Here, where the Black Lives Matter movement has brought focus to First Nations people dying in custody, media attention has been episodic and too often absent.
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George Floyd’s death and the US Black Lives Matter movement sparked extensive media attention. Why aren’t Australian Indigenous deaths in custody getting the same amount of media coverage?
It’s a tragedy that hundreds have died because the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody were not implemented fully.
The family of Rebecca Maher, an Aboriginal woman who died in custody in 2016, believed access to a custody notification service would have been an important check in the absence of police care.
Bianca De Marchi/AAP
Tanya Day, Ms Dhu and Rebecca Maher are among the 400 people who have died in custody more than 25 years since the Royal Commission. How could those deaths have been avoided?
Ms Dhu died on 4 August 2014 from staphylococcal septicaemia.
Richard Wainwright/AAP
Jane Lydon, The University of Western Australia and Donna Oxenham, The University of Western Australia
Noel Pearson has accused the ABC of racism in dwelling on indigenous alienation. But many advances in the status of Aboriginal Australians have been prompted by revealing ill-treatment, which is why Ms Dhu’s family want footage of her last hours made public.
Protestors in Perth call for an independent investigation into Ms Dhu’s death.
AAP/Jesse Roberts
The statistics used to discuss deaths in custody can make us lose sight of the fact that it’s people we’re talking about. People with families and friends, who died prematurely – and often brutally.