Between 10,000–20,000 people chanted, danced and sang in the rain at Langley Park on June 13 in one of the biggest protests for Black rights and against Black deaths in custody in Western Australia in recent years. The protest was organised by a new coalition, Boorloo Justice.
Speakers acknowledged the deaths in custody of Yamatji woman Ms Dhu in 2014 and Elijah Doughty in 2016, among others, and called for the recommendations from the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody to be implemented.
Boorloo Justice put forward a number of measures that governments need to undertake to solve: reduce the imprisonment of Indigenous people; end the practice of removing Aboriginal children from families; address systemic racism and appoint a statutory Aboriginal Advocate, Aboriginal Children’s Commissioner and Aboriginal Inspector of Custodial Services; and to set up an Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committee to respond to the Pathways to Justice inquiry.
The rally organisers also said that unless governments recognised that sovereignty was never ceded and that Aboriginal people has been wrongfully dispossessed, there would be no justice.
