The only thing that led to the abuse by Northern Territory youth detention centre guards being exposed on Four Corners on Monday, apart from hundreds of other incidents, was the presence of working video cameras, former youth detainee and prison inmate Mervyn Eades has said.
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Mr Eades, 46, who was incarcerated for more than 18 years between the ages of 13 and 31, is one of a group of indigenous community leaders who want the terms of reference of the royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory extended to cover the broader issue of indigenous suicide.
He and other participants in this week's National Suicide Prevention Conference in Canberra said an epidemic of suicide and self-harm, particularly among the young, was tearing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities apart.
"The royal commission into the Northern Territory juvenile detention system is a positive step," Perth-based researcher with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project, Gerry Georgatos, told Fairfax Media.
"But that's not going to reduce the juvenile detention population and it's certainly not going to stop traumatised young people taking their lives."
A royal commission into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides would "incorporate juvenile detention and the reasons that drive people into incarceration, ruination and contemplating taking their lives".
Mr Eades, who said his 18½ years in custody for property crimes and drug charges was not unusual among indigenous Western Australian men, founded support service Ngalla Maya to help others avoid spending the bulk of their lives in custody.
Being locked up as a child had been horrific and he said such experiences were a big contributor to suicides and self-harming in the indigenous community.
"I was in Longmore Detention Centre [and] Riverbank Detention Centre as a juvenile. I've seen [15-and-16 year-old] boys taken down the back and belted up [by guards]," he said.
"It's hurtful to the spirit to see it happen to another one of our brothers. But it also sets a fire, that survival instinct within us."
For many that fire just wasn't enough.
"In 18½ years I've seen 11 or 12 people cut down and dragged out into the hallway, a sheet tucked over them, and then had to walk past them," he said. "That has an impact on us too."
Mr Georgatos said it was deceptively easy for the broader Australian community to overlook the human cost of the indigenous suicide epidemic.
"At one community I attended three funerals in five days. The three graves were lined up in a row; the last was that of a 15-year-old girl," he said.
Philamena McKenzie, a 20-year-old adolescent sexual health worker with GREATS Youth Services at Maningrida in Arnhem Land, said it was hard to say what drove a 15-year-old to take her own life.
She cited a lack of support facilities, including youth centres and services such as Lifeline and the Kids Help Line, as contributing factors.
"[Often young indigenous people] don't have access to guidance when they are experiencing racism, intergenerational trauma and feelings of isolation and loneliness," she said.
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