Why Social Justice in Australia Must Include Queer Indigenous Australia

Australia has a long, complicated relationship with justice — and an even longer road ahead when it comes to including everyone in the conversation. When we talk about social justice in this country, we often focus on broad, sweeping reforms: closing the gap in health outcomes for First Nations peoples, advancing LGBTQ+ rights, tackling housing inequality. These are all vital causes. But there is a community that sits at the intersection of multiple marginalised identities, often rendered invisible in both Indigenous advocacy spaces and queer spaces alike. The voices and experiences of Queer Indigenous Australia deserve not just acknowledgement, but genuine structural inclusion in every social justice framework we build.

The data makes this impossible to ignore. Research published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare consistently shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience disproportionately higher rates of mental health challenges, suicide, and social exclusion compared to non-Indigenous Australians. When you layer queerness onto that — navigating homophobia, transphobia, or biphobia within communities already under systemic pressure — the vulnerabilities compound in ways mainstream advocacy rarely captures. A 2021 report by the National LGBTI Health Alliance found that LGBTQ+ First Nations people face intersecting discrimination from multiple directions: from white-dominated queer spaces that fail to account for cultural identity, and sometimes from within Indigenous communities still grappling with the legacy of colonisation's influence on gender and sexuality norms.

This is not simply an abstract policy conversation. It is about real people, real communities, and a persistent pattern of erasure that costs lives. Understanding why social justice in Australia must meaningfully include the lived realities of gender-diverse and same-sex-attracted First Nations people requires us to examine history, challenge our assumptions, and rethink how we build coalitions for change.

The Colonial Roots of Erasure

Pre-colonial Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures were not uniformly heteronormative. Many nations across this continent recognised gender diversity and same-sex relationships in nuanced, culturally specific ways. The Sistergirls and Brotherboys — transgender and gender-diverse people within First Nations communities — have existed for generations, holding distinct roles and respected identities within their mobs.

Colonisation did not just steal land. It imposed a rigid, Victorian-era moral framework that criminalised same-sex relationships and enforced binary gender roles through mission structures, government policies, and religious institutions. The lasting damage of that imposition is still felt today. When queer First Nations people face rejection or hostility within their own communities, it is often a direct legacy of colonial values — not a reflection of authentic, pre-colonial cultural norms.

Recognising this history is essential for any honest social justice conversation. It reframes the narrative: queerness is not foreign to Indigenous Australia. Homophobia and transphobia, in many respects, are.

The Double Bind: Marginalised in Two Worlds

One of the most significant challenges facing LGBTQ+ First Nations people is the experience of being caught between two communities — neither of which consistently makes room for their full identity.

Mainstream LGBTQ+ advocacy in Australia, while increasingly diverse, has historically been dominated by white, urban, middle-class voices. Pride events, policy campaigns, and even mental health services are often designed with that demographic in mind. Cultural safety — the capacity to engage with services and spaces without having to sacrifice or suppress your cultural identity — remains an afterthought in too many queer-facing organisations.

At the same time, within some Indigenous community contexts, internalised colonial attitudes toward gender and sexuality can create pressure to conform. Young Sistergirls or Brotherboys in remote communities may have limited access to affirming support networks, face family conflict, or lack visibility of role models who share their identity.

The result is a double bind that, without targeted intervention, leads to measurably worse outcomes. Research from LGBTIQ+ Health Australia indicates that First Nations LGBTIQ+ people are significantly more likely to experience psychological distress, housing insecurity, and barriers to healthcare than both non-Indigenous LGBTQ+ people and straight, cisgender First Nations people.

Why Intersectionality Is Not Optional

Intersectionality — the framework developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how overlapping social identities create unique experiences of discrimination — is not a buzzword. In the Australian context, it is a practical tool for designing policy and services that actually work.

When the Closing the Gap framework was revised in 2020, it represented a genuine step forward in co-designing policy with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. However, critics noted that specific references to LGBTQ+ First Nations people remained largely absent. A social justice agenda that does not account for intersecting identities will, by design, leave the most marginalised people behind.

