Ideology

Maintaining control has been an essential step towards enabling Aboriginal women access to justice. One of the problems with other services offered to women in general has been that they were not culturally appropriate to the needs of Aboriginal women. Historically Aboriginal women don’t use institutional help and therefore any means of obtaining the trust and sense of ownership of the clientbase must be used. Wirringa Baiya intends to establish a 'Sisters of Wirringa Baiya' which will enable non-Aboriginal women to contribute to the survival and growth of the centre.

One of the main aims in setting up the centre was that it was solely managed by Aboriginal women for Aboriginal women. The damage done to generations of Aboriginal women through denial of access to justice was largely perpetrated by a total discordance between non Aboriginal and Aboriginal culture. This can only be addressed by Aboriginal women being involved on our own legal service - we can then begin to look at ways of solving the problems of violence within their own culture.

Self management is also necessary to obtain the trust of Aboriginal women clients who have historically stayed away in droves from other available services, even when they were gender appropriate, due to a lack of trust and feeling of betrayal of their own culture. One of the other prime aims of the centre is to get out into rural NSW and provide education to isolated communities of Aboriginal women about legal issues and services available to them. It is hoped that this will further encourage Aboriginal women to make use of the services available to them for themselves and also build a knowledge and trust of the centre.

Another of the ironies is that many of the problems presented to the centre involve disputes over residency of children as Family Law is a major area in which women tend to require legal solutions. These children are often themselves the victims of abuse and yet the strict ceilings imposed on legal aid mean that women literally come to the end of the line in terms of avenues of redress.

Although Wirringa Baiya employs a full time solicitor who provides legal advice and referrals we are yet to have the resources to properly represent Aboriginal women and children in court. It is hoped that with further funding this problem can be tackled by the Wirringa Baiya.