Latest news with #Ngarluma
ABC News
4 days ago
- Science
- ABC News
Indigenous rangers join WA's Burrup Peninsula underwater heritage survey
Caleb Pitt-Cook is drifting just above the ocean floor, running his fingers through the soft sand. The 24-year-old Ngarluma man is searching for the stone tools his ancestors used thousands of years ago. "If you told me I'd be doing this work two years ago, I would have laughed in your face," he says. "It's one of the coolest parts of our job. I'd say it's my favourite part right now." Mr Pitt-Cook is contributing to research that has already made history. "There's only ever been two submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites mapped in Australia," Flinders University maritime archaeologist John McCarthy says. "Those were found by our team here." When humans first populated the Australian continent about 65,000 years ago, the sea level was much lower. "There's a huge area of archaeological landscape that's been lost to sea level change," Dr McCarthy says. Since 2019, Dr McCarthy's team has been trying to find artefacts from that time, submerged off the coast of the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia. The region's traditional custodians call the peninsula Murujuga. "The initial discoveries made in Murujuga were stone tools. They're very common — the sort of knives and forks of their day," Dr McCarthy says. "They survive very well through sea-level change because they're made of igneous rock, which is very hard and durable." Maritime archaeology of this kind is still in its infancy in Australia. Dr McCarthy says it is almost certain there are significant sites all across the continent's perimeter, and mapping where they are is the first step to protecting them. This year's round of underwater surveys is the first time in Australia that Indigenous rangers have accompanied maritime archaeologists. It is the culmination of more than a year of training for a handful of Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation rangers. "First, you start off with pool dives and it's a big jump up to actually get out on the water," Ngarluma ranger Malik Churnside says. "Once you're out there in the water and there's actually animals … sharks swimming around, [it] can be quite a scary sight, at first." One of the submerged sites Mr Churnside surveyed was an area that thousands of years ago would have been a freshwater spring. The spring is referenced in a Ngarluma cultural song his elders still sing today. "It's just like evidence and a connection to something they've talked about and sung about for such a long time," he said. Back at camp, Yindjibarndi man and Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation director Vincent Adams pulls on a virtual reality headset. It transports him from the hot Pilbara afternoon to the silty depths of Murujuga, where he can look out at the seabed alongside the divers. The goggles connect to a live feed from a remote operated vehicle (ROV), allowing elders and knowledge holders to identify artefacts in real time. Mr Adams says the technology is a big hit among the community elders. "It's like 20 years ago when the mobile phone came out and they were all frightened of it," he laughs. Mr Adams says several of the artefacts he has helped classify trace back to ancient hunting, crafts, and ceremonies; practices that still exist in some form today. "When they bring this up from under water, we can see that this is history from here, culture from here," he said. It is also an opportunity to inform researchers of the local lore and rules behind the tools. "If it's men's stuff [that] comes up, women can't see this, kids can't see it. Only men that have been through law," Mr Adams says. "We've been practising for years on land. This culture now is under water." The ROV will allow the team to rapidly survey larger and harder-to-reach areas. Mapping these sites is a new frontier for cultural heritage protections and could prove pertinent for waters crisscrossed by bulk carriers and offshore pipelines. Murujuga intersects with the Carnarvon basin, which is home to Australia's largest gas reserves. Geoff Bailey, a world authority on submerged landscapes, says robust information is essential to ensure industry can navigate the uncharted history off the Burrup Peninsula. "If somebody puts a hole in the seabed … they're quite likely to expose something that is of relevance and interest to the environmental history of the landscape and the cultural history of that landscape," Professor Bailey says. "The key to this is good communication and understanding." Earlier this month, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape was granted World Heritage status by the United Nations in recognition of its outstanding universal value. In UNESCO's unanimous ruling, member countries lauded the underwater archaeological work as a critical part of the nomination and called for further study. Mr Vincent Adams says the research is laying important groundwork as more gas projects look to come online. "This has popped up a lot of times in conversations with elders, saying what about the pipeline?" he says. "There's no law, there's no rule for any of this. Beyond the enormity of the task at hand, Mr Pitt-Cook's time below the waves is one of reflection. "Our culture is an oral-based tradition so it's all passed down through generations of speaking, songs and teaching," he says. "A lot of people are really sceptical because we don't have anything written down on paper. "But to actually go out and explore these places where the stories originate from is really special. "It's a whole different world under the water." Watch ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm AEST on Sunday or stream anytime on ABC iview.
