‘We’re the experts in our own lives’: Victoria’s First Nations treaty body is holding its first elections

Candidate in the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria's treaty elections, Gunnai and Gunditjmara man Andrew Thorpe. Photograph: Benny Clarke

After more than two decades in the construction industry, Andrew Thorpe has decided to down tools and take a shot at politics.

But it is not the traditional political system that has governed Australia since 1901. Thorpe is running for a seat in a “new era” of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, after Australia’s first and only treaty was signed between a state government and traditional owners in November.