However, analysis of the impacts of colonisation and trauma, on its own, cannot provide a full understanding of the causes and consequences of violence. Violence needs to be understood as a contemporary symptom of colonisation’s impacts (on Indigenous and non-Indigenous people), intersecting with gendered factors, and racialised gender inequalities and power dynamics.18 Forum participants also spoke to how the structures of the nation-state perpetuate a pattern of colonial dispossession, brutality and neglect, causing poverty and entrenching vulnerability, resulting in high rates of violence and murder against women and children, across generations.19 Throughout Wiyi Yani U Thangani, women and girls stressed how the imposition of Western patriarchy at colonisation forced gendered hierarchies, restructuring and diminishing the role of women in society, contributing to the violence they experience today. There are a range of other racialised gendered dimensions of discrimination perpetuated since colonisation, including the disempowerment and societal stereotyping of First Nations men, women and gender diverse people. The FaCtS study further details the raft of compounding factors that contribute to violence such as racism, poor housing, financial stress, alcohol and other drug use, a loss of physical, social and emotional wellbeing, and contact with the justice system amongst many other things.20 Due to these broad and overlapping factors, First Nations people predominantly prefer the term ‘family violence’ to describe the ‘range of violence that takes place in Indigenous communities, across extended families, kinship networks and broader relationships.’21 In 1999 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force made clear: A study of violence focusing on the term ‘domestic violence’ will not lead to full consideration of, and response to, the destructive effects of colonisation on Indigenous culture and social systems. The intersection of race, gender, age and power, and the disruption of the relationship between spiritual, cultural and environmental dimensions, must be considered in order to understand violence in Indigenous communities.’22 At the same time, violence against First Nations women is perpetrated by men from many cultural backgrounds and there is evidence that suggests non-Indigenous men make up a significant proportion of perpetrators.23 Similarly, sexual assault is often perpetrated by non-family members and is appropriately identified as sexual violence, rather than within the definition of ‘family violence’. Wiyi Yani U Thangani • First Nations Women’s Safety Policy Forum • Outcomes Report | 27