The silent national tally we need to be talking about.

Content Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains images of people who have died. Mamamia has permission from the Smith families to use these images.

In 2024, the national spotlight has highlighted the deaths of women at the hands of men known to them. We have a national tally of women killed in domestic and family violence situations, and devastatingly we are already at 55 women allegedly murdered this year, according to Sherele Moody's femicide watch.

Our leaders have heard our cries and have slowly made steps towards action — such as an emergency National Cabinet meeting, a meeting of Police Ministers from across the country, parliamentary debates about ankle monitors and stricter bail conditions, and also law reform proposals being brought forward. 

Yes, the level of action needs to be far better. But there's another equally important tally that remains silent in the media. 

It's the hundreds of murders and disappearances of First Nations women and children across this country. Literally hundreds. Likely, even more. 

Watch: What Country means to Indigenous people. Post continues below.

Karen Iles is the Principal Solicitor of Violet Co Legal & Consulting. She is a lawyer and Dharug Aboriginal woman, as well as the founder of the Make Police Investigate Campaign.

Iles has personal experience of navigating the justice system after she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. For 20 years now, she's tried to get police to investigate what happened. She's still waiting for justice.

Recently, Iles gave evidence at the Federal Inquiry into Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children.

The Inquiry was a long time coming, and many advocates and Indigenous people had hoped for tangible and swift action to be taken in order to correct the course of justice. But many feel it has missed the mark.

A "toothless" Inquiry.

There is no official count of Indigenous women who have disappeared or been murdered (often sexually assaulted as well). ABC Four Corners estimates from their research that just over 300 First Nations women have either gone missing or been murdered or killed in suspicious circumstances since 2000. 

As Iles said to Mamamia, First Nations women are being murdered at up to 12 times the national average.

"As the Inquiry saw, the disappearances, murders and sexual assaults of First Nations women and children are more often than not at the hands of non-Indigenous men. In my work, there aren't many First Nations women I come across who don't have a firsthand experience of a woman or a child within their family or community being disappeared, murdered and sexually assaulted. It's a grim colonialist trifecta."

The Inquiry's report was released last week, after decades of advocacy from bereaved families desperate for recognition. But the 10 recommendations suggested in the report felt "toothless".

Greens senator and Noongar Yamatji woman Dorinda Cox agrees with Iles, telling ABC News the solutions recommended were "manifestly inadequate".

Even more disappointing, WA Police were invited to the Inquiry and didn't turn up.

Shockingly, the Inquiry didn't even recommend change for the way in which the rates of murdered and missing Indigenous women are collated. The tally will remain silent. No one is counting. 

Illes explains: "There will be hundreds and thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families around the country absolutely devastated and disappointed by the report."

Karen Iles. Image: Supplied.

"It's great that it recommends police in every state or territory have a good hard look at themselves and review their approaches to policing, their procedures and practices. But systemic change and accountability are missing from the report."

Some of the solutions Iles had recommended included:

• A set of national principles around how police investigate and respond to complaints.
• A national state and territory police complaints integrity corruption commission separate to police, to ensure there's no conflict of interest in police investigating police.
• Research into the connection between poor police responses to abduction, sexual assault and murder, and the suicide of the victim or the victim's family members.

In Iles' evidence to the Inquiry, there was one particular case she focused on.

Mona and Cindy Smith deserved better.

Mona Lisa Smith and Jacinta Rose 'Cindy' Smith were close friends growing up.

The girls were born in the early 1970s, Mona being a year older than Cindy, and they were both Indigenous. They attended Bourke High School together and were popular. Inseparable since childhood, the girls were described as being more like sisters than cousins. 

On December 6, 1987, Mona, then 16, and Cindy, then 15, died in the early hours of that Sunday morning. Their bodies were found on the side of the road on Mitchell Highway in north-west New South Wales. 

There had been a single-vehicle collision. 

A white man, Alexander Grant, had been driving that car at the time of the crash, with Mona and Cindy as passengers. The evidence suggested he had plied the girls with alcohol before taking them out onto the highway in his car. 

In April this year, findings from an inquest into their deaths were released. 

The evidence indicates that Grant, who escaped the crash with only minor injuries, sexually interfered with Cindy after she had passed. The inquest says intoxication and road speed were contributing factors to Grant's loss of control of the vehicle.

Mona Smith and Cindy Smith deserved better. Image: Supplied/National Justice Project. Mamamia has permission from the Smith families to use this image.

Grant was charged was acquitted by an all-white jury of driving-related offences relating to the incident during a 1990 criminal trial.

A further charge of indecently interfering with a corpse was dropped before the trial due to difficulties with establishing the timing of Cindy's death based on the obtained evidence. 

The police investigation into what happened was "inexplicably deficient" according to the findings from the inquest into the girls' deaths. Grant could not be called to give evidence at the inquest, as he died of natural causes in 2017.

"Although it scarcely needs to be said, the conduct of Mr Grant was predatory and disgraceful," said State Coroner, Magistrate Teresa O'Sullivan.

Cindy and Mona's families had hoped justice would be served before Mr Grant's death, and that there would be a quicker acknowledgment of the police's failings in the case.

Mona's mother June Smith said at the inquest: "No police ever came near me or explained anything to me when the girls died. We had to find everything out ourselves. My eldest brother told me that they had died. We had heard that a couple of girls got hurt but I didn't know they got killed until my brother came home and said, 'Sis you've gotta come to the hospital straight away.'"

In a statement shared by the National Justice Project, Cindy's sister Kerrie said: "The police would have treated the sexual assault of a white child differently. We don't want any other family to go through that. We hope that the police and others take away from this inquest how important it is to listen to Aboriginal people and Aboriginal families. If only we had been listened to 36 years ago, we wouldn't be fighting now, and we could have seen someone held accountable."

As Iles notes to Mamamia: "The families had fought for decades to get an inquest because the police investigation was so non-existent. The coroner found that racism had impaired the police investigation. It's horrific."

What we can learn from Canada.

Australia's Inquiry into Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children ultimately made 10 recommendations. 

A similar Federal Inquiry took place in Canada, and there were 231 recommendations that came from it. They also called the phenomenon of missing and murdered Indigenous women in their country a "genocide".

"What they found in Canada was that the law was so poorly enforced with crimes against First Nations groups that perpetrators would pick vulnerable people like those who are Indigenous, because they know they can get away with it," says Iles.

"The Australian Inquiry was a really important chapter of truth-telling in our country's history. And that's to be acknowledged and commended. But we can't keep brushing this subject under the rug. With white defensiveness, we're not going to get anywhere."

Feature Image: Supplied/National Justice Project.