Black Witness

A searing indictment of the media's failures in reporting Indigenous affairs - and a powerful corrective that shows how Black journalism can pave the way for equality and justice.

From one of this country's leading Indigenous journalists comes a collection of fierce and powerful essays proving why the media need to believe Black witnesses and showcasing ways that journalism can be used to hold the powerful to account and make the world a more equitable place.

Amy McQuire has been writing on Indigenous affairs since she was seventeen years old and, over the past eighteen years, has reported on most of the 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 drawn attention to the misrepresentations and violence of mainstream media accounts, and also to their omissions and silences in regards to Indigenous matters altogether. In myriad ways the mainstream media has repeatedly failed to report accurately, responsibly or comprehensively on Indigenous affairs.

Black Witness is the essential collection of First Nations journalism that we need right now - and always have.

About the Author

Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman from Rockhampton, Central Queensland. She is a prolific Aboriginal affairs journalist, academic, writer and commentator who has been published in Guardian Australia, the National Indigenous Times, The Saturday Paper, BuzzFeed News Australia, New Matilda, Vogue Australia, Marie Claire, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. She currently co-hosts Curtain The Podcast, which was named one of the top 25 true crime podcasts by New York's Vulture magazine. In 2019 she won a Clarion Award and was nominated for a Walkley Award for her essay on the wrongful conviction of Aboriginal man Kevin Henry, and in 2023 she won Meanjin's Hilary McPhee Award for brave essay writing for her piece on the disappearing of Aboriginal women. She is an Indigenous postdoctoral fellow at the Queensland University of Technology.