Background

Wirringa Baiya is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘black women speak. We were founded in response to the denial of Aboriginal women's access to the legal system. Aboriginal women as victims of violent crime, particularly domestic violence, have not accessed other community legal centres.

The most crucial legal issue faced by Aboriginal women on a day to day basis is as victims of violent crime. At Wirringa Baiya we have decided to make this the focus of our work. The day-to-day experience of Aboriginal women in this area is dramatically at odds with the experience of Australian women in general (see statistics). A typical response of the police and court system has been to marginalise the problem by saying that domestic violence is part of the Aboriginal culture. There is, however, no evidence that this is so.

In 1988 a groundswell of Aboriginal women came together at a meeting in Parramatta with the stated aim of addressing the issue of violence perpetrated against women in their community. Aboriginal women and children came from all over the state on buses, planes and trains, all with the common aim of finding solutions for a problem that threatened more Aboriginal people than deaths in custody - albeit that it was only the female half.

This meeting was quickly followed by another. Many of those present felt that it was a cultural and community problem and should be dealt with within the community. External means had failed to offer Aboriginal women any redress in the past and they were totally unwilling to seek solutions in a legal system that had historically deprived them of their children and their families.

Whenever domestic violence is discussed within the Aboriginal context, the problem of divisiveness in the community arises. Sectors of the Aboriginal community feel that the issue must be confronted from within the community and that it is only from within that appropriate solutions can be found. The weeping sore of deaths in custody is held up to women as reason why they must not look to white justice as it results in the death of their men. This approach however begs the question 'won't inaction lead to far more deaths of Aboriginal women?'. And so the argument between the sexes and that between the elders and younger members of the community rages on. The threat of ostracism is real and inhibiting to Aboriginal women and the action they can take in response to violence.

In the meantime, in the absence of a communal solution, women that are not prepared to accept the full impact of the violence they face, and those women behind the centre, felt there had to be access to the only redress available - the criminal law.

FOUNDING OF THE CENTRE

In June 1994 the Law Foundation funded a Project Officer to conduct a needs analysis as well as to provide training for Aboriginal women’s groups on violence issues. The lobbying for funding continued.

In 1995 funding was granted by the NSW Attorney General to establish Wirringa Baiya as the first independent community legal centre managed by Aboriginal women.