The Advertiser
5 days ago
- The Advertiser
The 50,000-year-old rock art and its neighbour, the gas-guzzling energy giant
The road to the main viewing area for Murujuga's 50,000-year-old art is past Woodside's giant gas mining and export hub. As you listen to the ancient stories of lore and culture carved into rocks before you, the tangle of cranes, tanks, buildings and towers typical of huge industrial facilities sit at your back. The Murujuga petroglyphs and their landscape have just been World Heritage listed, less than two months after the federal government handed Woodside a provisional licence to extend its north west gas operations by 40 years to 2070. The carvings - at least one million of them - are spread over a series rock outcrops on the Burrup peninsula and surrounding islands just outside Karratha in north-west Western Australia. "This is like a massive database," our guide, Ngarluma woman Sarah Hicks, says. History and knowledge are recorded in each image. A dissected kangaroo is an instructional image showing how to carve up the animal and use its parts for food, blankets, pants and combs. An emu, or jankurna, engraving reflects the emu-shaped spaces and dust lanes of the Milky Way in the night sky, a guide to the seasons and when to hunt. A Tasmanian tiger records the extinct marsupial's presence thousands of years ago on the Australian mainland. A prehistoric fat-tailed kangaroo, mangguru, is depicted standing on four legs in its massive megafauna state, long before it evolved to hopping. As we walk and talk, small rock wallabies navigate the hardy red stones on the outcrop peaks. Ms Hicks says the presence of living animals on our visit is a good sign. There are carvings everywhere, some more faded - and older - than others. There are whales and stingrays, mice and fish tails, dingoes, quolls, goannas, spears - and people. Though we are asked not to take photographs of depictions of people. The outback collection - the world's largest, densest and most diverse collection of rock art engravings - is still revealing its secrets. A women's business carving of a hand was newly discovered and catalogued only weeks ago, Ms Hicks said. A Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation senior ranger, she shares the stories not only of the art but of the uses of plants around the base of the rocks. The bloodwood sap boiled with water to treat illness, the sticky spinifex grass (baru) burnt to make strong glue for spears and axes, the flowers that reveal when to fish depending on their bloom, and the bush tomatoes that taste like a mixture of squash and capsicum. She's assisted by young Ngarluma man Riley Sebastian, a ranger still learning. He confesses he's never tried a bush tomato or sap medicine, but Ms Hicks says local elders still consume both. As the talk ends, our small group of well-to-do east coasters and European tourists pass a team of air quality monitors checking emissions levels from the nearby gas and fertiliser plants and iron ore and salt export facilities. It is "highly likely" these operations are contributing to higher acid levels in the air which is deteriorating the carvings, a recent report found. We turn back to the dystopian landscape dominated by the machinery of natural resource extraction. The contrast could not be more stark. Woodside says it's committed to "protecting and managing this precious and culturally significant place". "Woodside has taken and continues to take proactive steps - including through emissions reduction, data sharing and ongoing support for the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program (MRAMP) - to ensure we manage our impacts responsibly," a spokesman said. He said recent research shows the landscape and its ancient art can live alongside the gas operations with responsible management. For at least 47,000 years the Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, Yindjibarndi, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples have slowly, carefully managed their relationship with the Pilbara land, sea and their wildlife. That record of management exists in the Murujuga petroglyphs. If the elders were still carving records into the rocks today, I wonder how they would tell the story of the oil and gas operations on their doorstep. The road to the main viewing area for Murujuga's 50,000-year-old art is past Woodside's giant gas mining and export hub. As you listen to the ancient stories of lore and culture carved into rocks before you, the tangle of cranes, tanks, buildings and towers typical of huge industrial facilities sit at your back. The Murujuga petroglyphs and their landscape have just been World Heritage listed, less than two months after the federal government handed Woodside a provisional licence to extend its north west gas operations by 40 years to 2070. The carvings - at least one million of them - are spread over a series rock outcrops on the Burrup peninsula and surrounding islands just outside Karratha in north-west Western Australia. "This is like a massive database," our guide, Ngarluma woman Sarah Hicks, says. History and knowledge are recorded in each image. A dissected kangaroo is an instructional image showing how to carve up the animal and use its parts for food, blankets, pants and combs. An emu, or jankurna, engraving reflects the emu-shaped spaces and dust lanes of the Milky Way in the night sky, a guide to the seasons and when to hunt. A Tasmanian tiger records the extinct marsupial's presence thousands of years ago