Speaker 1: This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal people across this country, shining a light on
Speaker 1: the darkest parts of our justice system. We ask who
Speaker 1: are the victims?
Speaker 2: I'm Amy mcquaire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior Advocate at
Speaker 2: the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning, this series
Speaker 2: contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content
Speaker 2: that may upset some listeners. Welcome to season two of
Speaker 2: Curtain the Podcast. After a short break, we're back and
Speaker 2: we have a bit of a shift in focus for
Speaker 2: season two, although we're never going to stray too far
Speaker 2: from where we started and what brought us here. In
Speaker 2: season two, we're going to start talking a lot more
Speaker 2: about missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and you will have
Speaker 2: heard us speak about a number of the cases that
Speaker 2: we've raised over the years in quests that Amy's attended,
Speaker 2: and the just sheer lack of justice for the women
Speaker 2: and children who have gone missing and been murdered and
Speaker 2: for their families. Amy, can you explain why we've decided
Speaker 2: to make.
Speaker 1: This shift, Yeah, Mardin. As many of our listeners have
Speaker 1: obviously heard us through the podcast, When we started this podcast,
Speaker 1: it was specifically about one investigation into a chronic miscourage
Speaker 1: of justice around the wrongful conviction of Aboriginal man Kevin Henry.
Speaker 1: But we always recognize the fact that the victim in
Speaker 1: this story, a strong, proud Aboriginal woman named Linda, had
Speaker 1: been all forgotten in the media coverage at the time
Speaker 1: and then the court portrayals, and that was a leading
Speaker 1: reason why this miscarriage of justice existed in the first place,
Speaker 1: the dehumanization of a strong, proud Aboriginal woman. And as
Speaker 1: we continued this podcast over the past five or six years,
Speaker 1: as we did the episodes, those themes kept coming up,
Speaker 1: and we widened the podcast to look at not just
Speaker 1: this one case of injustice and we still fight for Kevin,
Speaker 1: but also other cases of injustice affecting Aboriginal people, because
Speaker 1: that's the only way that you will understand is by
Speaker 1: looking at the broader context of how this is happening,
Speaker 1: how this state sanctioned violence is being continually perpetrated against
Speaker 1: not just Aboriginal men, but Aboriginal men, women, and children.
Speaker 1: And during that time, Martin and myself have actually started
Speaker 1: looking into a number of cases of Aboriginal women who
Speaker 1: have been killed and died by violence and for which
Speaker 1: there has been no justice, There have been no charges,
Speaker 1: and they've been all but forgotten, partly also because of
Speaker 1: this devastating media silencing that makes them responsible for their
Speaker 1: own deaths, and so we felt like it was very
Speaker 1: important to relaunch the podcast by centre Aboriginal women, and
Speaker 1: we do that very deliberately because by centering Aboriginal women,
Speaker 1: we are able to see all aspects of racial and
Speaker 1: gendered violence in this colony and how it has been
Speaker 1: continually reproduced through the justice system and through the media
Speaker 1: and sanctioned effectively by state and federal governments in Australia.
Speaker 1: And that's really why we are focusing specifically on centering
Speaker 1: Aboriginal women as we continue in this podcast, and we
Speaker 1: hope our listeners will join that journey with us and
Speaker 1: take those lessons on board. Martin, we have been doing
Speaker 1: this for a long time, but you also had a
Speaker 1: long history investigating these cases even before I met you.
Speaker 1: But what have you actually learned from doing this investigation.
Speaker 2: It's a really good question, and the instant answer is,
Speaker 2: this is the first chance I've had to work with
Speaker 2: an Aboriginal woman over such an extended period of time.
Speaker 2: And when I say that, obviously I'm talking about my
Speaker 2: co host, Amy Maguire, and throughout this process everything we
Speaker 2: speak about, or the background research we do, the legal
Speaker 2: work that's been done. In addition to making the podcast
Speaker 2: and understanding these stories, Amy's always had a real focus
Speaker 2: on Linda and the other Aboriginal women who have been
Speaker 2: involved in these stories and who have been treated so appallingly.
Speaker 2: And from the first time I read the transcript of
Speaker 2: that initial trial that we started this podcast about Curtin,
Speaker 2: you could see the way that Linda just was not present. There.
Speaker 2: No one involved, be it the judge or the prosecution
Speaker 2: or the police, ever seemed to care about Linda, her personhood,
Speaker 2: her humanity, who she was. It was as if she disappeared.
