A Ngunnawal elder has rebuked Lidia Thorpe over her confrontation with King Charles, saying the Victorian senator doesn’t speak for her people and that her comments of “fuck the colony” were “disrespectful”.
Aunty Violet Sheridan, 69, met the royals as part of an official greeting party on Monday and was sitting near the king in Parliament House when Thorpe “jumped out”, marched forward and started shouting at the royals. Thorpe yelled at the king to “give us our land back”, and “you are not my king”. As she left the hall and was forced back into the foyer, Thorpe could be heard shouting: “Fuck the colony.”
Sheridan said when she greeted Charles and Queen Camilla “it was all from the heart and I said, ‘I warmly welcome the majesties to Ngunnawal land and also to Canberra,’ and it had just ended, and then she’s jumped out.
“Lidia Thorpe does not speak for me and my people, and I’m sure she doesn’t speak for a lot of First Nations people. It was disrespectful to come there and go on like that, there’s a time and place.”
The elder acknowledged the pain and suffering brought by colonisation and the legacies still being felt but she said coming together as a nation would “bring healing”.
“We have a lot of unfinished business but I don’t want to be negative,” Sheridan said. “Let’s sit down and talk together, for our next generations to bring healing.”
The royal couple are touring Australia and Samoa this week and are expected to face opposition from some First Nations people who oppose the monarchy.
Wayne Coco Wharton was in the Australian capital on Monday for what he called a day of resistance against the visit, and calling for the acknowledgment of massacres and violent dispossession in Canberra.
Wharton said he wanted to give the king an international criminal court notice for genocidal crimes but said he had been barred from getting close to the monarch.
“This is resistance,” he said, calling himself “an adversary on behalf of sovereign nations”.
“I tried to explain to the authorities, I was trying to serve a document on the king of England,” the Kooma man told Guardian Australia.
He said Britain had failed to acknowledge the country’s history and its legacy.
“All the advantage, all the wealth … is through the direct results of massacres, wars and genocide of First Nations people.”
Thorpe – a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman – said in a statement she had met and was supported by traditional owners and that she had backing from First Nations people around the country.
“This morning before the event in Parliament, I met with and was supported by Ngambri Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians from that Country, and I have the support from Blak Sovereign Movement Elders from around the whole country,” she said. “I take the lead from the Blak Sovereign Movement.
“The King is not our Sovereign, he’s not our King. I have been requesting meetings with him, but was ignored. Today I felt it was right to speak up on behalf and the Blak Sovereign Movement to call out genocide and the invasion and theft of our lands, waters and skies by the Crown.”
