I woke up in the middle of the night feeling distressed—the book I’d been reading, The White Girl by Tony Birch, lay open on the bedside table. Odette Brown, an Indigenous woman and the protagonist of the story, must try and protect her granddaughter from the welfare authorities that threaten to remove her. Odette is no stranger to the perils of living under white rule; she has lived on the fringes of society all her life. Tony Birch’s story is set in post-war Australia, when Indigenous people were treated as less than human. Were controlled by the state. Not counted in the census.

I leaned over and turned on the radio. Sometimes lying in the dark and hearing the soft crackle of the radio can soothe me back to sleep. I recognised Larissa Behrendt’s voice and knew I was listening to Speaking Out, Radio National’s Indigenous program. Music played. I felt myself begin to drift. I didn’t hear words, only the comfort of conversation. One of the major issues for justice advocates in recent years has been the use of strip searches by the police. . . I was still half asleep. Strip searching? Research has found the system disproportionately affects First Nations communities. I was somewhere between sleep and language. What was that. Strip? What did that mean? That word? There has been a twenty-fold increase in the practice. . . Over 5500 cases were reported in 2018. I was awake now, listening carefully as Samantha Lee, the Police Accountability Officer at the Redfern Legal Centre, explained that 10% of the strip searches in NSW were conducted on Indigenous people even though Indigenous people only make up 3% of the population. The youngest child to be strip searched was ten years old. Pictures formed in my mind. Children forced to remove their clothing in the presence of police. I shuddered. Wide awake now. That was about power. Taking power. Abusing power.