I have undertaken the review of this book by Joan Kimm with some hesitation. It is not that its content—the violence experienced by Indigenous women—is not important. Having lived in a number of Indigenous communities over many years, I have witnessed and heard enough to know something of this sad and distressing side of Australian life. The violence currently experienced within some communities is serious and needs urgent attention. Nor do I hesitate because I believe it is solely ‘Indigenous business’. We all have the right to live without violence.
My hesitation arises from my own history and the perspectives I necessarily bring to this issue. I am not an Indigenous person nor am I a woman. There are aspects of Indigenous and gendered life that lie beyond my own experience, however much I have heard and seen. My response to this book is from a non-Indigenous male perspective. It is necessarily a response that is limited but accompanied by some self-criticism. When I observe violence against women, especially against Indigenous women, I am aware that too easily has their suffering been ignored, trivialised or even rationalised by men and much of Australian society. This book offers the possibility that serious issues around violence within Indigenous communities will be discussed and addressed. Unfortunately, it also runs the risk of upsetting and alienating some Indigenous men and women. They might not understand or interpret the violence currently being experienced in Indigenous communities in as straightforward a way as Kimm suggests. Indigenous researchers such as Judy Atkinson, Boni Robertson, Marcia Langton, Kyllie Cripps and Sue Gordon have argued that the sources of violence are multiple, complex and cumulative. There would seem to be no logic or reason to dissociate this present violence from the historical experiences of dislocations and dispossession, the decades of children being separated from their families and the immediate consequences of unemployment, welfare dependency and alcohol addiction.
Kimm’s book A Fatal Conjunction, appears to be based on the author’s thesis for a Master of Laws at Monash University in 1999 (although this background is not mentioned). In a relatively short and easy to read book, she (a non-Indigenous woman) has opened a particular and public window on the violence that has been, and continues to be, experienced by Indigenous women. Evidently, she has come to her perspective of this violence from her legal background, the reading of case studies and some