Speaker 2: And this comes to something that not only have I learned,
Speaker 2: but this is something that Amy has been teaching about
Speaker 2: and writing about over recent years and really informing the
Speaker 2: public on so Amy, one thing I read when you
Speaker 2: put your articles out into the public sphere that really
Speaker 2: challenges things is that you don't just talk about missing
Speaker 2: and murdered, but you very deliberately use the term disappeared.
Speaker 2: So can you explain to the audience why you use
Speaker 2: that term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I also just want to add Martin that
Speaker 1: I have learnt so much from you as well as
Speaker 1: we have gone on this journey together. I just think
Speaker 1: back to five years or six years ago my understanding.
Speaker 1: It was almost like I was a different person. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to say that, to say that our practice
Speaker 1: as journalists and as lawyers and as commentators is really
Speaker 1: informed by the cases we worked on, and not just
Speaker 1: informed that by viewing the violence in the violence of
Speaker 1: the justice system, but also informed by the testimonies and
Speaker 1: the acts of resistance by Aboriginal women who have died
Speaker 1: so in their living they resisted multiple forms of violence,
Speaker 1: and I learned from that, but also in the advocacy
Speaker 1: and the resistance of their families. All of these lessons
Speaker 1: haven't come from academia, They haven't come from other legal avenues.
Speaker 1: The lessons I've learned has actually been from not just
Speaker 1: through this podcast and talking to Mardin, but also in
Speaker 1: sitting with families and in learning of the lives of
Speaker 1: Aboriginal women. And I think that is really important to
Speaker 1: say because I think it differentiates us a lot. And
Speaker 1: I want people to know that it is very important
Speaker 1: to understand that the media is a part of this
Speaker 1: apparatus of disappearance which I'll be talking about, and so
Speaker 1: we have to actually be very careful that we don't
Speaker 1: reproduce violence, the violence that has already been done, and
Speaker 1: we have to act as a form of resistance to
Speaker 1: that violence. And so I learned about thinking and talking
Speaker 1: about disappearance in that context, and it was really from
Speaker 1: the stories of Aboriginal women who had been deemed missing
Speaker 1: in Queensland. So those are stories like stories we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the podcast Menique Club, but also cases in
Speaker 1: Queensland like Misspernite and Constance may Watcho, who we've also
Speaker 1: talked about and who are subject to continuing inquests. And
Speaker 1: I realized you're sitting in those processes and talking to
Speaker 1: the families and talking to advocates, particularly advocate shareon of Sin,
Speaker 1: that the word missing was actually silencing in itself, So
Speaker 1: it had concealed a lot of levels of violence, and
Speaker 1: so I orientated to thinking and talking about it through
Speaker 1: the perspective of disappearance. So a framework of disappearance, which
Speaker 1: are actively disappearing Aboriginal women, and the reason I talk
Speaker 1: about it was because one missing was being used by
Speaker 1: the police to claim, you know, these women have just
Speaker 1: gone missing on their own accord, they've gone walk about,
Speaker 1: they could turn up at any point, and that the
Speaker 1: police were doing everything they could define them, which was
Speaker 1: not true. So it redirected the responsibility back to themselves
Speaker 1: and it made absence the existence of potential perpetrators, which
Speaker 1: we're playing a key part in not ailing the failure
Speaker 1: to bring the women home, but to find justice for
Speaker 1: the women and their families. But a framework of disappearance
Speaker 1: is really predicated a lot on what I also learned
Speaker 1: from reading about the testimonies, particularly of the mothers in Argentina,
Speaker 1: who were fighting for the rights of their loved ones
Speaker 1: who'd been disappeared into detention centers or killed under the
Speaker 1: Argentinian dictatorship. And they were deliberately being killed and disappeared,
Speaker 1: And it was a very specific form of violence because
Speaker 1: there was in a state of between life and death,
Speaker 1: and that ambiguity was what was making it so incredibly traumatic,
Speaker 1: and I realized that was what was happening here. So
Speaker 1: a framework of disappearance goes beyond just the violence of
Speaker 1: individual perpetrators. It includes the police who failure to search
Speaker 1: and to prosecute. It includes the media for failing to
Speaker 1: cover these stories properly and for further dehumanizing the women.
Speaker 1: And it covers the State of Australia through acquiescence, because
Speaker 1: they're consenting, through their failure to actually stop these deaths
Speaker 1: and to put pressure, are actually sanctioning these deaths and disappearances.
