An Indigenous senator has intensified her criticism of King Charles III, again accusing the British monarch of complicity in the "genocide" against Australia's First Nations peoples and declaring on Wednesday she will not be "shut down." Sen. Lidia Thorpe's comments followed an encounter with the monarch at a parliamentary reception Monday where she was escorted out after shouting at him for British colonizers taking Indigenous land and bones, the AP reports. Despite facing political and public backlash, Thorpe was resolute in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and said she would continue to press for justice.
"The colonial system is all about shutting Black women down in this country," Thorpe said. "For those that don't agree with what I have said and what I have done, I can tell you now there are elders, there are grassroots Aboriginal people across this country and Torres Strait Islander people who are just so proud."
- "I have decided to be a Black sovereign woman and continue our fight against the colony and for justice for our people," she added.
- Thorpe highlighted the ongoing harm to Australia's First Nations peoples, including holding on to the remains of Indigenous ancestors. "I'm sorry, Charlie, but you can't come here and think you can say a few nice words about our people while you still have stolen goods. You are in receipt of stolen goods, which makes you complicit in theft," she said.
- Thorpe also pressed on the endemic social disadvantage that Indigenous Australians continue to experience and said it was being papered over by platitudes that fail to address the systemic issues.
- Asked by the ABC if she had renounced the parliamentary oath of allegiance to the monarchy she recited in 2022, Thorpe said: "I swore allegiance to the queen's hairs. If you listen close enough, it wasn't her 'heirs', it was her 'hairs' that I was giving my allegiance to, and now that, y'know, they are no longer here, I don't know where that stands." The ABC notes that in video of the swearing-in, it appears that Thorpe did pronounce "heirs" as "hairs."
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