Independent federal senator Lidia Thorpe's frank address to King Charles during her visit to the Australian Parliament has made headlines around the world.
Reactions have been mixed. Many have criticized Thorpe's decision to cut short the event, calling the 51-year-old's behavior “disrespectful” and “grandiose.”
The federal Conservative opposition is considering bringing a no-confidence motion against Thorpe, a woman from Gurnai Gunditjmara and Djab-Wurrung., when parliament resumes on November 8.
Others, such as Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi, support Thorpe's views and his right to express them directly to the king.
“It is a fact that the British committed genocide here. “It is a fact that its racist legacy is still alive in Australia today and it is absolutely necessary to resist and confront it,” Faruqi said.
As she was led out of the reception in Canberra on Monday, Thorpe shouted several statements about the situation of indigenous people in Australia.
“The truth is that this colony is built on stolen land, stolen wealth and stolen lives,” Thorpe said in a statement immediately afterward.
Thorpe later said he protested to highlight Australia's poor record on Indigenous deaths in custody, child removals and the need for a treaty.
“We have 24,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in [and] out of home care by 2024: it's worse than the stolen generation. We have over 600 deaths in custody that we know of. That doesn't include babies who have died in the system,” Thorpe told the ABC on Tuesday morning.
So how do Thorpe's claims compare?
The Crown has 'committed heinous crimes' against First Nations people
Thousands of Aboriginal men, women and children were murdered by British troops and later by government forces acting on instructions from the crown, in a deliberate effort to eradicate all resistance to colonization.
Almost half of all border massacres were carried out by colonial forces.
This finding was made by the first major research project to document border violence in Australia, led by Newcastle University emeritus professor of history Professor Lyndall Ryan.
Professor Ryan and her team's eight-year study of the colonization of Australia concluded: “From the moment the British invaded Australia in 1788, they encountered active resistance from Aboriginal and South Islander landowners and custodians. Torres Strait. In the border wars that continued into the 1920s, border massacres were a defining strategy for containing and eradicating that resistance. “As a result, thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and children were killed.”
Request a treaty
Despite this legacy of border conflict, no treaty has ever been negotiated between Aboriginal and Island Nations and the Commonwealth.
Because of this, according to the Human Rights Commission, state institutions and laws, including the national constitution, have been developed without any negotiation with First Nations.
Calls for treaties go back decades. A line is often drawn from the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition, in which the Yolngu (the indigenous people of northeastern Arnhem Land) asserted sovereignty over lands where the federal government had permitted a bauxite mine, to 1988, when the Treaty 88 campaign took off amidst large Aboriginal protests against the bicentenary of European colonization.
In June of that year, the traditional owners presented the barunga declaration to Bob Hawke, who promised there would be a treaty by the end of 1990. That did not happen.
Activists like Senator Thorpe say that until a treaty is signed there can be no peace or reconciliation between indigenous people and the crown.
Aboriginal child removals
Aboriginal children were systematically separated from their families, communities and culture, and many were never returned, under assimilation laws and policies adopted by all Australian governments until 1970.
The children were placed in institutions, fostered or adopted by non-indigenous families. Many suffered harsh and degrading treatment, sexual abuse and were often indoctrinated into the belief that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were inferior, or that their parents were dead or unloved.
It is estimated that between one in 10 and possibly up to one in three indigenous children were separated from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970.
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In 2023, 22,328 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were in out-of-home care. Indigenous children were 10.5 times more likely to be in OOHC than non-Indigenous children according to data collected by SNAICC, the National Advocates for Aboriginal Children and Families.
Under the “close the gap” deal, Australian governments have promised to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children by 45% by 2031. That target is unlikely to be met. In fact, the federal government's own data says that nationally the removal rate of Aboriginal children is actually getting worse.
“The reasons for the over-representation of Indigenous children in child protection foundations are complex,” according to a 2019 report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
AIHW said the legacy of past forced removal policies (known in Australia as the stolen generations), as well as poverty and generational disadvantage, were among the underlying causes.
Deaths in custody
At least 576 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in police and prison custody since 1991, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology database.
The National Deaths in Custody Program has tracked Indigenous deaths in prison, police custody and youth detention since 1980. But it only began tracking in current time in 2023, after decades of calls from advocates and family members who lost loved ones. .
Since January, 18 Indigenous people have died in custody. In the last 12 months, two children have died in child detention centers in Western Australia.
Nationally, the incarceration rate for Indigenous adults is worsening.
Last week, the Northern Territory lowered the age of criminal responsibility to ten years. The Queensland government suspended its Human Rights Act to imprison children in adult police care homes; the Victorian government has backtracked on its commitment to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14; and New South Wales has tightened bail laws for young people.
Repatriation of human remains
UK institutions hold thousands of artefacts stolen from indigenous communities during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The British Museum holds human remains, listed in a macabre spreadsheet, from Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania, as well as others whose provenance is unknown. These include a baby shroud taken from Cape York, skulls of men and women from the Northern Territory, as well as cultural artefacts such as masks, clubs, knives and spears made from human bone.
The British Museum Act 1963 specifically prohibits the museum from disposing of its holdings. The National Heritage Act 1983 prevents trustees of institutions including the V&A, Science Museum and others from removing objects unless they are duplicates or beyond repair.
Sovereignty, apology and reparation
Thorpe's definition of sovereignty refers to indigenous connections to the land, not loyalty to the crown.
“Our sovereignty is on the ground. It is in the waters. It's in our songs. That's what this country is made of. We come from the land and we are of the land,” Thorpe told Guardian Australia.
“You cannot go to a foreign country and claim sovereignty when you are not from there… for the so-called King of England, for him to claim or think that he has a legitimate claim over this country and that he is sovereign.” “It's just not possible.”
Thorpe said the king should apologize as a form of reparation and that crown lands should be returned to the First Peoples.
“Whoever wears that crown takes charge of the wealth, a transfer of wealth occurs. Well, what about the transfer of responsibility? Who is responsible? He is destined to be a king with power. You can use it for good.”
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