About BLACK WITNESS

BLACK WITNESS is a Substack publication that has gone through many iterations over the years. It began during the COVID-19 pandemic, launching during the historic Black Lives Matter protests, and has continued under a couple of different names like ‘Presence’ and ‘Black Justice Journalism’. It was always my intention to use this platform as a form of independent media which centred on fighting for Indigenous rights and uplifting voices of Black Witnesses.

The website takes its name from my book Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media, published by University of Queensland Press. The book critiqued the violence of Western imperial media and argued for the foregrounding and centring of the Black Witness, who is continually spoken over, for and is deemed illegitimate or disbelieved unless first accepted by the White Witness.

It is my belief that diversifying imperial and colonial media was never the answer. In fact, black media has been aligned with Indigenous advocacy and activism, and it has always been used in the fight.

About Amy

I am a Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist, writer, and academic from Rockhampton in Central Queensland. I’ve spent over 17 years working in independent and Aboriginal media. I was previously the editor of two national Aboriginal publications - the National Indigenous Times and Tracker Magazine. I was previously an Indigenous affairs correspondent for New Matilda, and BuzzFeed News Australia, and hosted the daily current affairs talk show Let’s Talk on 98.9 FM (Triple A), with legendary black broadcaster Tiga Bayles. I currently co-host the investigative podcast Curtain the Podcast with Yuin lawyer Martin Hodgson.

I received my doctorate at the University of Queensland, looking specifically at media representations of violence against Aboriginal women and am currently a postdoctoral Indigenous fellow at the Queensland University of Technology.