Yarning about Lawyering with and for Rural and Regional Aboriginal Communities

Abstract

The words of Jeanette Blainey, good friend and 'sister' of Elaine Walker - the mother of a 16 year old Aboriginal child who disappeared from Bowraville Aboriginal community in September 1990 - are a chilling reminder of the huge cultural divide between Aboriginal communities and the mainstream AngloAustralian legal system: <br/> my sister her and I went in and spoke to the prosecutor about the problem that we saw happening with the way the [Aboriginal] witnesses were being heard, the way they were being questioned, the way the witnesses were experiencing it... [He] had such a sense in which he knew all this and did not need anybody to tell him. I do not like thinking about it as racism, but it is in a way. It is not seeing people for who they are, the stories they are telling, the feelings they are sharing.¹ <br/> The NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the Famili/ responses to the murders at Bowraville (2014)² documents the experiences of the families of three Aboriginal children who disappeared in suspicious circumstances between September 1990 and February 1991, and highlights the cultural insensitivity of police and the legal system in the investigation and two subsequent murder trials.³ These failings prompted the NSW Parliament to recommend the inclusion of 'Aboriginal cultural awareness' training as a compulsory element of legal education and accreditation, and to investigate the merit of requiring lawyers and members of the judiciary to undertake similar professional development training.⁴