Prison Industrial Complex:
Advocacy, Activism and Social Change
Comments of Kim Pate in Melbourne, Australia - 21 July 2005
at the
Sisters Inside Conference: Is Prison Obsolete?

Before I begin my comments, I want to once again thank the Wurundjeri People and the Kulin Nations people of this area for the welcome to country; it is a privilege to be on your land. As a white woman from away, I feel very privileged to be here and I carry the responsibility of coming from another part of the world where the land of our First Nations people has been stolen and appropriated.

Thank you to the Aunties, the Elders, allies, and friends here with us. Thank you also to Sisters Inside, Flat Out, and the Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service of Victoria for coordinating Sister’s Inside 3rd International Conference.

Thank you to the women inside, in Canada, whose drumming you heard as I was introduced, and whose words, writings, artwork, and music so vividly tell their stories.

I especially want to start by honouring those women who are with us who have the lived experience about which we presume to speak. I urge you to continue to unite and together to challenge and hold us accountable for all we say and do, not just here, but in our daily work and lives, especially when we try to describe or represent your realities.

Some of you know that I nearly was not here this conference… Five weeks ago today, corrections nearly succeeded in killing an Aboriginal woman whose life journey exemplifies the outrage of the interconnectedness of economic/corporate, social, political context of globalization and the mushrooming of the prison industrial complex. Crime and criminalization are theories and always remember that it is no accident who is criminalized. That is why they have started coming for the advocates, activists and allies…More about that later, first I must talk about Sandy…

This woman started her time in prison more than 28 years ago. Like too many Aboriginal women, she had first endured the impact of the genocidal colonization tactics that have nearly decimated too many families and communities – nearly, but not quite.

Raped of her family, community and cultural identity in residential schools, as a 17 year old her survival skills were criminalized by the same white, middle class, male state that started this process when she was a child. She started with a very short sentence but her reflex to survive and her refusal to bend to the authority of the ‘Man’, resulted in the accumulation of what is now more than 28 years in prison – most of the last 15 years of which have been in segregation.