The staggering omission that led to Deaths Inside, the tally tracking Indigenous deaths in custody

Guardian Australia’s Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam at home in Sydney. ‘Our people were very rarely given voice,’ she says. ‘On deaths in custody we were just the nameless, faceless dead.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

In cities across Australia in 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests erupted around the world, the number 432 was everywhere – displayed on banners at rallies and at marches.

“That number didn’t exist before we published Deaths Inside,” says Calla Wahlquist, one of the Guardian Australia journalists behind the massive data-based project.