Speaker 1: And we know in the setl of colonial project Australia
Speaker 1: as a Setlar colony, it's predicated on the disappearance of
Speaker 1: our peoples. And the most powerful way you can hurt
Speaker 1: us as people is by targeting our women, because our
Speaker 1: women are the links to the next generation. And so
Speaker 1: that's why I use disappearance deliberately, and that's why we'll
Speaker 1: be using the word disappearance rather than the words missing.
Speaker 1: And I also want to say that disappearance also incorporates
Speaker 1: the deaths and the containment of our women in watchhouses
Speaker 1: and pre ms all across the country, because there are
Speaker 1: clear links between the criminalization and over surveillance of ambush
Speaker 1: or women with our deaths inside and even our deaths outside.
Speaker 1: So Martin, just thinking about that and what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about in the cases we've been working on. How
Speaker 1: does that aspect of disappearance play out?
Speaker 2: From your view, I think the best way to explain
Speaker 2: it to the general public is to look at a
Speaker 2: case that everyone is familiar with because it's been covered
Speaker 2: so broadly across a number of generations, and that's the
Speaker 2: case of the Bearerville murders, the murders of three Aboriginal children,
Speaker 2: and the first of those children to be murdered was
Speaker 2: Colleen Walker. And immediately the police started talking about the
Speaker 2: fact that she'd supposedly gone walk about, that she was missing,
Speaker 2: that she'd gone to another town, and this meant there
Speaker 2: was no investigation early on, where really, as soon as
Speaker 2: anyone goes missing, but especially a young person and especially
Speaker 2: a woman, you need to be making those investigations a
Speaker 2: priority and immediate. You have no time to lose. And
Speaker 2: yet what they did was to blame Colleen for going missing,
Speaker 2: when in fact, as you've explained, and as anyone who
Speaker 2: would know who's read anything about what happened to the
Speaker 2: Barraville children, is she had been murdered, and so she
Speaker 2: was never missing. It was never a missing person's case.
Speaker 2: She'd been forcibly disappeared from her community and killed. And
Speaker 2: as people know from anything they've read and heard about
Speaker 2: that matter too, is that two more Aboriginal children would
Speaker 2: be murdered by the same individual because the police had
Speaker 2: failed to act, because they'd shifted the focus onto this
Speaker 2: idea of missing and this old trope of people Aboriginal
Speaker 2: people going walk about as if Colleen was just lost
Speaker 2: into the ether, when in fact it wasn't ambiguous at all.
Speaker 2: She had been forcibly disappeared and removed from her community, murdered,
Speaker 2: and taken from her family forever. So I think this
Speaker 2: is why this term that Amy uses is so important.
Speaker 2: It shifts things back to how they really are, and
Speaker 2: the very deliberate use of missing by police so that
Speaker 2: it shifts the focus from the missing woman and their family,
Speaker 2: the disappeared women and their family, away from the real killer.
Speaker 2: And we know all these killers are getting away with
Speaker 2: it scot free. But it's not just the police who
Speaker 2: are doing this, who are shifting the focus, who are
Speaker 2: using blame. It's also the media, who we've seen time
Speaker 2: and again blame Aboriginal communities for these issues that do
Speaker 2: not begin inside Aboriginal communities and the language that the
Speaker 2: media uses. I mean, you've done a lot of work
Speaker 2: on the way the media operates in this sphere and
Speaker 2: published a long paper on this issue. Can you explain
Speaker 2: the media side of the reporting on these issues, how
Speaker 2: the media is failing and also what damage it does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think one of the reasons that you
Speaker 1: don't know that this is a crisis is because the
Speaker 1: media have silenced this issue. And there are many ways
Speaker 1: that they do that. So one of the things is
Speaker 1: silence is that it's not so much about what has
Speaker 1: been unseid, So it's not about the voices that aren't there,
Speaker 1: but about the sort of the language and the discourse
Speaker 1: that's actually displacing the voices. So what we've seen is
Speaker 1: that the media report on these issues in very limited ways.
Speaker 1: The main way they report on it is to say
Speaker 1: it's an issue of the Aboriginal community, it's an issue
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal culture. It's black on black violence. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a punitive, savage Aboriginal community who are killing their
Speaker 1: own women, which is totally divorced from historical context. And
Speaker 1: that framework has been used very insidiously to pass really
Speaker 1: draconian laws against Aboriginal people, which only leads to further violence,
Speaker 1: and we know that from for example, the anti intervention.
