Independent federal senator Lydia Thorpe's apparent harassment of King Charles made global headlines during her visit to the Australian Parliament.
Reactions have been mixed. Many have criticized Thorpe's decision to cut short the event, criticizing the 51-year-old's behaviour. “disrespectful” and “magnificent.”
The conservative centrist opposition party is considering bringing a no-confidence motion against Thorpe, Gurnai Kunditjmara and the Djab-Wurung woman., When Parliament resumes on November 8.
Others, including Mehreen Faruqi, deputy leader of the Green Party, support Thorpe's views and his right to speak directly to the king.
“It is true that the British committed genocide here. “The fact that his legacy of racism is still alive today in Australia is a fact that absolutely must be resisted and confronted,” Farooqui said.
As he was led away from a reception in Canberra on Monday, Thorpe shouted several statements about the state of Aboriginal people in Australia.
“The truth is that this colony was 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 Aboriginal deaths in custody, child removals and the need for a treaty.
“We have 24,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. [and] Out-of-home care in 2024: It's worse than the stolen generation More than 600 people we know have died in custody. That system doesn't include dead babies,” Thorpe told ABC on Tuesday morning.
So how do Thorpe's claims compare?
The Crown 'commits 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 attempt to eliminate all resistance to colonialism.
Almost half of the border massacres were carried out by colonial powers.
The discovery was made by the first major research project to document border violence in Australia, led by Professor Lyndall Ryan, Emeritus Professor of History at Newcastle University.
The conclusion of an eight-year study of the colonization of Australia by Professor Ryan and his team: “From the moment the British occupied Australia in 1788, they faced fierce resistance from Aboriginal and South Islander landowners and protectors. Torres Strait. Border massacres were a defining strategy to control and eradicate that resistance in the border wars that followed in the 1920s. Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and children died as a result.
Called for an agreement
Despite a tradition of border disputes, no treaty has been negotiated between Aboriginal and Island Nations and the Commonwealth.
Because of this, according to the Human Rights Commission, government institutions and laws, including national constitutions, have been developed without any consultation with First Nations.
Calls for treaties go back decades. A line from the Yirrkala Bar Association's 1963 petition, in which the Yolngu (indigenous people of northeastern Arnhem Land) asserted sovereignty over lands where the federal government had permitted bauxite mining, until mining began in 1988. Treaty of '88 campaign, was an important tribal protest. against two centuries of European settlement.
In June of that year, the traditional owners submitted a barangay report to Bob Hawke, promising that an agreement would be reached by the end of 1990. It did not happen.
Activists like Senator Thorpe say there can be no peace or reconciliation between indigenous people and the Crown until a treaty is signed.
Expulsion of tribal children
Indigenous children are systematically separated from their families, communities and cultures, and many will never be returned, under assimilation laws and policies. All Australian governments until 1970.
Children were placed in institutions, fostered or adopted by non-tribal families. Many suffered harsh and degrading treatment, sexual abuse and were often taught that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were inferior or that their parents were dead or unloved.
It is estimated that between 1910 and 1970 one in 10 and one in three Aboriginal children may have been separated from their families and communities.
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In 2023, there were 22,328 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. Aboriginal children were 10.5 times more likely to be in OOHC than non-Aboriginal children, according to data collected by SNAICC, the national advocate for Aboriginal children and families.
Under the “Closing the Gap” agreement, Australian governments have committed to reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in OOHC by 45% by 2031. That target is unlikely to be achieved. In fact, the federal government's own data suggests that nationally the rate of removal of Aboriginal children is worsening.
According to a 2019 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), “the reasons for the under-representation of Aboriginal children in child protection resources are complex.”
The AIHW said it was a legacy of Australia's past forced removal policies, known as the Stolen Generations, as well as poverty and generational disadvantage, as one of the root 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 Custody Deaths Project has tracked deaths in prison, police custody and detention of tribal youth since 1980. But it began real-time tracking in 2023 after decades of calls from advocates and family members who lost loved ones.
Since January, 18 Indigenous people have died in custody. Two children have died in juvenile detention centers in Western Australia in the last 12 months.
Nationally, the incarceration rate for Aboriginal adults is worsening.
Last week, the Northern Territory lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years. The Queensland government has suspended the Human Rights Act to imprison children in adult police homes; The Victorian government has backtracked on its promise 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 Aboriginal people in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The British Museum holds human remains listed in a gruesome spreadsheet from Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania, and others whose provenance is unknown. These include the burial of a child from Cape York, skulls of men and women from the Northern Territory and cultural artefacts such as masks, sticks, knives and spears made from human bones.
The British Museums Act 1963 specifically prohibits a museum from disposing of its holdings. The National Heritage Act 1983 prevents trustees of the V&A, Science Museum and other institutions from defacing objects unless they are duplicates or irreparable.
Sovereignty, Forgiveness and Reparation
Thorpe's definition of sovereignty refers to tribal ties to the land, not loyalty to the crown.
“Our sovereignty is on the ground. It's in the water. It's in our letters. That's what this country is made of. We come from the land, we belong to the land,” Thorpe told Guardian Australia.
“You cannot go to a foreign country and claim sovereignty for the so-called King of England, who claims or thinks that he has a legal right over this country and that he is sovereign. “Simply impossible.”
Thorpe said that as a form of reparation the king should apologize and the crown lands should be returned to the people.
“Whoever wears that crown obtains wealth and there is an exchange of wealth. Well, what about the change of responsibility? Who is responsible? He must be a powerful king. You can use it forever.
