Why Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe harassed King Charles

Lidia Thorpe is no stranger to controversy and this isn't the first time she's expressed her views on the British monarchy.

The Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman has been a Senator for Victoria since 2020, the first Aboriginal senator from that state.

She has previously been active in Indigenous activism – she also worked as chair of the Naidoc (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) for the state of Victoria, an organization that works to recognize Australians and about First Nations cultures and theirs Cultures enlighten stories.

When she was sworn into parliament in 2022 after being re-elected, she described the late queen as a colonizer.

“I, Sovereign Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and give true allegiance to the colonizing majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said. when she was sworn in.

After criticism from other senators, she then repeated the oath in printed form.

So Monday's incident would not have come as a big surprise to anyone who follows Australian politics. Lidia Thorpe has made her views clear: During the British settlement, numerous indigenous peoples were massacred and the scars of colonization are still clearly visible to many of Australia's indigenous people.

Whether you agree with Lidia Thorpe's approach or not, the fact is that there are large differences between First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians on many indicators, including education, health and life expectancy.

Last year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a young Indigenous man was more likely to go to prison than university, which was borne out by statistics. as ABC showed.

And between 2020 and 2022, the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was estimated eight years shorter as non-Indigenous Australians.

“I wanted to send a clear message to the king of England that he is not the king of this country, he is not my king, he is not sovereign,” Thorpe told the BBC after being removed from the Great Hall following heckling. “To be sovereign, you have to come from this country. He’s not from this country.”

She continued.

“How can he stand up there and say he is the king of our country – he has stolen so much wealth from our people and our country and he has to give it back. And he must lead talks about a peace treaty in this country,” she said.

“We can lead this, we can do this – we can be a better country, but we cannot bow to the colonizer, whose ancestors that he spoke of there are responsible for mass murder, for mass genocide.”

One of Lidia Thorpe's biggest complaints is the fact that Australia is the only Commonwealth nation that has never signed a treaty with its indigenous peoples. She pushed for it as a priority.

For them, last year's referendum on a Voice to Parliament – a body made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to advise Parliament on Indigenous issues – was a distraction from what was important – a treaty.

Australians voted strongly against the proposal and she was among the minority First Nations people who also voted no.

She told the BBC at the time that The Voice was about “assimilating us into the colonial constitution to make us nice, nice little Indigenous Australians who continue to be oppressed by the colonizer.”

But she was in the minority among First Nations who did so. Regions with high proportions of Indigenous Australians voted overwhelmingly yes, but Aboriginal people make up almost 4% of Australia's population. Nationally, just over 60% of voters across Australia voted against it.

Not all indigenous leaders seem concerned through royal visits like Lidia Thorpe.

Allira Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, said she respected the late queen and even described her as “beautiful”.

What about King Charles' current visit?

“I don't think it's that important. We are our own country,” Allira Davis told the BBC before Lidia Thorpe harassed him in Canberra.

“It's really, really important to understand the history of what happened in this country. We are no longer just a white country. We are a very brown country. We are a very multicultural country.

“So I’m all for becoming a republic, but we need to look at recognizing our First Nations people.”

Although Lidia Thorpe reflects a view shared by many about the damage that colonization has done – and continues to do – not everyone agrees with her approach.

Local media have reported that it was difficult for former colleagues to work with her.

But Lidia Thorpe – who is now an independent after leaving the Greens over the party's support for the Yes vote in the referendum – is unlikely to change course. She believes that the king must play a greater role in eliminating the evils of the past.