Speaker 1: So the media have no framework or language in which
Speaker 1: to speak about the actual violence of what's happening. They'd
Speaker 1: grow critique not only their own outlets, but they also
Speaker 1: don't critique, for example, the coronial process or the police,
Speaker 1: and that leads us into the other issue is that
Speaker 1: they have very reliant not on black witnesses, but on
Speaker 1: white witnesses, and often their stories are predicated first on
Speaker 1: the authority of the police. So, as I said before,
Speaker 1: the police are complicit in the disappearances of Aboriginal women.
Speaker 1: So they're taking that language from the police and not
Speaker 1: adequately questioning it. But they also dehumanize Aboriginal women to
Speaker 1: the way that they report on our bodies as if
Speaker 1: we're just wounds or we're just body parts, rather than
Speaker 1: who we are in our living and that has a
Speaker 1: severe impact, you know, and it's been used from the
Speaker 1: day of the Frontier to now. So Aboriginal women have
Speaker 1: been painted in very certain ways through colonial stereotype, and
Speaker 1: that stereotype is still being used. So the media are
Speaker 1: reporting on a very limited way of representation, which they've
Speaker 1: always reported on so they're not actually reporting on the truth.
Speaker 1: They're reporting on the way the stories have been told
Speaker 1: about us for two hundred years. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I say, when we talk about violence, we have to
Speaker 1: talk about the historical context. And they're just not willing
Speaker 1: to see that. And they're willing they're so uncritical. They
Speaker 1: do not accept the word first of Aboriginal Aboriginal women.
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to quote an amazing Aboriginal woman
Speaker 1: that we know, Tarita Fisher, who is the friend of Constance.
Speaker 1: May watch show and I remember her talking about the fact,
Speaker 1: you know, the police when Constance went missing, they never
Speaker 1: considered her in high risk disappearance. But Aboriginal people knew
Speaker 1: she was a high risk disappearance. And that shows you
Speaker 1: the differences in Aboriginal ways of knowing and living and
Speaker 1: White ways, you know what I mean. So the media
Speaker 1: are responsible for what Ignatio Corona, a Mexican writer, says,
Speaker 1: in the context of Mexico, a second disappearance. So even
Speaker 1: if they report on it in any way, those stories
Speaker 1: fall off the back pages. And what you'll find is,
Speaker 1: in all cases I've looked at, I can't think of one,
Speaker 1: there has never been adequate media attention given to an
Speaker 1: Aboriginal woman who has disappeared or died by violence, and
Speaker 1: I can't think of one where this has happened. And
Speaker 1: so the media. That's why I include the media in
Speaker 1: this apparatus of disappearance, because they have so much power,
Speaker 1: and what we're doing as Aboriginal media and as independent
Speaker 1: media is actually allowing us to understand that black communities
Speaker 1: have our own power and we honor that power through
Speaker 1: centering their testimonies and their perspectives and their resistances. So, Martin,
Speaker 1: just taking what I just said, how have you seen
Speaker 1: the issues with the media around reporting this these cases
Speaker 1: play out in reality and in other cases that you've seen.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really important thing that we analyze
Speaker 2: and important to understand how this impacts on families and
Speaker 2: the murdered or disappeared individual getting justice. So just in
Speaker 2: the cases that we've looked at and the families we've
Speaker 2: spoken to, you can go back as far as the
Speaker 2: seventies and understand the deep impact that the media has
Speaker 2: had on ensuring no justice was ever served. And first
Speaker 2: that begins with Queenie Hart, who we've spoken about many times,
Speaker 2: and as Amy talked about the way that the media
Speaker 2: describes Aboriginal women, and at the time there was either
Speaker 2: a leak or the media came up with it themselves,
Speaker 2: and it was a leak, probably from the police, that
Speaker 2: Queenie was a sex worker, when that in fact was
Speaker 2: not the case. And we know all too well from
Speaker 2: studies in the United States and Canada and just the
Speaker 2: sheer number of Aboriginal women and Indigenous women who have
Speaker 2: been murdered because they were sex workers, that once you
Speaker 2: plant this seed, that second layer of discrimination runs so
Speaker 2: deep and ensures that almost no chance of justice ever exists.
