About…
Greetings from Kaurna country, the beautiful country of the Kaurna people, the original inhabitants and continuous custodians of the Adelaide Plains in South Australia.
Aboriginal people in Australia are locked up at the highest rates of any population in the world, even far higher than other Indigenous populations.
Aboriginal communities repeatedly call for action.
We whitefellas acknowledge the ‘over-representation.’
Every year we publish the numbers. We set targets. We call it a ‘national disgrace’, and still we watch, and we document.
And still the numbers rise.
We offer half-hearted solutions to reducing Aboriginal imprisonment.
Our disconnected whitefella systems across health, justice and social services continue to disadvantage Aboriginal people at every turn.
And we fail to act.
This project is about holding whitefellas to account.
Let’s Right this Wrong, together.
About me…
I first set foot in a prison over 25 years ago.
The local Aboriginal Health service had asked me to do a weekly clinic for the Aboriginal women in the Adelaide Women’s Prison.
I was interested. I was aware of the recent Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC.) And, as a doctor, I was concerned because of the many conversations I’d already had with Aboriginal mothers and grandmothers about family inside prison and their worries for them. These worries for family were often so distressing that their own health was deeply affected.
This initial connection to women inside and their families has set me on a quest that has consumed me ever since-a journey to understand what is driving incarceration for Aboriginal people and what we can all do about it.
I am not Aboriginal. I am balanda, pirinpa, kartiya, goonya, wadjella, all language names for being non-Aboriginal. I am a whitefella. It’s an identity I’ve sought to understand all my working life.
Is it OK for me to speak up about Aboriginal incarceration, or am I taking away from voices of Aboriginal people who need to be heard?
When is my idea of helping actually helpful, or am I doing more harm than good by reinforcing the existing systems of injustice and disadvantage and power?
The outcome of the Voice to Parliament referendum in late 2023 galvanised my commitment to speak up.
The Voice was not the responsibility of Aboriginal Australia to convince the rest of us. It was our chance to take responsibility, and we failed.
It is no accident that our whitefella systems don’t work for Aboriginal people. Those of us who have worked and fought inside them to try to make things better for Aboriginal people know it’s not a matter of chance.
We whitefellas created these systems, we whitefellas maintain them and we whitefellas as a nation collectively condone them.
So spurred on by the recurring sound of the clank of the prison gate in my head as it closes behind me, it is time to tell a better story, to face our whitefella responsibility and to make this right.
I’m Anthea Krieg. Welcome to Good Mob Mad System.
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