on the Australian mainland. A prehistoric fat-tailed kangaroo, mangguru, is depicted standing on four legs in its massive megafauna state, long before it evolved to hopping. As we walk and talk, small rock wallabies navigate the hardy red stones on the outcrop peaks. Ms Hicks says the presence of living animals on our visit is a good sign. There are carvings everywhere, some more faded - and older - than others. There are whales and stingrays, mice and fish tails, dingoes, quolls, goannas, spears - and people. Though we are asked not to take photographs of depictions of people. The outback collection - the world's largest, densest and most diverse collection of rock art engravings - is still revealing its secrets. A women's business carving of a hand was newly discovered and catalogued only weeks ago, Ms Hicks said. A Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation senior ranger, she shares the stories not only of the art but of the uses of plants around the base of the rocks. The bloodwood sap boiled with water to treat illness, the sticky spinifex grass (baru) burnt to make strong glue for spears and axes, the flowers that reveal when to fish depending on their bloom, and the bush tomatoes that taste like a mixture of squash and capsicum. She's assisted by young Ngarluma man Riley Sebastian, a ranger still learning. He confesses he's never tried a bush tomato or sap medicine, but Ms Hicks says local elders still consume both. As the talk ends, our small group of well-to-do east coasters and European tourists pass a team of air quality monitors checking emissions levels from the nearby gas and fertiliser plants and iron ore and salt export facilities. It is "highly likely" these operations are contributing to higher acid levels in the air which is deteriorating the carvings, a recent report found. We turn back to the dystopian landscape dominated by the machinery of natural resource extraction. The contrast could not be more stark. Woodside says it's committed to "protecting and managing this precious and culturally significant place". "Woodside has taken and continues to take proactive steps - including through emissions reduction, data sharing and ongoing support for the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program (MRAMP) - to ensure we manage our impacts responsibly," a spokesman said. He said recent research shows the landscape and its ancient art can live alongside the gas operations with responsible management. For at least 47,000 years the Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, Yindjibarndi, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples have slowly, carefully managed their relationship with the Pilbara land, sea and their wildlife. That record of management exists in the Murujuga petroglyphs. If the elders were still carving records into the rocks today, I wonder how they would tell the story of the oil and gas operations on their doorstep. The road to the main viewing area for Murujuga's 50,000-year-old art is past Woodside's giant gas mining and export hub. As you listen to the ancient stories of lore and culture carved into rocks before you, the tangle of cranes, tanks, buildings and towers typical of huge industrial facilities sit at your back. The Murujuga petroglyphs and their landscape have just been World Heritage listed, less than two months after the federal government handed Woodside a provisional licence to extend its north west gas operations by 40 years to 2070. The carvings - at least one million of them - are spread over a series rock outcrops on the Burrup peninsula and surrounding islands just outside Karratha in north-west Western Australia. "This is like a massive database," our guide, Ngarluma woman Sarah Hicks, says. History and knowledge are recorded in each image. A dissected kangaroo is an instructional image showing how to carve up the animal and use its parts for food, blankets, pants and combs. An emu, or jankurna, engraving reflects the emu-shaped spaces and dust lanes of the Milky Way in the night sky, a guide to the seasons and when to hunt. A Tasmanian tiger records the extinct marsupial's presence thousands of years ago on the Australian mainland. A prehistoric fat-tailed kangaroo, mangguru, is depicted standing on four legs in its massive megafauna state, long before it evolved to hopping. As we walk and talk, small rock wallabies navigate the hardy red stones on the outcrop peaks. Ms Hicks says the presence of living animals on our visit is a good sign. There are carvings everywhere, some more faded - and older - than others. There are whales and stingrays, mice and fish tails, dingoes, quolls, goannas, spears - and people. Though we are asked not to take photographs of depictions of people. The outback collection - the world's largest, densest and most diverse collection of rock art engravings - is still revealing its secrets. A women's business carving of a hand was newly discovered and catalogued only weeks ago, Ms Hicks said. A Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation senior ranger, she shares the stories not only of the art but of the uses of plants around the base of the rocks. The bloodwood sap boiled with water to treat illness, the sticky spinifex grass (baru) burnt to make strong glue for spears and axes, the flowers that reveal when to fish depending on their bloom, and the bush tomatoes that taste like a mixture of squash and capsicum. She's assisted by young Ngarluma man Riley Sebastian, a ranger still learning. He