Abstract
All available data suggest that, like many other Indigenous peoples, Australian Aborigines are significantly more likely to kill themselves than are non-Aboriginal Australians. This statistical disparity is normally positioned an objective, ontological and undeniable social fact, a fact best explained as a function of endemic community disadvantage and disenfranchisement. This research explores the possibility that higher-than-normal Aboriginal suicide rates may also be a function of coronial decision-making practices. Based upon in-depth interviews with 32 coroners from across Australia, the following conclusions emerged from the data. First, coroners have differing perceptions of Indigenous capacity, and are less likely to have concerns about intent when the suicide is committed by an Indigenous person. Second, coroners have identified divergent scripts of Indigenous suicide, particularly its spontaneity and public location, and this supports rather than challenges, a finding of suicide. Third, the coronial perception of Indigenous life is a factor which influences a suicide determination for Indigenous deaths. Finally, the low level of Indigenous engagement with the coronial system, and the unlikelihood of a challenge to the finding of suicide by Indigenous families, means that a coronial determination of suicide is more likely.
Highlights
It is not in dispute that Indigenous Australians have been—and continue to be—subject to significant social, cultural, political, legal, medical and psychological trauma [1]
Coroners are aware that there remains significant stigma against those who die by suicide, and by proxy, their families, a situation they find themselves trying to avoid [28]
Within a general framework of issues relating to the coronial determination of suicide, there exist some specific observations about Indigenous suicide, observations which speak directly to the accuracy of Indigenous suicide statistics, and to the differential ways that suicide is determined on the basis of racial and ethnic identity
Summary
It is not in dispute that Indigenous Australians have been—and continue to be—subject to significant social, cultural, political, legal, medical and psychological trauma [1]. Through the effects of introduced disease, military resistance, displacement, and extra-judicial killings, in the 230 years since colonisation began, the Indigenous population has fallen from an estimated 750,000 to a low point of 120,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, before reaching the current levels of approximately 786,689 [2]. 4.2 times higher than non-indigenous Australians; their life expectancy is over ten years less [3]. Indigenous Australians are 13 times more likely to be imprisoned [4]. Of the estimated 250 Indigenous languages which existed in the late 18th century, only 13 remain in daily use [5]. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this statistical portrait of a comprehensive Indigenous crisis extends to the issue of suicide. In Australia, Indigenous suicide rates are currently twice that of the non-Indigenous [6]
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