The same applies to LGBTQ+ rights campaigns. Marriage equality was a landmark moment, but the campaign was overwhelmingly led by and centred on white, cisgender gay men and lesbians. First Nations queer communities — with their distinct cultural needs, geographic contexts, and compounding disadvantage — were rarely centred in the national conversation.

Genuine intersectionality means more than including a First Nations speaker at a Pride event or adding a rainbow flag to a Closing the Gap campaign. It means embedding LGBTQ+ cultural competency into Indigenous health services, ensuring First Nations voices lead queer advocacy spaces, and funding community-controlled organisations that specifically support gender-diverse and same-sex-attracted First Nations people.

Community-Led Responses Making a Difference

Despite systemic failures, grassroots communities have been doing extraordinary work. Organisations like First Nations Sistergirls and Brotherboys programs — operating in urban centres like Sydney and Darwin, and increasingly in regional communities — provide culturally grounded support for gender-diverse First Nations people. These programs centre cultural identity alongside queer identity, recognising that the two are inseparable for the people they serve.

The annual Mardi Gras parade in Sydney has, in recent years, seen growing and increasingly visible First Nations LGBTQ+ contingents. NAIDOC Week events are beginning to create explicit space for queer First Nations voices. These are not just symbolic gestures — visibility matters enormously for young people who may otherwise have no framework for understanding that their identities are valid, celebrated, and connected to deep cultural roots.

Community-controlled health organisations, when adequately resourced, are particularly effective at delivering culturally safe, intersectionally aware care. The model has been proven across Indigenous health more broadly — it works because it is built by and for the community, rather than imposed from outside.

What Needs to Change: A Practical Framework

Meaningful inclusion does not happen by accident. Here is what a genuine commitment to this work looks like in practice:

•      Funding community-controlled organisations: State and federal governments must direct dedicated funding to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTQ+ organisations, not just mainstream queer or Indigenous organisations that nominally 'include' this cohort.

•      Cultural competency requirements: LGBTQ+ health services, particularly those receiving government funding, should be required to demonstrate First Nations cultural safety standards, not just LGBTQ+ inclusivity.

•      Data collection reform: National health and social surveys must disaggregate data to capture the experiences of First Nations LGBTQ+ people specifically. Invisibility in data means invisibility in policy.

•      Leadership pipelines: First Nations queer people must be supported to lead — not just participate in — the organisations, campaigns, and policy conversations that affect them.

•      Education and awareness: Schools in Indigenous communities should have access to culturally informed, LGBTQ+-affirming resources that honour both First Nations cultural diversity and queer identities.

The Broader Stakes for Australian Social Justice

Australia is at a critical moment in its relationship with First Nations peoples. The 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum — while ultimately unsuccessful — demonstrated both the appetite for change and the depth of political resistance to structural reform. In the aftermath, the conversation about how to move forward in good faith has intensified.

Any credible path forward must account for the full diversity of First Nations communities — including those members whose gender and sexuality place them at additional risk. A social justice movement that speaks loudly about racial justice while remaining quiet about homophobia and transphobia within and beyond Indigenous communities is incomplete. Worse, it risks replicating the same logic of selective inclusion that has marginalised these communities for generations.

The measure of a genuinely just society is not how it treats its most powerful members. It is how it treats those who live at the intersection of multiple forms of disadvantage — who face not one barrier, but several, often simultaneously.

Conclusion: Full Inclusion Is Non-Negotiable

Social justice in Australia will remain incomplete until it fully, structurally, and unapologetically includes every First Nations person — including those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, or gender-diverse. This is not about political correctness or ticking boxes. It is about building a country where no one has to choose between their cultural identity and their right to live authentically.

The frameworks exist. The evidence is clear. The communities are ready and have been doing this work for decades, often without adequate support. What is needed now is political will, sustained funding, and a commitment from every social justice advocate in this country to make space — genuine, lasting, structurally embedded space — for the voices and experiences that have been marginalised for far too long.

Australia cannot close the gap while leaving some of the most vulnerable people in the widest part of it.