Speaker 2: And it was a complete lie. There was no truth
Speaker 2: to it ever then or now. And of course, as
Speaker 2: we all know, Queenie Heart's murderer was never punished. Everyone
Speaker 2: knew who it was, and the police did nothing, and
Speaker 2: the media had a real role in that. Then if
Speaker 2: we fast forward through to the nineties and we look
Speaker 2: at the way the media covered the murder of Linda
Speaker 2: and their deliberate use of salacious details and a lot
Speaker 2: of things that again simply did not happen. The media
Speaker 2: seem all too happy to make things up when it
Speaker 2: involves Aboriginal women or simply believe anything the police say
Speaker 2: without a shred of evidence. And I think one of
Speaker 2: the most despicable examples of this is that the community,
Speaker 2: Linda's family and everyone involved was led to believe that
Speaker 2: Linda was raped when that did not happen. I mean,
Speaker 2: this isn't a p hauling thing for the media to
Speaker 2: say and for the family to have to hear, and
Speaker 2: yet it never happened. And yet they planted that seed,
Speaker 2: and it exists for everyone who loved Linda until this day,
Speaker 2: and the media faces no consequences for that behavior. And
Speaker 2: then if you come to the last few years in
Speaker 2: Queensland and the three inquests we've spoken about and that
Speaker 2: Amy's been involved in, and I've helped Monique Club's family
Speaker 2: a little bit of Miss Bernard Constance may watchhow and
Speaker 2: Monique Club. The media has taken photos supplied by the
Speaker 2: police which show the women in the blue prison uniforms
Speaker 2: and not from the families. And in no other case
Speaker 2: of a missing or murdered woman in Queensland have the
Speaker 2: police done that. Only when it involves Aboriginal women. So again,
Speaker 2: the media is sending this signal that it's the women's fault,
Speaker 2: not the killer. They are taking everything away from the woman,
Speaker 2: They're taking everything away from her family. And we know,
Speaker 2: because we know the background of these women, and we
Speaker 2: know the background of over policing, that these were not
Speaker 2: serious criminals or anything of the sort. These were women
Speaker 2: who had been overpoliced and charged for things that no
Speaker 2: other woman would be charged for, and had been surveiled
Speaker 2: and treated appallingly both in police custody and prison custody,
Speaker 2: and yet when they were the victim, that was used
Speaker 2: against them. And so the media has to take a
Speaker 2: lot of responsibility for the fact that they're not just
Speaker 2: doing bad reporting, they are actively participating in the murder
Speaker 2: and disappearance of Aboriginal women and children. And I think
Speaker 2: it also goes to what Amy was talking about and
Speaker 2: their inability or unwillingness or deliberate excising of the voice
Speaker 2: of Aboriginal women and their families and simply not believing them.
Speaker 2: When a non Indigenous person goes missing or is killed,
Speaker 2: the family is rightly treated with a great deal of respect,
Speaker 2: kid clubs are used, and yet that never happens for
Speaker 2: Aboriginal families. So it's a really important part of this
Speaker 2: story that we are trying to map out is the
Speaker 2: media's direct involvement and their complicity in all of this
Speaker 2: with the police and with corrective services.
Speaker 1: So with all that said, curtain is going to be
Speaker 1: taken a somewhat different direction. As we said, we're not
Speaker 1: just centered on one case. Although we will continue to
Speaker 1: follow the case of Kevin Henry and we're continuing to
Speaker 1: advocate and push for his exoneration. That will never end
Speaker 1: and we'll never we always said that we wouldn't stop
Speaker 1: the podcast until Kevin is free. What will be doing
Speaker 1: is focusing on a number of different cases specifically related
Speaker 1: to Aboriginal women. I'll be intending a number of inquests,
Speaker 1: and we'll be telling a lot of those stories more
Speaker 1: in depth and fleshing out those issues, but also the
Speaker 1: patterns of what we're seeing in how Aboriginal women are
Speaker 1: being targeted and killed all across the country.
Speaker 2: So you can expect to hear from not only Amy
Speaker 2: and I on this very issue, but the victims, families,
Speaker 2: experts in the area, and those in the community who
Speaker 2: are advocating for these families and doing their best to
Speaker 2: bring this issue into the spotlight so that this issue
Speaker 2: of femicide against Aboriginal women and children is hopefully stopped forever.
Speaker 2: Season two of kurtin the Podcast will now come to
Speaker 2: you fortnightly, and we hope you join us in two
Speaker 2: weeks time for episode two. This episode was brought to
Speaker 2: you by black Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more,
Speaker 2: you can visit us at www dot Curtain podcast dot com,
Speaker 2: follow us on Twitter at curten podcast, and help to
Speaker 2: support our work at Patreon dot com. Backslash Curtain Podcast