The role of activism in Black media, Indigenous deaths in custody, and the justice and legal system are some of the issues raised in an incisive new book from award-winning journalist QUT’s Dr Amy McQuire.
Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media (UQP) will be launched today at an event hosted by QUT’s Carumba Institute in collaboration with the Office of the DVC, Indigenous Australians, the Faculty of Health and QUT Library’s Indigenous Conversation Series.
The collection of powerful essays exploring partiality of the Western media and outlining why the media needs to believe Black Witnesses is Dr McQuire’s non-fiction debut. For the launch, she will join Executive Director of the Carumba Institute, Professor Chelsea Watego in conversation.
A Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman from Rockhampton, Central Queensland, Dr McQuire has made her name as one of Australia’s leading Indigenous journalists.
For more than 20 years she has reported on key events involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including numerous deaths in custody, the Palm Island uprising, the Bowraville murders and the Northern Territory Intervention. She has also exposed the misrepresentations and violence of some of the mainstream media’s reports, as well as their omissions and silences altogether on Indigenous matters.
A journalist, academic, writer and commentator, Dr McQuire has been widely published, including in the Guardian Australia, National Indigenous Times, The Saturday Paper, BuzzFeed News Australia, New Matilda, Vogue Australia, Marie Claire, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In 2022 she won Meanjin’s Hilary McPhee Award for her piece on the disappearing of Aboriginal women and is now a post-doctoral research fellow at QUT with the School of Communication.
Black Witness showcases how journalism can be used to hold the powerful to account and make the world a more equitable place.
“My work has been sustained by the strength of Black Witnesses who continue to speak out and utilise journalism as a tool for advocacy, even when so often journalism has been used against us,” Dr McQuire said.
"This work speaks to the need for the building of a Black Justice Journalism which fights for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Black Justice Journalism is not objective or unbiased, but rather is to be used as a weapon for our people in the continuing fight against racial violence."
- The Carumba Institue will work closely with the Australian-first Faculty of Indigenous Knowledges and Culture at QUT, which will begin taking students in 2025.
Main image: Dr Amy McQuire. Photo: Jacob McQuire
