DG: What would a justice system designed entirely from an Aboriginal standpoint look and feel like?

Dr Rule: It’s difficult to answer this question. I think, as a Wiradjuri person – and not speaking on behalf of all Wiradjuri people, of course, but speaking on behalf of myself – because I grew up on Kaurna Country, I can understand that, at least in our system, Yindyamarra becomes something that we continue to uphold. Which is, I guess, our understanding, similar to mana, I would say, as a Māori person, which is in our innate way of understanding ourselves, working with others and recognising people and other kin in a respectful manner doing business together in a respectful way because of the recognition of each person’s mana recognising that person’s inherent strength and wellbeing and space from which they arise. This is kind of the way I see the design of a more successful and sustainable Indigenous legal or justice system – with such values intact from that space of mutual respect and understanding of each person’s and nations’ histories and principles, or the place from which they come and which they arrive. It’s forward-thinking. It relates to resource management as much as it relates to the management of conflict, and discussion around love and care, intimate partnership and marriage, friendship – all of those beautiful things. However, I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen justice in my life, so I can only see the influences of such and hope in such. This is a type of dreaming and recalling, I believe, that is going to need to be taught and respected, to get to such a tangible day of actual justice for us all.

And so when people ask me, what is justice, what kind of justice do you want to see, it was only recently that I actually had to eat my words and say, hang on, I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen a day of justice yet.
So I can’t describe what justice is, but I can describe what I imagine it to be, and as I’ve just stated, I imagine it to be steeped in – regardless of if you’re Indigenous or not – respectful dialogue and truth-telling together with a commitment to transcend and divest from this time of genocidal terror.

And it’s from these places, I think, that we can start to develop our understandings of a day when we might see justice come to fruition.

DG: What would be our collective next steps?

Dr Rule: Something I’ve written about in my doctoral research is, of course, the recommendations of Aboriginal women, family members of those who have lost our loved ones to contested deaths in custody through asphyxiation (suffocation).

What has arisen out of my research with my co-researchers, or these Aboriginal women with lived expertise of the coronial jurisdiction and inquest processes, is the need for truth-telling, occurring within Blak space. The need for spaces that we create and are open to us, away from state surveillance, away from the protocols of white law and its injustice system. A way for us to actually truth-tell on systemic injustices against our family members, but also more than that, about recognising and reckoning with genocide in Australia.

One solution that I’ll be pursuing is not only the release and recording of Aboriginal stories toward what the great Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt has deemed an Indigenous Storytelling Jurisprudence, but also looking at how stories support our legal processes and understandings to enable more just solutions. But I’m also really interested in observing and undertaking research into a model called a permanent People’s Tribunal on genocide, to continue this truth-telling space.

A People’s Tribunal looks like a tribunal around having victims of state and other types of genocidal violence speak on these issues, but more than that, on the manifestations of genocide.

I sit here on Gadigal Land in so-called Sydney, New South Wales, and as people would know, we’ve witnessed recently the Bondi terror attack and an increasing degree of policing and state violence. In 2025, New South Wales also recorded the greatest number of Aboriginal deaths in custody in a single year since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report was handed down in 1991. I see this collectively as state-sanctioned violence and brutality against our people, as attributed to genocide, and the inherent genocide that continues on Aboriginal Land and indeed of which derives from beyond us.

To go back to the start of our conversations, that’s where that grievance lies. It is in the taking of this Land that continued acts of genocide have been able to be implemented and carried out as daily routine. Sometimes, sadly, in our own names. Sometimes, sadly, by leaders who have taken it upon themselves to say who is and isn’t welcome. Where we know better. We know that as Aboriginal people, we want our Lands and people and almost all other people to proceed safely on Aboriginal Land, though maybe not the racists. So, reckoning with genocide, I believe, can and must occur at a first point.

We’ve seen global and national examples of People’s Tribunals. These are spaces sometimes fashioned in design away from state surveillance, where truth can be spoken freely, without state control. Though these are also conducted in diverse environments with different needs and under different authorities globally. Some have been deemed successes, while others not so much. It’ll be up to us to consider how this occurs and what is most important in the design phase. And for me, these spaces might actually allow us to begin to grieve, to be held in community, and to speak with authority on our own knowledges. I would rather be in those spaces than in the Coroner’s Court, which families in my research describe as cold, like a morgue, and where we are again surveilled.

I believe the right to life can be obtained for us in our own Blak spaces, and I believe that this is where we thrive, and I believe that thrivance is in our future.

DG: What does the shift to Blak space look like in a practical sense?

Dr Rule: I think, in a way, I’ve answered this question in different ways, but to provide a little bit more detail: I approach this question from the position of decolonisation, that incremental change, as much as it irks me, is sometimes a way forward, without forgetting the abolitionist vision toward a new day without carcerality and this type of punishment of people generally. Those little details do matter. Our values and principles of that incremental change do matter. Our people lived without prisons continuously for at least 80,0000 years. We can do it again.

So, while we try our best to be the most radical people we can, I also understand that people are working in precarious conditions and cannot always speak out freely.

If I reflect on the National Ban Spit Hoods Campaign, for example, we have had some support from unexpected places, including governments and policing bodies eventually. So, working in proximity to these bodies hurts, but some of us make that sacrifice when we have the goal of abolition to remove in this way an instrument of torture, for example. Limiting my exposure and working with such groups and having strong boundaries around such interactions is important for my ability to heal and to retain my social and emotional health and well-being. They, and their spaces, are implicated in our deaths at the end of the day.

So, while I see that our processes are incompatible with Western systems of justice, I also know that simply removing these systems overnight would place our people at risk as well, as we do not yet have control over all of our infrastructural means. Incremental change is important, but this must be steeped in incremental resistance. How our efforts are positioned is the most important in this dialogue, as we do not serve to re/produce and empower the state. It’s about what we accept or refuse in our daily lives, because those decisions build over time and form our reality. We are thinking about future generations, children not yet born, their safety, their housing, their right to life. We cannot afford to only think about the present and ourselves. We must think generations ahead.

DG: Who or what informs your knowledges and understandings of Blak space and justice?

Dr Rule: So, as I began this discussion, Dominic, I have spoken about how your own influence in my life has been really pivotal. As a Kaurna person, as a creative, your influence around podcasting and research has been important – alongside others, your own work and leadership have encouraged me to produce these understandings.

Alongside Kaurna Elders like Uncle Stevie Goldsmith and Uncle Tauto Sansbury, who supported my family and me in meaningful ways prior to and beyond my brother’s death, as I’ve been working on such issues since I was a teenager, before 2016, with local Elders across South Australia. I also think prominently of Uncle Andrew Wilson and Auntie Neva Wilson and their archival work over generations, but also of young people in my kinship network, like Jayda Wilson, in their creative practices, in their writing and storying. More widely, people like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Neville Bonner have influenced my politics.

Overall, it is Aboriginal people, particularly Aboriginal women and queer Aboriginal people, from Wiradjuri Country, too of course, who have held me in my grief and shaped my work and from Gadigal Nura / Land where I continue to live. There are too many to name, but they are the foundation and many times the reason for everything I do. I hope I get to continue work that honours them.