confesses he's never tried a bush tomato or sap medicine, but Ms Hicks says local elders still consume both. As the talk ends, our small group of well-to-do east coasters and European tourists pass a team of air quality monitors checking emissions levels from the nearby gas and fertiliser plants and iron ore and salt export facilities. It is "highly likely" these operations are contributing to higher acid levels in the air which is deteriorating the carvings, a recent report found. We turn back to the dystopian landscape dominated by the machinery of natural resource extraction. The contrast could not be more stark. Woodside says it's committed to "protecting and managing this precious and culturally significant place". "Woodside has taken and continues to take proactive steps - including through emissions reduction, data sharing and ongoing support for the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program (MRAMP) - to ensure we manage our impacts responsibly," a spokesman said. He said recent research shows the landscape and its ancient art can live alongside the gas operations with responsible management. For at least 47,000 years the Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, Yindjibarndi, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples have slowly, carefully managed their relationship with the Pilbara land, sea and their wildlife. That record of management exists in the Murujuga petroglyphs. If the elders were still carving records into the rocks today, I wonder how they would tell the story of the oil and gas operations on their doorstep. The road to the main viewing area for Murujuga's 50,000-year-old art is past Woodside's giant gas mining and export hub. As you listen to the ancient stories of lore and culture carved into rocks before you, the tangle of cranes, tanks, buildings and towers typical of huge industrial facilities sit at your back. The Murujuga petroglyphs and their landscape have just been World Heritage listed, less than two months after the federal government handed Woodside a provisional licence to extend its north west gas operations by 40 years to 2070. The carvings - at least one million of them - are spread over a series rock outcrops on the Burrup peninsula and surrounding islands just outside Karratha in north-west Western Australia. "This is like a massive database," our guide, Ngarluma woman Sarah Hicks, says. History and knowledge are recorded in each image. A dissected kangaroo is an instructional image showing how to carve up the animal and use its parts for food, blankets, pants and combs. An emu, or jankurna, engraving reflects the emu-shaped spaces and dust lanes of the Milky Way in the night sky, a guide to the seasons and when to hunt. A Tasmanian tiger records the extinct marsupial's presence thousands of years ago on the Australian mainland. A prehistoric fat-tailed kangaroo, mangguru, is depicted standing on four legs in its massive megafauna state, long before it evolved to hopping. As we walk and talk, small rock wallabies navigate the hardy red stones on the outcrop peaks. Ms Hicks says the presence of living animals on our visit is a good sign. There are carvings everywhere, some more faded - and older - than others. There are whales and stingrays, mice and fish tails, dingoes, quolls, goannas, spears - and people. Though we are asked not to take photographs of depictions of people. The outback collection - the world's largest, densest and most diverse collection of rock art engravings - is still revealing its secrets. A women's business carving of a hand was newly discovered and catalogued only weeks ago, Ms Hicks said. A Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation senior ranger, she shares the stories not only of the art but of the uses of plants around the base of the rocks. The bloodwood sap boiled with water to treat illness, the sticky spinifex grass (baru) burnt to make strong glue for spears and axes, the flowers that reveal when to fish depending on their bloom, and the bush tomatoes that taste like a mixture of squash and capsicum. She's assisted by young Ngarluma man Riley Sebastian, a ranger still learning. He confesses he's never tried a bush tomato or sap medicine, but Ms Hicks says local elders still consume both. As the talk ends, our small group of well-to-do east coasters and European tourists pass a team of air quality monitors checking emissions levels from the nearby gas and fertiliser plants and iron ore and salt export facilities. It is "highly likely" these operations are contributing to higher acid levels in the air which is deteriorating the carvings, a recent report found. We turn back to the dystopian landscape dominated by the machinery of natural resource extraction. The contrast could not be more stark. Woodside says it's committed to "protecting and managing this precious and culturally significant place". "Woodside has taken and continues to take proactive steps - including through emissions reduction, data sharing and ongoing support for the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program (MRAMP) - to ensure we manage our impacts responsibly," a spokesman said. He said recent research shows the landscape and its ancient art can live alongside the gas operations with responsible management. For at least 47,000 years the Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, Yindjibarndi, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples have slowly, carefully managed their relationship with the Pilbara land, sea and their wildlife. That record of management exists in the Murujuga petroglyphs. If the elders were still carving records into the rocks today, I wonder how they would tell the story of the oil and gas operations on their doorstep.
