The chief executive of Victorian Aboriginal family violence prevention service Djirra says investing in First Nations data sovereignty is key to keeping Aboriginal women visible.
Antoinette Braybrook's statement comes in the wake of the Australian Institute of Criminology's (AIC) Homicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women report, which was released this week.
The report found between 1 July 1989 and 30 June 2023 a total of 476 Indigenous women were victims of homicide, with seventy-two percent killed by their current or former intimate partner.
"It is not acceptable for losses of this scale to continue," Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said on Tuesday.
Djirra chief executive Antoinette Braybrook said whilst the organisation welcomed the report, "which confirms the devastating reality we have long been aware of," she argued the number was "likely to be much higher," with an estimated 90 per cent of family and sexual violence against First Nations women going unreported.
"Investing in First Nations data sovereignty is key to keeping Aboriginal women visible and it is not negotiable when it comes to our self-determination," Ms Braybrook said.
"The current inadequate data collection and reporting systems are confined to 'counting' and focus on deficits."
Ms Braybrook highlighted the AIC - which relies on police homicide data - as not telling the "full story", arguing the Crime Statistics Agency data - based on Victoria Police data - which said Aboriginal men committed approximately 60 per cent of violence against Aboriginal women, was "not Djirra's experience".
"This is why there must be an investment into resourcing our specialist Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) to collect, analyse and evaluate our own data," Ms Braybrook said.
"In 2023, at least 2 in 3 Aboriginal women accessing Djirra's legal services, and 72 per cent of Aboriginal women accessing Djirra's individual support services, had a non-Aboriginal partner. Violence against Aboriginal women is a gendered issue, not an Aboriginal issue, and should not be labelled [as] family violence in Aboriginal communities."
Ms Braybrook argued research was only a "small part of a much bigger picture" which required resourcing for specialist ACCOs - such as Djirra - to "show a more accurate picture of Aboriginal women's experiences" and said "inadequate" data collection and reporting systems meant Djirra was forced to count and focus on deficits to meet their funding obligations.
"But this does not speak to the strengths of Aboriginal women," Ms Braybrook said.
"This approach limits our ability to articulate the self-determined solutions that are proven as effective healing, prevention, and early intervention. The deficit approach limits Djirra's ability to show how we put Aboriginal women's self-determination into their own hands by providing tools to navigate their own way through their journey."
Ms Braybrook reiterated her criticism of the "utterly unacceptable" lack of any new data since 2018/19 on family violence and abuse against Aboriginal women and children in the Productivity Commission's Closing the Gap report.
"This is utterly unacceptable and is not tolerated when it comes to relying on data on violence against other women in our country," Ms Braybrook said.
Target 13 of Closing the Gap calls for the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal women and children to be reduced by at least 50 per cent by 2031.
Aboriginal women are 45 times more likely to experience family violence than non-Aboriginal women, with the numbers of Aboriginal women and children experiencing family violence - including those who have been murdered - continuing to escalate.
The AIC report comes in the wake of a damming senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children, which called for a review of policing practices, as well as a First Nations role at the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission and changes to the way the media reports on First Nations deaths.
It was delivered to a near-empty Senate and garnered no coverage in the national broadsheet and a number of other major media publications across the country.
The recent Yoorrook Justice Commission hearings saw Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) argue the Victorian police often treat family violence call outs as "roll your eyes" matters and wrongfully accuse Aboriginal women of being perpetrators of domestic violence.
Ms Braybrook noted: "It is a fact that reports of family violence against First Nations women, as well as missing and murdered First Nations women, are not taken seriously by individual police officers or investigative bodies."
"It is a common occurrence for police to refuse to take statements, telling our women that 'it's been too long - they should have reported it sooner', or that the violence 'isn't that bad so why bother pursing it'," she said.
Having previously called for policing culture to change while arguing "When our families report that an Aboriginal woman has died or is missing, police responses are often inadequate," Ms Braybrook said "at least 24 per cent" of women supported by Djirra in 2023 had been misidentified by police as perpetrators.
"Misidentification leads to criminalisation, incarceration, and is a major contributor to the removal of our children. It also has far reaching ramifications for Aboriginal women in need of other critical services such as housing and employment," she said.
