporting First Nations communities. A $4.7 billion package would address the recommendations of the Inquiry and the development of the ‘Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices: National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Plan to End Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence 2026–2036,’ the first national plan of its kind.
The plan sets out a pathway for change over the next ten years. It calls on governments, communities and organisations to work together to create a safer future, where there is respect and strengthening of culture, kinship and connection to Country.