ABC News
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Hidden power of First Nations women unlocked in Big hART's Punkaliyarra project.
A long-term creative and cultural exchange between Women from the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi communities in Roebourne and women from Yuin country on the NSW south coast. Video by Vanessa Milton and Isabel Darling, photo by Rachel Mounsey
ABC News
19-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Murujuga traditional owners 'sidelined' in government's North West Shelf approval
A group of Murujuga traditional custodians is calling on the federal government to immediately release the conditions attached to its 40-year extension of Woodside's North West Shelf gas project. Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt waved through the approval three weeks ago, allowing Australia's largest oil and gas facility to continue operating in Western Australia's Pilbara region until 2070. Ngarluma woman Samantha Walker penned a letter to the government on Tuesday last week, gathering signatures from multiple traditional owners and elders with connections to the landscape. "Our people have not consented to the proposal," she wrote. Mr Watt gave Woodside 10 days to respond to the approval's "strict" conditions, which he indicated focused on the protection of ancient Aboriginal rock art. Last Friday, the gas giant breezed past that deadline and neither Woodside nor Mr Watt could confirm the date negotiations would be finalised when asked by the ABC. Ms Walker said she was "alarmed" that the right of reply was afforded solely to Woodside. "We understand there are statutory requirements, however, the approvals process has sidelined Murujuga Ngurrara-ngarli [Murujuga traditional owners]," she wrote. "They have a process with Woodside and the government, but they don't take into account our cultural processes, which we have as well, which is very saddening." Ms Walker repeated calls for Mr Watt to visit Murujuga — the Aboriginal name for the Burrup Peninsula — where Woodside's main processing plant is located, about 1,500 kilometres north of Perth. The area is home to some of the world's oldest known rock art, the preservation of which became a flashpoint amid the extension decision. The Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) administers cultural matters involving the peninsula on behalf of five language groups: the Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, Yindjibarndi, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples. The corporation was formed in 2006 and granted joint management of Murujuga National Park in exchange for extinguishing native title rights to land earmarked for industrial development. The chair of MAC, Peter Hicks, flew to Canberra this week to meet with Mr Watt. Mr Hicks said he was confident findings of a two-year rock art monitoring program, carried out by MAC and the WA government, showed the North West Shelf project was not currently harming the ancient petroglyphs. The rock art is central to the organisation's bid to have Murujuga listed by the United Nations as a World Heritage site. This goal was thrown into doubt by a UNESCO draft decision calling for the area's industrialisation to be halted, triggering protests from the federal government. While Ms Walker backed the embattled World Heritage push, she said more consultation on the North West Shelf project and its impact was needed. "Broader consultation means speaking with the whole community, all of the families, the connections who have a connection to the place," Ms Walker explained. "The minister needs to speak to us, according to our cultural protocols," she said. She argued that the violation of traditional owners' informed consent was grounds for a human rights complaint, and current economic arrangements between Woodside and traditional owners had become obsolete. "It is severely remiss of the Commonwealth to consider approving a major project while relying on an outdated agreement that is in urgent need of modernisation," Ms Walker said. Mr Watt did not respond to specific questions put to him by the ABC. Samantha Hepburn, a professor at Deakin Law School, said it was not typical for proponents to miss response deadlines, although this case was "unique" given its magnitude and the extent of public interest. Dr Hepburn believed Mr Watt possessed the legal discretion to make the conditions public and would be "justified" in doing so because the approval was so controversial. "We see a broad range of the community very, very concerned about the impact that this extension is likely to have and wanting to make sure that the conditions are capable of addressing those concerns," she said. The decision to extend the major gas project is currently facing court challenges on several fronts. Dr Hepburn said publicising the conditions would be a show of good faith ahead of federal environmental law reform, the subject of high-level talks hosted by Mr Watt on Thursday. "Showing a preparedness to be responsive to the concerns, I think, is a very, very important thing that the government has the opportunity to [do]," she said. Ms Walker said she had only received a response from WA Senator Dorinda Cox, who could not be reached for comment.
