Music

A.B. Original Used Their Splendour Set To Call For Justice For Elijah Doughty

"How do we unite when you keep killing our kids?"

by Tom Clift  24 July 2017

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Indigenous hip-hop duo A.B. Original used their performance at Splendour In The Grass over the weekend to protest the verdict in the trial of a man who caused the death of 14-year-old Indigenous boy Elijah Doughty.

Doughty died in August last year after he was run over by a Kalgoorlie man, who believed the teenager had stolen his motorbike. On Friday the man was found not guilty of manslaughter, and was instead sentenced to three years in jail on the lesser charge of dangerous driving occasioning death.

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On Sunday, A.B. Original used a photo of Doughty as a backdrop for their set in the Mix Up tent, and later led the crowd in a chant of “no peace, no justice”.

The group was also joined on stage by Australian music legend Paul Kelly for an updated rendition of their Like A Version cover of Kelly’s iconic track ‘Dumb Things’. “This is going out to my brother Elijah that got failed / dealing with that disaster that that driver’s there and not jail,” sung Trials.

“When it comes to a situation like Elijah’s, and the response and the reaction, like people trying to justify what happened because he allegedly stole a motorbike, that is indicative of Australia’s relationship with indigenous Australians,” Briggs told HuffPost Australia after the performance. “How do we unite when you keep killing our kids?”

Trials told the publication that Doughty should have had the opportunity to make mistakes without losing his life.

“That’s how you grow as a human,” he said. “[It’s] how you deal with those mistakes, that’s what it’s all about. Your rite of passage is literally fucking up until you figure out what is right and what’s wrong. Holy shit, I did some dumb shit when I was a kid. I do dumb shit as an adult. But that don’t never justify someone’s life being taken from them.”