A profound loss and a grieving community: We must take action now to end violence against women

We began the year with a profound loss. I say ‘we’ because our whole community is grieving.

On the 8th of January, I received a phone call early in the morning from my good friend Maree, who is the manager of the Tangentyere Family Violence Prevention Program here in Mparntwe/Alice Springs. She was crying and she had some hard news to tell me, she said that R.Rubuntja(1) had been killed the night before in a hit and run outside of Alice Springs hospital. I was devastated and confused – what and how had this happened?

R.Rubuntja – affectionately known as RaRa – was a founding member of the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group, a group of senior Aboriginal women from Alice Springs Town Camps campaigning against family violence and who endeavoured to bring visibility to Aboriginal women’s experiences. RaRa was also the president of Anthepe Town Camp and was on the executive board of Tangentyere Council. I had known and been working with RaRa since 2016, as she and the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group are my long term research partners, colleagues, sisters, nanas, aunties and friends. RaRa was a huge part of my PhD research and her words and artwork feature heavily in my thesis. She was a friend of mine.

After receiving the news, I went into the Tangentyere offices to be with the staff and with the Tangentyere women. I remember the shock, grief and confusion of that morning. I remember someone saying “at least it was not family violence”. A grim reminder of the work we do every day to prevent violence against women here in the Northern Territory, which has the highest rates of domestic, family, and sexual violence in Australia, and among certain cohorts, the highest rates in the entire world.

As the day went on, information began to travel through our community. That day we came to know that RaRa’s partner had been driving the car that had struck her as she sat on the pavement outside of the hospital. We came to know that the act was a deliberate act of domestic violence. And we came to know that he had been charged with her murder.

It’s difficult to explain how that growing realisation of what had happened to RaRa affected me. I was already shocked and so very sad, but what I came to feel was so much anger. This anger wasn’t necessarily solely directed at RaRa’s partner who had stolen her from us, but it was directed at the whole system which allowed this violence to continue unchecked and unabated. And what was so ruthlessly heartbreaking was the silence that seemed to greet RaRa’s death – where was the national outrage? Where were the men standing up and condemning men’s violence against women? Where was the collective commitment to action to stop all forms of violence against women? Why did ‘mainstream’ Australia seem not to care? That night I spent with my friends and I cried so very hard and I raged against what was such an injustice. I hated that RaRa’s life and death could go by unnoticed – as though her life did not matter.

RaRa was my friend and I have many great memories with her...cooking roo tail out at Ross River, laughing about the dingoes that had chased me on my run, the many many workshops and meetings and discussions and car rides. And I am so very very angry that now all we have are memories. I am so heartbroken that her children have had their mother stolen from them.

In the days and weeks following RaRa’s murder, the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group and our community rallied. We came together to support RaRa’s children. We took food and clothing. We sat by them in court. We sat with each other in sorry business, and grieved. And the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group made a call to action that RaRa’s death would be a catalyst for change: “We grieve now and then we mobilise, we will continue, it just may take a minute. We will be inspired by our sister’s legacy, we will not let her be forgotten and then we will ask you to stand with us against family and domestic violence”.