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Bobbi was denied access to an Aboriginal midwifery program in her last pregnancy – and nearly lost her life
After a life-threatening three-day labour, Bobbi Lockyer woke up alone in a single room in the intensive care unit of a Perth hospital with an IV drip in her arm. She had lost five litres of blood and had been rushed to intensive care for an emergency hysterectomy. Her new baby had been discharged while she was unconscious into the care of her now ex-partner. 'I woke up alone and thought something had happened to my baby,' she says. 'I was distraught.' With three children already, Lockyer thought she was well prepared for the joys and the challenges of a newborn. But during the birth of her fourth child, now eight years old, she experienced a medical emergency. 'While I was pushing, I literally remember telling them, 'Something isn't right, something's going wrong,'' she says. 'I birthed my baby, and then immediately started haemorrhaging and was rushed into theatre.' The Ngarluma, Kariyarra, Nyulnyul and Yawuru woman says her unease grew throughout her pregnancy. She was moved to another hospital due to zoning changes and was denied access to the Aboriginal midwifery program after being marked as 'high risk', despite repeatedly testing negative for gestational diabetes and her young age. The test is usually only required once between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. Lockyer says she believes she was tested repeatedly because she was Indigenous. 'They said to me I had to do it again and again because there was no way that I would have passed because I was Indigenous and overweight by their standards,' she says. She says it felt like doctors had 'ticked the box to say, 'You're Aboriginal, so you're high risk.' It's racist and it's traumatic.' She felt pressed to accept an induction and epidural, driven by warnings about her baby's and her own health. Her uterus tore, triggered by too much synthetic oxytocin during her medically induced long labour. 'I was rushed into surgery and woke up in ICU several hours later,' she says. They told me my uterus had torn and I'd never have children again.' The experience stood in stark contrast to the birth of her three older children, all born at Perth's King Edward Memorial hospital, Western Australia's major maternity hospital, grounded and loved through culture and family. 'Our family – our sisters, our aunties and mum, are very important part of that birthing process. When you're denied access to that – it's incredibly hard.' Lockyer is one of more than a dozen First Nations women who spoke to Guardian Australia as part of an investigation into alleged racism and discrimination in mainstream maternity services. Aboriginal mothers, midwives and clinicians claim they've witnessed or experienced racial profiling, lack of consent, inadequate care or culturally unsafe treatment – failures they say can erode trust in the healthcare system, contributing to trauma, poor outcomes and long-term fear of seeking care. Lockyer says she 'basically couldn't move' during a painful post-birth recovery and three-week hospital stay. 'I had a scar from my navel down to my vagina and that took six months to heal,' she says. Lockyer says the hospital gave her no psychological support, even after her mother requested counselling on her behalf. 'They said they don't offer anything until six weeks postpartum. I remember just laying there in the hospital crying. I'm holding my newborn. I'm supposed to be celebrating this new life, but I'm mourning the loss of my body.' She says despite a complaint to the hospital, she received no apology, no follow-up or meeting to discuss her concerns. 'We just felt extremely dismissed. Nothing came of it. Nothing.' Asked by Guardian Australia about Lockyer's allegations, the WA Department of Health said it 'can't comment on individual patients' but it was 'committed to improving culturally safe and respectful care for Aboriginal women and families'. It said it provided 'a number of culturally tailored maternity programs' to support Indigenous women through pregnancy, and worked with Aboriginal health practitioners, liaison officers and midwives 'to help women feel safe and supported'. 'The Department continues to work with Aboriginal communities and health partners to build trust and ensure care is culturally safe, trauma-informed, and responsive to the needs of Aboriginal women and families,' it says. