Colonial carceral systems weaponise childbirth: Queensland’s shackling of incarcerated Indigenous women mirrors global prison-industrial violence
Original framing: “Indigenous woman shackled to hospital bed while in labour in Queensland” — The Guardian - World
Testimonies from incarcerated Indigenous women, such as those collected by *The Guardian Australia*’s *Custody* series, describe shackling as a form of *psychological torture* that extends to their children, who are often separated at birth. Organisations like *Indigenous Women’s Prison Link-Up* report that women fear speaking out due to retaliation, including solitary confinement—a practice linked to the 2014 death of *Troy Anthony* in Queensland prisons. The silence of these voices is not accidental but a feature of carceral control.
The shackling of Indigenous women during childbirth in Queensland is not a failure of ‘prison reform’ but a deliberate mechanism of colonial control, embedding racial violence into the fabric of Australia’s carceral state.
Historical patterns—from the *Blackbirding* era to the *Aborigines Protection Board*—reveal how penal systems have always functioned to dispossess Indigenous peoples of land, autonomy, and reproductive sovereignty. The cross-cultural parallels, from Māori *wāhine toa* traditions to U.S. Native women’s struggles, underscore that this is not an Australian exception but a global symptom of settler-colonialism’s refusal to cede power. Solutions must move beyond reformist demands (like the failed shackling ban) to confront the root: the prison-industrial complex’s reliance on Indigenous women’s bodies as sites of extraction. The *trickster* lens exposes the hypocrisy of a state that claims to ‘protect’ women while shackling them in labour—a practice that would be unthinkable in any ‘civilised’ society, yet persists because Indigenous lives are deemed disposable. The path forward lies in treaty-based land repatriation, maternal health sovereignty, and international accountability, as these are the only mechanisms capable of dismantling a system designed to erase Indigenous futures.