When Lloyd Boney's life was cut short in a police cell in 1987, it wasn't just his family who were gripped by grief. It triggered a collective cry for change and led to a national reckoning.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died.
"The whole community was sad … it affected us big time, just crying in the street," Glen Boney said of his 28-year-old brother's death.
By the time Lloyd Boney died in lock-up in the tiny town of Brewarrina in north-west New South Wales, the Indigenous community had started counting their dead.
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)"His was, I think, the 44th death or something in 10 years, well that we knew about anyway," Glen Boney said.
"We'd watched the whole thing unfold when Eddie Murray died in Wee Waa down the road, not that long before … our families were connected."
His sister Karen remembers getting a knock on the door from officers on that Thursday evening in 1987, "it was just shocking, and it felt strange [that] police were telling me".
His other sister Belinda was just a teenager when Lloyd died, but those days are imprinted in her mind.
"The sadness in Mum's eyes, I remember that so clearly … and then I just remember the town kinda blowing up," she said.
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)The death of Lloyd Boney was quickly ruled a suicide, something his family struggled to believe, especially as their distrust of police ran deep.
When police bosses came to visit the town, the community rallied outside the station.
They called on police to "come out here and try pretend it was a clear-cut suicide".
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)It was a town with existing racial divisions and when there were murmurs of unrest following the death, extra police were flown in.
Soon after, riots broke out.
"It was just anger, anger in the community … angry that our people were dying and we weren't getting answers," Glen Boney said.
For years, grieving families had been begging for an inquiry to investigate the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody — Lloyd Boney's death was the tipping point.
He had been arrested for breach of bail on a Thursday afternoon and would be found dead less than 90 minutes later.
By Monday, the Hawke government had announced a royal commission.
The commission, the community and finding closure
"We thought a royal commission [was] going to be a good thing, we might get answers," Glen Boney said.
"I just hoped for justice for Mum … our family was still feeling it big time," Belinda Boney said.
Thirty years on, life is quiet again for the Boney family, but the fight for a better life hasn't faded.
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)The commission eventually handed down 339 recommendations — wide-ranging reforms to prison safety, justice diversion, post-death investigations and calls for broad social change.
It cost $40 million and took three years of testimony and evidence to deliver the final report in 1991 into what turned out to be 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody.
In the years following Lloyd Boney's death, NSW police apologised to the family for footage which showed officers offensively parodying his death.
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)But decades on, it remains cold comfort to his family, feel justice still eludes them.
"Our people are still locked up, still dying … young people are still scared of the cops," Glen Boney said.
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)"Do I think the royal commission brought change to our community? In honesty, no," Belinda Boney said.
"We still need a lot of change in our community … drugs, alcohol … racism … I mean when is all that going to be stopped?
Indigenous Australians still dying
The key finding of the royal commission was that the best way to stop deaths in custody was to stop the disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous Australians.
Back in 1991, Indigenous Australians made up about 14 per cent of the prison population; now that figure has more than doubled to about 30 per cent.
"Aboriginal people die more in custody because we're simply in custody more in the first place," said Meena Singh, the legal director from the Human Rights Law Centre.
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)In 2018, a government-issued Deloitte review found at best 64 per cent of the royal commission's recommendations had been fully implemented.
"We've seen lots of law and order, lots of tough on crime policies run over in the last 30 years since the royal commission," said Ms Singh, a Yorta-Yorta and Indian woman.
"We're seeing lots of responses that introduce tougher bail laws that capture disproportionately Aboriginal women and children.
"We're seeing much tougher sentencing, mandatory sentencing and these are not the things that stop deaths in custody."
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)Since the royal commission's final report, it's estimated at least another 450 Indigenous people have died in custody.
"This means that over 15 families every year are losing someone to a death in custody, so things have sadly not gotten any better," said Ms Singh.
Figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology show there have been improvements to prison safety, with the Indigenous death rate in custody dropping since 1991.
This year though, there have been five Indigenous deaths in custody in March and April alone, with authorities disclosing very little about the circumstances.
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)So, while the death rate for Indigenous Australians in custody is now lower than non-Indigenous prisoners, the disproportionate incarceration rates mean the problem is far from solved.
The latest figures show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people still made up about 20 per cent of all deaths in custody despite being just 3 per cent of the country's population.
"We need governments to think holistically about what it means to keep people safe and what it means to keep people out of prison," Ms Singh said.
'We're still fighting to have a voice'
Chris McHughes doesn't have memories of his community rioting but he knows many of the challenges his countrymen faced haven't gone away.
"We've changed a bit for sure … but racial things are still around, we still deal with that every day," the 23-year-old said.
He's the president of the local rugby league team and he tries to look out for his players, who are mostly Indigenous.
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)The town's legacy and history have not been lost on them.
"There's still a lot of fear today, not just for men but for our young women too," he said.
"Some men are afraid about being locked up, some have been through the system, there's fear they won't make it out of custody alive."
It's his generation that has connected to the cause through social media, watching the Black Lives Matter movement erupt all over the globe.
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)"Sometimes it just means more trauma and grief to deal with," he said.
"The generation today knows not just … what happens around Australia, but around the world … they're just all really aware of it."
As the young chairman of the Brewarrina Local Aboriginal Land Council, David Kirby represents the emerging leadership of the community.
"Bre[warrina] has changed a lot but I don't know how much of that has from the commission, and how much has just been fostered by our community here," he said.
"When my mum gave birth to my two older brothers here, she was segregated to an Indigenous section [of the hospital], but by the time I was born it was just in the main section."
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)For him, one of the biggest failings of successive governments over the years was the failure to address the underlying social problems that lead to incarceration.
"It's just systemic, we're still just fighting to have a voice at the table a lot of the time.
"What's needed is a real focus on investment at community level to change housing availability, education, health, alcohol and drug rehabilitation.
"Us on the ground, we know that's what's going to stop this problem for this generation, and we hope we're not waiting 30 years for that self-determination."
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2021-04-10 19:30:13Z
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