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers are up to three times more likely to die during childbirth than other mothers who give birth in Australia. Their babies are more likely to be born preterm, stillborn or die suddenly. A birth trauma inquiry by the New South Wales parliament in 2024 heard harrowing testimony of women receiving poor care, including feeling disrespected or coerced, or experiencing unwanted or unnecessary intervention, and a lack of culturally appropriate care. Dr Marilyn Clarke has worked in obstetrics and gynaecology for more than 20 years. The Worimi woman now works at Coffs Harbour hospital on NSW's mid-north coast. 'The mainstream system is not always a culturally safe space for Aboriginal women, particularly in the maternity spaces [with] the effects of colonisation and effects of racism in the care,' Clarke says. 'I've seen it in action, it still happens. They [non-Indigenous doctors] just don't see it because they're not seeing it through the lens of an Aboriginal person.' Cultural safety training is slowly increasing awareness among junior doctors and staff but Clarke says it needs to be embedded at all levels. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion 'There is definitely an assumption sometimes that [Aboriginal women are] bad mothers, just because of their race,' she says. 'Racial profiling happens big time.' She says Indigenous women have been flagged for review for child protection services just because they were Indigenous and were therefore considered high risk for intervention, or had experienced a lack of care stemming from unconscious biases. 'Complications might be starting to develop, like infection,' she says. 'Picking up signs and symptoms early, getting antibiotics started … It comes down to engagement with services early but also receiving good care.' A 2019 study of 344 Indigenous women living in urban, regional and remote areas of South Australia found more than half felt they had been discriminated against or received unfair treatment by hospitals or health services during pregnancy and soon after childbirth. The same study found Aboriginal mothers who experienced discrimination in perinatal care were more likely to have a baby with a low birthweight, even after adjusting for other causes. Mikayla*, a midwife from the Torres Strait, has spent the last five years in hospitals and clinics based in Cairns, Brisbane and Thursday Island supporting women through pregnancy and postpartum care. She says she witnessed multiple cases where consent was bypassed or ignored – especially for Indigenous women who spoke English as a second or third language. 'One midwife just grabbed a woman's breast without consent and shoved it into the baby's mouth. No tenderness, no care,' she says. 'I had to step in and say something.' She has also seen midwives perform vaginal examinations without asking. 'I asked one woman, 'Is it OK for them to be doing this to you?' and she said no. I told the midwife, 'Even if she doesn't speak English well, at least try to ask for consent.'' Mikayla says she knew of women who were left so traumatised by receiving episiotomies (an incision to widen the birth canal) without proper explanation that they feared having more children. 'They feel stripped of their dignity, their self-determination, their right to a decision they didn't give permission for.' A spokesperson for Queensland Health told Guardian Australia it did not tolerate racism, discrimination or unsafe care. It would not comment on specific cases but all complaints were thoroughly investigated. Queensland is funding 17 First Nations maternity models of care in state-run and Indigenous community-controlled health organisations, the spokesperson said, as well as programs for more First Nations maternity staff, culturally safe care and wrap-around services. They said consultation was under way to 'understand how First Nations people would feel safer in raising concerns about their own health or that of a loved one whilst in hospital'. Lockyer says she still felt 'ripped of those first moments' with her son and now feels anxious when accessing health services. 'That trauma is always there. I get really anxious for them, and I just hope that they're receiving the right care.' * Name has been changed In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. The Indigenous crisis hotline is 13 YARN, 13 92 76
