This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Indigenous women and children experience disproportionate levels of family violence. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are killed at rates up to six times higher than non-Indigenous women, overwhelmingly by intimate partners (76%) or family members.
A common response in Australia, by both federal and state governments, is to announce a new inquiry or review, especially when the deaths of women or children generate intense public and media attention. Yet after decades of inquiries, reviews and recommendations, the question is increasingly not what we know about violence and its consequences, but what governments are doing with what they already know. Rarely are such reviews Indigenous-led or controlled.
These processes create the impression that governments still need to work out what should be done. But Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, communities and organizations have been providing answers for decades. Our new research shows just how consistent those answers are.
We examined 32 submissions made by Aboriginal community-controlled organizations to three Australian federal parliamentary inquiries into family violence between 2020 and 2025. Across those submissions, one principle was central: self-determination. The problem is no longer simply a lack of evidence about what needs to change.
It is getting governments to act on what Indigenous women and communities have recommended for decades. Self-determination is sometimes treated as if it means governments consulting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or including them in existing systems. That is not what communities have been asking for.
The first Indigenous-led National Plan to End Family Domestic and Sexual Violence makes clear what self-determination is about. It is restoring Indigenous control over how responses are defined, governed and delivered. In practical terms, this means Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people must have genuine authority over responses to violence affecting their communities.
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