Kumanjayi Little Baby and the Politics of Suffering

The widening gap between activist ideology and life in remote Aboriginal Australia

Last ANZAC Day while Australians debated all day whether or not Welcomes to Country have a place at Dawn Services, a 5-year old girl was abducted from a notoriously unsafe Indigenous camp in Alice Springs and murdered.

Australians are shocked and appalled by the murder of Kumanjayi Little Baby, but those who know what the conditions are like in many remote Aboriginal communities are appalled, but far from shocked. The murderer, recently released from prison, had previous convictions of physical assault. No doubt over time our many questions will be answered, the most important being: Why was he walking the streets?

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Presumably those activists who complain of high-rates of Indigenous incarceration will say that this child murderer is an exception – he should have been incarcerated. And yet for anyone who knows the truly appalling rates of domestic and child abuse in remote indigenous communities, there are many, many such exceptions. Activists who do not live in these communities may be scandalised by the high rates of Indigenous incarceration, but the women and children who do live in them might enjoy one night’s sound sleep knowing their attacker cannot get to them, at least for the time being.