Australia Achieves 'Profoundly Distressing Milestone' in Indigenous Deaths
The Guardian highlights New South Wales's 'profoundly distressing milestone': a record 12 Indigenous deaths in corrective services and four in police operations since January 2025. This record, reached in just nine months, is attributed to rising incarceration rates. While the coroner decries the situation, the framing misses the forest for the trees, glossing over the colonial violence that
underpins these 'statistics.' This isn't a mere 'milestone,' it's a continuation of a dispossession that began over 200 years ago. The problem isn't just 'tough on crime' measures; it's the inherited legacy of a carceral system designed to control and suppress Indigenous populations. One might wonder if the 'distress' truly begins with the deaths, or with the centuries of policies that make such
records inevitable.