If the fact an estimated 5.2% of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths are officially registered as suicides rattles you, consider this: experts reckon the actual figure could be closer to 10%.
In the Kimberley alone, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are suiciding at 8 times the national rate.
The catastrophic frequency at which people in the Indigenous community are taking their own lives has prompted a Change.org petition calling for an urgent royal commission into how and why this is happening.
Suicide prevention researcher Gerry Georgatos created the call to action – addressed to PM Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten – and wrote that a royal commission with the resources and manpower to investigate the soaring rates thoroughly is “the only shot we have left” at addressing the issue.
“I have travelled to hundreds of homeland communities and the people who are losing their loved ones are crying out to be heard, they are screaming,” he says. “It is a myth and a dangerous perception that there is a silence, shame, taboo – it’s the listening that is not happening. This humanitarian crisis needs to translate to a national priority.”
More than 21,000 Aussies have put their name to the petition since it went up on Sunday, with those numbers climbing by the hour.
A bunch of well-respected Indigenous Australians have joined Georgatos’ plea for a royal commission, including this year’s National Indigenous Human Rights Awards recipients and several past NAIDOC winners, among them Australian of the Year awards finalist Rosalie Kunoth-Monks.
But the plea from Kimberley mother Lena Andrews – whose daughter Phillinka took her own life at age 18, in 2014 – is the most humbling / heartbreaking aspect of the petition.
Phillinka Andrews, 18, committed suicide in 2014.
She says nobody was there for them when her family, and Phillinka, needed help.
“There was nobody there for us. We are living in neglect, in racism, forgotten by everyone. Please allow our stories to be told at a royal commission. Too many are dying too young.”
