Indigenous Academic Says Men Bashing Women Is "Not Aboriginal Culture"

No more.

Outside Parliament House, politicians from both major parties have linked arms and chanted "no more!" in a bid to show a united front against shocking rates of domestic violence in Indigenous communities.

Lukas Coch / AAP

The show of unity on Monday comes after Indigenous domestic violence campaigner Charlie King made a personal plea for prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to join the "no more" campaign back in August.

Earlier this month, one of the prime minister's advisers, Josephine Cashman, joined with two other prominent Indigenous women, Marcia Langton and Jacinta Price, to stage a public shaming of sorts, claiming she was "frustrated and disappointed" by the government's slow action in combatting Indigenous family violence.

But Turnbull opened his arms to the Northern Territory-based "no more" campaign on Monday, with traditional owners from East Arnhem land performing a sacred ceremony on the doorstep of the capital.

Mick Tsikas / AAPIMAGE

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton (centre) described the event to BuzzFeed News as "an uprising against thugs" adding that the Rirratjingu dancers from Yirrkala in Arnhem Land had come to Canberra to meet with senior MPs.

Mick Tsikas / AAPIMAGE

"We can’t keep listening to this rubbish, how its cultural. This is what this is about today, that’s why people have brought out a secret and sacred ceremony," Langton said.

"It’s not cultural to bash women. Thugs say that. That’s not Aboriginal culture."

Langton said COAG's national domestic violence plan had failed Indigenous women.

"The third national action plan is really very poorly worded, poorly conceived, the advice to indigenous people is go off and get dispute resolution, well with the rates of homicide of Indigenous women and maternal loss, the rate at which we are losing mothers, that kind of advice is really not welcome."

She said now state and federal governments need to focus on better policing and more funding for domestic violence shelters.

Here are some of the shocking statistics that illustrate the scale of the domestic violence epidemic against women:

- Aboriginal mothers are 17-and-a-half times more likely to be murdered.

- Just over a quarter of Aboriginal mothers who died in Western Australia between 1983 and 2010 were the victims of homicide.

- Aboriginal mothers are almost seven times more likely to die from external factors like suicide, accidents and homicides.

- Aboriginal children are more likely to experience the loss of a mother in the first five years of life.