Black Lives Matter in Australia - A Conversation with Professor Marcia Langton
Channel: Center for Global Ethnography
Date: 2020-10-24

***We would like to respectfully inform Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander peoples, and others that content in this video interview contains references to deceased persons.*** 

For more information about this conversation, including the accompanying reading list, visit: https://iriss.stanford.edu/ethnography/black-lives-matter-australia
 
In 2020, Black Lives Matter protests in Australia, along with solidarity for Black communities in the United States and worldwide, called for justice and accountability for the deep history of police brutality, custodial deaths, and incarceration faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the country. 
 
Change the Record, a national Aboriginal-led justice coalition of Aboriginal peak bodies and non-Indigenous allies, reports that in the last decade there was an “88% increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being put in prison” with Indigenous persons thirteen times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander populations make up two percent of the Australian population but twenty-seven percent of the prison population. The Guardian Australia's database, “Deaths Inside: Indigenous Australian Deaths in Custody 2020,” compiles and examines every known Indigenous death in custody, since 2008. 
 
Professor Dr. Marcia Langton, Associate Provost and the Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, has struggled for justice for indigenous communities throughout her activist and academic careers. She served on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody from 1989 to 1990. Since the end of the commission, from 1991 alone, more than 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody. To this day, the Commission’s recommendations have yet to be implemented. In this interview, Langton discusses protests, police brutality against indigenous communities--connecting this to a broader carceral logic directed against indigenous communities in the Australian government--and Australia’s settler-colonial history and racism. She concludes by discussing Indigenous justice initiatives and questions of sovereignty for Indigenous families and communities.
 
Speakers: 
 
Dr. Marcia Langton, Associate Provost;  Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor; Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies,
Indigenous Studies Unit, Centre for Health EquityMelbourne School of Population and Global Health
https://about.unimelb.edu.au/leadership/senior-leadership/PVC-community-and-cultural-partnerships/prof-marcia-langton

Dr. Sharika Thiranagama, Associate Professor, Anthropology; Co-Director of the Center for Global Ethnography
https://iriss.stanford.edu/people/sharika-thiranagama-0