By Meredith Griffiths
Aboriginal mothers are 17.5 times more likely to die from homicide than non-Aboriginal mothers, according to new research.
The Telethon Kids Institute analysed West Australian data about deaths from external causes from 1983 to 2010 and found about a quarter of Aboriginal mothers who died in that time were homicide victims.
“I think it pinpoints… domestic violence issues that Aboriginal women are sometimes faced with,” report author Carrington Shepherd said.
Overall, Aboriginal mothers were 6.5 times more likely to die from preventable causes than non-Aboriginal mothers.
The main external cause of death was accidents, with about 40 per cent of the Indigenous mothers dying in transport accidents.
“They tend to live in more remote areas where the roads are of poorer standard and speed limits are higher, but also, and this is also connected to areas of poverty and socio-economic disadvantage, they tend to have access to cars that aren’t as safe and wearing seatbelts is an issue as well,” Dr Shepherd said.
The report, published in the BMC Public Health journal, shows about 14 per cent of the deaths were suicides meaning Aboriginal mothers were 3.5 times more likely to kill themselves than non-Aboriginal mothers.
It says risk factors for suicide in Aboriginal people include a lack of purpose and role models and dislocation from family and community.
“In terms of Aboriginal mothers we’re talking about issues of potential sexual abuse and intimate partner abuse that can lead to issues with social and emotional wellbeing and poor mental health,” Dr Shepherd said, adding that the impact of the Stolen Generation was also still being felt in subsequent generations.
Early death of mothers leads to life-long problems among children
The researchers analysed data from the West Australian midwife notification system, death registry, hospital morbidity data system and mental health information system.
The median age of death of Aboriginal mothers was 33 years old and the median age of their youngest child was 4.8 years old.
“When children face maternal loss at this stage of life the evidence is quite clear that this can lead to long periods of grief, and depression and anxiety and stress as well,” Dr Shepherd said.
“It can lead, further down the track, to problems with identity development and also the difficulties associated to the transition to out of home care when that’s an issue.
“An important thing to recognise is that these effects can be long lasting as well, and we’ve seen that they can impact on substance abuse and suicide of these children down the track.”
Aboriginal health professor Rhonda Marriott from Murdoch University said the report was painful to read and raised questions about how society values Indigenous women.
“It’s really important that we don’t blame the victims or blame Aboriginal families,” she said.
“What has happened that the women who were involved have not developed resilience?”
Professor Marriott said many young Aboriginal women had no-one to help them in a crisis, but they also needed more support services throughout their lives.
“The culturally safe birthing experience, culturally safe and secure child health experience, schooling that values your cultural identity and strengthens your cultural identity and through to the choices that you make around your aspirations supporting young people more to have greater aspirations in life,” she explained.
This post originally appeared on ABC News.
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Top Comments
**To all those who posted** either genuine comments about this article and the issues raised - I say THANK YOU. I can't recall all your names but I wanted to let you have made a difference. To all of you who joined in to make hurtful, or ignorant comments (yes it is your god given right to free speech) please remember that to many Aboriginal people we are either suffering these issues mentioned in these articles or our loved ones are. We know the women driving these cars and losing their lives, we know the women killed, or in many cases young teenage girls brutalised in ways no human should endure, we know the suicides, we have to cope with raising our kids knowing that many Australians we come into contact with don't like us, don't want us living next to them, shopping in their shops, don't think we deserve respect or compassion. But we are human and we hurt too, there are not many places we can participate on line or IRL without painful encounters. Some of us struggle every day to stay alive or make a difference. Kindness matters.
I would like to see the data and compare it with white women of disadvantage and see what the difference is- this would indicate if the issues are to do with being aboriginal or the fact that such a high proportion of aboriginal women are disadvantaged.
This information would give more relevant information in how to address the issue.
Here is the link to the NSW Coroners investigation into DV homicides
http://www.coroners.justice...
The study took the homicde dataset from 2000 - 2012.
Page 3
280 (28% of all NSW homicides) DV homicdes occurred. 164 female deaths, 116 male deaths.
Page 5
Of perpetrators, 9% of males identified as Aboriginal, 33% of females identified as Aboriginal. That's in both cases a big over representation of homicides in Aboriginal relationships.
Scroll further down and you can compare across socio economic groups. What the study concludes is a very strong link between social circumstances and risk of DV homicide.
You cannot compare NSW to WA for this. Really, there are significantly different issues. some similarities for sure but i guarantee the problems women face in WA don't happen in NSW. NSW also report that they have had no deaths in custody for years, where as in WA we still have regular deaths in custody, including a young girl Ms Dhu who died at a police lock up. these traumas impact on the wellbeing of many other Aboriginal women both related to her and also because it makes us feel vulnerable to that same kind of death. suicide, access to services, cultural connection, isolation, intergenerational trauma, birthing etc are all very different between NSW and WA.
This article discusses the many disadvantages aboriginal women suffer. A much larger number of aboriginal women are considered disadvantaged then white women so hence a larger number are victims of homocide.
of course they are Neesa and thank you so much for writing about it here. I hope you do so more often. I personally don't reply to posts by Guest5 as he is a well known MRA and it's really offensive of MM to let him have a voice, particularly about issues affecting women that he knows absolutely nothing about and obviously doesn't care about.