'Deaths in our backyard': 432 Indigenous Australians have died in custody since 1991

Australia’s track record on deaths in custody is again under scrutiny, as Aboriginal people whose family members died in similar circumstances to George Floyd express solidarity with protestors on the streets of major US cities following the death of the unarmed black man.

The family of 26-year-old David Dungay, a Dunghutti man who said “I can’t breathe” 12 times before he died while being restrained by five prison guards, said they have been traumatised anew by the footage of Floyd’s death.

Dungay’s nephew, Paul Silva, said he has tried to watch the footage of the death of Floyd, who died after a police officer knelt on his neck and whose death has sparked protests across the US, but had to switch it off halfway.

“When I heard him say ‘I can’t breathe’ for the first time I had to stop it,” Silva said. “My thoughts really go out to the family and everyone on the streets in the USA. My solidarity is with them because I do know the pain they are feeling.

“And as for the Aboriginal deaths in our backyard … it’s not in the public as much as it should be.

Related: Deaths inside: every Indigenous death in custody since 2008 tracked – interactive

Dungay is one of at least 432 Aboriginal deaths in custody since the royal commission in 1991, the Guardian’s latest analysis shows. There have been at least five deaths since Guardian Australia updated its Deaths Inside project in August 2019, two of which have resulted in murder charges being laid.

In September, 29-year-old Joyce Clarke was shot dead by a police officer outside her house in Geraldton in Western Australia. At the time, police said they were called to the Yamatji woman’s house by her family and that “during an incident at the address an officer discharged their firearm, causing a woman to receive a gunshot wound”.

Clarke’s family said they called police for assistance in transferring her to hospital, because she was having “difficulty at home” after being recently released from jail.

The police officer, whose name is suppressed, has pleaded not guilty and remains on bail. He will make his first appearance in the Western Australian supreme court on 17 August.

In November, 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead in his family’s house at Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. Constable Zachary Rolfe was later charged with murder and will next appear in court at the end of June. He has also said he intends to plead not guilty.

Related: Kumanjayi Walker: court postpones case of NT police officer charged with murder

In December 2019, a 20-year-old Aboriginal man fell 10 metres to his death while being escorted from Gosford Hospital to Kariong Correctional Centre.

In January this year, Yorta Yorta woman Veronica Walker died at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Victoria. Walker had been on a community corrections order when she was arrested for shoplifting. According to her family, Walker was placed in an observation room but heard calling for help. She was reportedly checked on by prison staff at 4am but not again until she was found dead.

In March, a 30-year-old Aboriginal man from Horsham in Victoria died in police custody after being arrested for breaching a court order. Police said the man was arrested at the scene without incident but his condition deteriorated over the afternoon. He died later in hospital.

Police said the homicide squad would investigate the death, with oversight from the professional standards command, as is standard protocol when someone dies in police custody.

According to the federal government’s own measures, the majority of recommendations dating back to the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1991 have either not been implemented or only partly implemented.

In 2018, Guardian Australia analysed all Aboriginal deaths in custody reported via coronial findings, official statements and other means since 2008. We updated that analysis in 2019, and found that government failures to follow their own procedures and provide appropriate medical care to Indigenous people in custody were major causes of the rising rates of Indigenous people dying in jail.

Related: Family of David Dungay, who died in custody, express solidarity with family of George Floyd

• The proportion of Indigenous deaths where medical care was required but not given increased from 35.4% to 38.6%.

• The proportion of Indigenous deaths where not all procedures were followed in the events leading up to the death increased from 38.8% to 41.2%.

• The proportion of Indigenous deaths involving mental health or cognitive impairment increased from 40.7% to 42.8%.

• The proportion of deaths attributed to a medical episode following restraint increased from 4.9% of all deaths in the 2018 analysis to 6.5% with new data in 2019.

• Indigenous women were still less likely to have received all appropriate medical care prior to their death, and authorities were less likely to have followed all their own procedures in cases where an Indigenous woman died in custody.

David Dungay’s family said they wanted the New South Wales director of public prosecutions to investigate whether charges could be laid against the prison officers involved, and they intended to lodge a complaint against the nursing staff involved in his treatment.

The National Justice Project’s George Newhouse said: “It’s hard to believe that in modern Australia, some 25 years after the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, this is still happening without accountability.”

Dungay, who had diabetes and schizophrenia, was in Long Bay jail hospital in November 2015 when guards stormed his cell after he refused to stop eating a packet of biscuits.

Guards dragged Dungay to another cell and held him face down as a Justice Health nurse injected him with a sedative.

In harrowing footage shown to the court and partially released to the public, Dungay said 12 times that he couldn’t breathe before losing consciousness and dying.

• This story was amended on 1 June 2020 to correct the date in the headline and text. An earlier version said 432 deaths had occurred since 2008.