Thousands of people attended Invasion Day rallies across Australia on Thursday, where First Nations speakers called for action on deaths in custody and an end to the removal of Aboriginal children, and – in many locations – made a case against an Indigenous voice to parliament being enacted before a treaty.
The referendum on a constitutionally enshrined First Nations advisory body, as first proposed in the Uluru statement from the heart, is due to be held later this year and was a prominent topic at Thursday’s events, which are held each year to mourn and protest Indigenous dispossession on what is officially Australia’s national day.
