CHAPTER ONE
Lethal Intersections and Violence

In 2014, Ms. Dhu, a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman from the Pilbara region of Western Australia, died in police custody. Ms. Dhu was arrested by police who were responding to a call from a neighbor that she was being abused by her partner. But instead of investigating a case of domestic abuse, the police transported Ms. Dhu to the police station for non-payment of overdue fines. While in custody, she repeatedly asked for medical care. The police thought that she was pretending to be ill, but on two occasions they took her to medical personnel who downplayed her reports of pain and authorized her return to her cell. Ms. Dhu was in pain – she had a fractured rib inflicted by her partner. When Ms. Dhu continued to ask for medical care, the police once again took her to seek medical help, but she was once again declared “fit for custody” and was returned to her cell. Two days after being arrested, Ms. Dhu collapsed and died alone in her cell. Two years later, a government inquest into the circumstances exonerated the medical staff and police of culpability in her death. The basic facts of this case are disturbing enough. Many people like Ms. Dhu die in police custody, with official causes of death listed as suicide, drug withdrawal, or preexisting conditions of some sort. But digging deeper into this particular case allows important details to emerge.

From the beginning of her encounter with the police, Ms. Dhu was regarded as an offender, rather than as a young woman in need of protection from intimate partner violence. She was immediately treated with suspicion and her credibility was questioned. Throughout her incarceration, when she repeatedly reported that she was in pain, neither police officers nor medical officials believed her. At one point, she was in so much pain that she said, “Can you help me? … it’s hurting like hell.” When she was taken into custody, she reported her pain level as ten out of ten. While waiting to be taken to the health center, she moaned and cried from the pain. Yet the nurse at the health center recorded her pain level as three out of ten, and gave her a low triage score. As she was being examined, Ms. Dhu recoiled when the nurse touched her. The nurse responded with words to the effect of “I hardly touched you,” and rolled her eyes. During the inquest, both the doctor and the nurse suggested that an escorting police officer had told them that she only claimed to be in pain after they informed her that she would have to stay in the lockup overnight. She did not get a diagnosis, but was given a pain killer and a sedative and returned to her cell.

The next day, Ms. Dhu again asked for help. She told the police officer that she was finding it difficult to breathe and that she had asthma. She was handcuffed, removed from her cell, and again taken to the medical center. But again, she was declared fit for custody. Medical personnel did not take her temperature – a high temperature might have led to further tests and a diagnosis. Instead, the doctor noted a discharge diagnosis of perhaps “withdrawal from drugs” and “behavioral issues.” This neglect continued into the next day when Ms. Dhu rang the bell yet again and asked to go to the health center. The material from the inquest, especially CCTV footage, provides details about how Ms. Dhu was treated while she lay dying. When the police decided to take her to the hospital for the last time, she was unable to get up. She was handcuffed while lying on the mattress, then dragged across the floor, and carried by two police officers to the back of the police vehicle. When they arrived at the health center, CCTV shows that Ms. Dhu appeared to be completely incapacitated.1

The inquest, held two years after Ms. Dhu’s death, did yield more information from those who seemingly had direct knowledge of her treatment during her three days in custody. Even so, many of the witnesses who were interviewed at the inquest apparently could not remember what happened. Because the CCTV film footage was so central to spelling out the details in this case, following the inquest the family wanted it to be released. The coroner ruled against this on the grounds that it might “retraumatize” the family and the broader Aboriginal community. Shaun Harris, Ms. Dhu’s uncle, rejected this explanation and led a tireless campaign to get the footage released. As he argued: “It’s traumatizing yes, but it still needs to be put out there … They can’t hurt us anymore, but they can traumatize us more by still holding back the truth … There will never be any justice unless there is truth and accountability.”2

Ms. Dhu’s death in custody constituted one more case of state-sanctioned violence against Aboriginal people in Australia. State-sanctioned violence that occurs through acts of commission – that is, when agents of the state take actions that result in premature deaths – are often quite visible. Had Ms. Dhu been killed by a police officer in a mall, on the street, or in a similar public place, or had she been killed by a soldier who was occupying her village, her death could more easily be categorized as state-sanctioned violence. But state-sanctioned violence that occurs through acts of omission, that is, where the state fails to protect people from harm, is often difficult to see because it is hidden and/or normalized as part of everyday life. Patterns of deaths while in the custody of the state shine a spotlight on the seemingly hidden aspects of state-sanctioned violence in fostering premature deaths. Ms. Dhu died in a jail cell, a physical place that was built to lock up people who pose some sort of threat to social order. Had she not been in the cell, she would have had the freedom to seek help for her injuries. Her premature death demonstrates how the policies of an array of social institutions, such as criminal justice, health, education, and employment, affected every aspect of her life before she arrived in her cell. She was neglected, and this indifference contributed to her death. By denying her care, the state let her die.

Ms. Dhu’s death, while tragic, was no accident. She was in a lethal intersection where the combination of being an Aboriginal woman who was young and poor proved to be lethal. Had she been a middle-aged, affluent, white man, the outcome of her encounters with police and medical personnel would have been different. In that case, Ms. Dhu most likely would never have been arrested for non-payment of minor fines; if she had had the money to pay, she would have done so and left. The way in which she was treated while in the custody of the state also mattered. When she reported her pain to government officials and medical personnel, she was consistently disbelieved. Being in the custody of the state was instrumental in her death because she was in a lethal intersection: the combination of who she was, where she was arrested, and how she was treated by the police contributed to her premature death. Ms. Dhu’s death might easily have been mourned only locally, or perhaps even forgotten altogether, were it not for the actions taken by her family, friends, supporters, and allies, many of whom had never met her, who refused to forget her premature death.3

Investigating the circumstances surrounding this particular case brings nuance and complexity to the idea of being in a lethal intersection. In the following section, I examine two dimensions of this case that illuminate what it means to be in a lethal intersection. First, this case illuminates how the convergence of power relations of gender, race, class, and nation as systems of power shaped the state policies and procedures that led to Ms. Dhu’s premature death. Second, it shows how her death in a lethal intersection catalyzed political resistance; Ms. Dhu’s family, friends, and allies could not save her life, but they continued to resist after her death. Together, these two dimensions point to the synergistic relationship of intersectional violence and resistance to such violence.

Being in a lethal intersection

The synergy among multiple systems of power that fostered Ms. Dhu’s premature death constitutes one dimension of being in a lethal intersection. Efforts to rank gender, race, and class as systems of power miss the significance of how these systems of power collectively shape intersectional violence. Was any one system of power more fundamental than the others in explaining her death? By viewing violence as something far broader than one violent act, the construct of being in a lethal intersection conceptualizes violence as simultaneously embedded within the daily realities of one’s society – in this case, living as a young, poor, Aboriginal woman in Australia – and organized within the intersecting power relations of one’s society – namely, Australia’s distinctive national history with intersecting power relations of gender, race, and class.

The convergence of heteropatriarchy, racism, and capitalism within the Australian context provides distinctive strands of the structural contours of this particular lethal intersection. As a victim of domestic violence, Ms. Dhu experienced gendered violence, both at the hands of her partner and by the police as representatives of a social institution that was tasked with protecting her. Her treatment demonstrates how gender discrimination is confined neither to the privacy of the home, and therefore out of reach of the state,...