J Kimm, A Fatal Conjunction: Two Laws Two Cultures (The Federation Press 2004) 212pp

Abstract

Family violence is a cancerous disease that is destroying us, eating at the very heart of our culture, and our future as a people. Women are being maimed and killed, children's lives scarred, and our young men sentenced to prison and further cycles of abuse and self abuse … We’re killing ourselves. If we don't do some thing NOW there won't be a future for us. It's not a women's problem. It isn't a men’s problem either. It’s a community problem and the whole community has to be involved, to be told what's happening ... [and to] take responsibility for finding solutions. 1 Some fifteen years ago Judy Atkinson, quoted above, an Australian Indigenous woman with many years of experience in this field, described the devastating consequences of violence upon Indigenous men, women and children. She also declared in explicit terms that Indigenous people were killing themselves. Unfortunately, in the considerable time that has since passed, nothing much has changed. The violence has escalated to epidemic proportions with ‘very few Aboriginal families ... not struggling with the debilitating effects of trauma, despair and damage resulting from their experiences with violence.’ 2 Neither Indigenous leaders nor the Australian government and its various agencies have been able to curb the violence. It is little wonder then that thirteen years on, this mounting problem continues to be described in tones and expressions similar to Atkinson’s: ‘we are killing our future … we will, in the end, have destroyed ourselves if we do not put a stop to family violence now;’ 3 ‘violence is undermining our life’s very essence, it is destroying us’; 4 and ‘this is a national crisis’. 5 In recognising that past actions to combat the problem have been ineffective, Indigenous leaders and the Australian government now acknowledge that Indigenous women and children have the right to be protected against persecution in the form of family violence and that Indigenous people need ‘extreme actions’ to combat an * Dr Kyllie Cripps BA, BA(Hons) (UniSA), PhD (Mon) is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the