For more than 200 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made direct appeals to the royal family over past and current policies that have seen Indigenous people subjugated on their own lands.
In passing, the Queen leaves behind a complex legacy for First Nations people and there remain many diverse views on her decades-long reign.
The monarch made more than a dozen visits to Australia, starting at a time when Indigenous people were forced to live on missions and on the margins, with few rights.
In 1954, on her first tour of Australia, the Queen toured towns across regional Australia, including Shepparton in Victoria, the lands of the Yorta Yorta.
The Queen's procession went by "The Flats", where Aboriginal people lived in makeshift humpies, but local authorities had tried to shield the community from the monarch's view by erecting hessian screens.
"[The Queen] was in a trail of cars coming across the highway and [the local authorities] cut branches off trees and threaded them through the fence so that when she came past the area … she wouldn't see all the people camping there and ask any questions about what was happening," Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung elder Aunty Fay Carter, 87, said.
"We accepted these sort of things happening to us … but now as I've gotten older and more aware of what happened, I don't feel very good about it."
Almost half a century later, on a return visit to Australia that took in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, ACT and WA, the Queen toured the regional NSW town of Bourke.
Wiradjuri elder Frank Doolan — better known as "Riverbank Frank" — said he was "shocked and saddened" to hear of the Queen's passing.
Mr Doolan spent his formative years in Bourke and while he was not there during the momentous visit in March 2000, he said it left a positive and lasting impression on his community.
"It was lovely and they were honoured she wanted to go out there and especially to meet them," he said.
"They were surprised at how tiny she was and I guess it would be a surprise too because in many ways the Queen, and all she represents, is larger than life."
He said when he was growing up, images of the Queen stood proudly in every classroom and, although that has now changed, her influence touched many.
"Regardless of how you feel politically … I think all of us have got to agree that we have been witness to a very great and gracious woman," he said.
"As an Indigenous man in Australia, I have no problem with the idea that overnight Charles has become King Charles and I have no issue or problem with the idea that his late mother, God rest her soul, spent 70 years on the throne too."
As the world reflects on the legacy of the longest-reigning monarch in British history, Wiradjuri person Sandy O'Sullivan said some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people felt the Queen had a responsibility to enact change to better the lives of First Australians.
"There is this massive concern that everything that's happened to Indigenous people under her reign, has barely been commented on by her," they said.
"[She] has barely had any impact in terms of reparations, in terms of land back, in terms of all incursions that have occurred across the many decades that she's reigned."
Professor O'Sullivan said a lot of First Nations people were frustrated the Queen did not do more.
"We've experienced over decades that work not being done," they said.
"She had a voice that we didn't have and that voice would have gone a long way to effecting change.
"Hopefully that's what we see now."
The next generation
King Charles III will begin his reign at a time when there is growing pressure on Commonwealth nations to honour or enact treaties with Indigenous peoples, and to give First Nations people greater autonomy.
For decades, Indigenous activists have been critical of the monarchy and its role in the colonisation of many nations which remain in the Commonwealth today.
This sense of activism harks back to 1933, when Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper drew up a petition to King George V, the Queen's grandfather.
He called for representation for Aboriginal people in the Commonwealth parliament and said Aboriginal people must have a say in the laws which affected them, much like today's debate over a Voice to Parliament.
The letter and petition never reached King George V but in 2014, William Cooper's grandson passed it on to Queen Elizabeth II.
Indigenous senator Pat Dodson recently told an ABC documentary Australia needed to reckon with its colonial past in order to move on with its future.
"We really can't sever our ties with Britain until there's some restitution, some acknowledgement of how we've become dispossessed," he said.
He said when he met with the Queen at Buckingham Palace ahead of the 1999 republic referendum, he found the experience profoundly moving.
"She treated us with respect and she seriously wanted to know what our concerns were," Senator Dodson said.
"She treated us as human beings … she came across as genuinely interested in what was happening to us as First Nations."
The 1999 referendum ultimately failed but in Australian and New Zealand parliaments, there have been continued calls from Indigenous politicians for both nations to part ways with the monarchy.
Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and DjabWurrung woman, was directed to repeat the oath of allegiance for Australian parliamentarians last month after she initially described the Queen as a "coloniser".
And the Māori Party in New Zealand said this year that a split with the monarchy would "be an opportunity to re-imagine a more meaningful and fulfilling partnership".
Indigenous rights and the next generation
For the next generation of royals, engagement with First Peoples is seen as a critical component of tours and duties across the Commonwealth.
Before they left their positions as senior working members of the royal family, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, made a deliberate decision to meet with multiple Aboriginal communities.
For many Indigenous people across the Commonwealth, Meghan Markle's marriage to Prince Harry was the first time they had seen the family grapple publicly with accusations of systemic racism and a lack of diversity.
King Charles will reign in an era where there is a growing understanding of Indigenous rights and activism across the Commonwealth.
Elsewhere, including in the Caribbean, some Commonwealth members have debated cutting ties with the monarchy.
Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, were met with protests this year on a visit to Jamaica, and calls for apologies and reparations over slavery and historical mistreatment.
King Charles has signalled he's aware that nations will continue debating their place in the Commonwealth but said this year it would be "a matter for each member country to decide".
Aunty Fay Carter said she hoped to see a formal apology in the future from the royal family for the injustices inflicted upon Indigenous Australians under British colonial rule.
"It would just make us feel as though they did, or they do, care about what happened in the past … it'll just help us soften our thoughts about the monarchy," she said.
"This is their history too, not just our history and so hopefully [King Charles] will have a different attitude and might not be as conservative as the Queen was."
She said she hoped there would one day be a treaty acknowledging the past wrongs.
"It'll be good if [King Charles] can come up with something that can help us overcome some of the pain and suffering that our people have been put through by his people."
