Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women's Voices) Report

Wiyi Yani U Thangani Report Securing our rights, securing our futures

On 14 December 2020, the Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices) Report was launched— an ambitious Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander female-led plan outlining the structural reforms necessary to provide our women and girls with equal enjoyment of human rights in this country.

Long overdue, Wiyi Yani U Thangani represents the first time our women and girls’ voices have been heard as a collective since the publication of the Women’s Business Report in 1986. The report highlights the powerful and diverse strengths that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls bring, benefiting not only women and girls but their entire communities and Australian society more broadly. Wiyi Yani U Thangani also provides women and girls’ accounts of a broken system that perpetuates negative life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—a state of disadvantage overwhelmingly determined by structural forces stemming from colonisation. One of the key inequalities identified by women and girls is that Australia’s high standard of health is not shared equally, an indicator of which is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples per capita burden of ill-health stands at 2.4 times the rate of that for non-Indigenous people. Women and girls spoke about how their health is dependent on the interconnection of social, cultural and economic determinants. They identified governments’ failures to effectively respond to upstream factors, coupled with poor access and coverage of health services and a lack of cultural safety within health services as significant drivers of health inequality. Women and girls consistantly described how the imposed systems—even those intended to provide support—are trapping them and their communities in cycles of intergenerational poverty, ill-health, trauma and powerlessness. The report provides a comprehensive roadmap to confront this dynamic— including seven overarching structural reform recommendations to address the root causes of systemic inequality, highlight the alternatives needed to reconstruct enabling systems, and transform the relationship between Australian governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It recommends national action to eradicate racism and to embed truthtelling, cultural safety and traumainformed training across all services and sectors. It also calls for increased investment into preventative, placebased, culturally responsive programs and services—such as those delivered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Organisations—that will help us to heal from intergenerational trauma and sustain and revive our knowledge systems, Lore and languages. Furthermore, Wiyi Yani U Thangani is calling for measures to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls’ leadership and participation in all decisions that impact their lives. This includes the establishment of a Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls National Action Plan, a women and girls advisory body to design and monitor the implementation of the National Action Plan, and targets for our women and girls to lead across all sectors. The Wiyi Yani U Thangani report puts the lives and truths of our women and girls in the hands of all Australians, and asks that you listen to their stories, recognise their strengths, their power and their potential, and join with them in creating a system that will enable all Australians to thrive. To read the report visit wiyiyaniuthangani.humanrights.gov.au

Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar © Wayne Quilliam for Australian Human Rights Commission

Artwork: Elaine Chambers in collaboration with Riki Salam