«You are not our king. Give us back our lands”

Lidia Thorpe interrupts Charles of England‘s speech at the Australian Parliament in Canberra” alt=”Aboriginal Senator Lidia Thorpe interrupts Charles of England’s speech at the Australian Parliament in Canberra”/>

Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe interrupts Charles of England’s speech at the Australian Parliament in Canberra – ANSA

“This is not your land, you are not my king.” With this cry, Aboriginal Senator Lidia Thorpe interrupted the speech that Charles of England was giving to the Australian Parliament in Canberra. A verbal attack rather than a protest. “Give us back our land and everything you have stolen from us, the bones and skulls of our dead, our children, our people”, he thundered as he approached the stage of the Great Hall from which the sovereign, with Queen Camilla sitting next to him, he had just greeted the audience. The demonstration degenerated into a very serious accusation: “You are a genocide.”

The exit of the independent senator, wrapped in a traditional possum skin cloak typical of the indigenous population, was judged “eccentric” and “disrespectful” by the same representatives of the Aboriginal community present at the ceremony. His was an anti-colonial regurgitation. Australia, of which King Charles is now head of state, was a British colony for more than a century. At the end of the 19th century, thousands of Aboriginal people were killed, imprisoned or displaced to make room for the English “masters”. A wound that was never healed, not even after independence in 1901. The Crown is also aware of it: Charles, in the ceremony, had not surprisingly paid homage to the indigenous people by defining them as “guardians” of Australia.

The sovereign’s tour of Oceania is not easy. It is the first so long (nine days) and so far from London (also scheduled to stop in Samoa) after the cancer diagnosis at the beginning of the year. Elizabeth’s heir also took into account having to manage possible republican demonstrations. The absence of the premiers of the six Australian states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania) at a banquet organized in his honor by the head of government, Anthony Albanese, was interpreted as a slap in the face to the monarchy. According to polls, however, Australians are not yet ready to become a republic. Now it is time, this is the compromise aired by Carlo himself, to “reinvent” an old friendship and to undertake “the difficult path of reconciliation” together.