It’s time, King Charles, to do the right thing by the Indigenous peoples

It’s time, King Charles. It was time before this week. But surely now, it is time. The Indigenous people of this country need to hear an apology from you, on behalf of your reign and those that preceded you.

On Monday, Senator Lidia Thorpe, moved from the back of the Great Hall after the King had delivered his speech and shouted at him, and indeed the monarchy: “You are not our king. You are not sovereign. You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want treaty.”

The outburst, rightly, has drawn criticism for the manner of its delivery. It was disrespectful to our visiting monarch (whether we want one or not is another subject), who is not himself responsible for the wrongs of which Thorpe accused him. The disruption was noted around the world.

Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe disrupted a reception for the King.Credit: Getty Images

Other Indigenous people, such as Aunty Violet Sheridan, who met King Charles and Queen Camilla as part of an official greeting party, said Thorpe did not “speak for me and my people, and I’m sure she doesn’t speak for a lot of First Nations people”. This was also a charge against Thorpe during the Voice referendum.

But it was not false for the deliverer of the message. Thorpe could never be accused of using a softly-softly approach to a subject that concerns her. As a senator, she had a right to be at the occasion, and this being a democracy, she also had a right, she would argue, to speak up. She says she has written to the King, all to no avail. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says she should resign. We think not. If her words were not based on this country’s past, then her stand and position would be less tenable.

Lamentably, they are. The British government instructed Arthur Phillip on his establishing of a colony in 1788 that “you are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”. If any hurt were done to them, the offenders were to be punished. This may have aligned with the sentiment of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. It was, however, the dawning of an age of devastation and extermination on the other side of the world, as the groundbreaking map of massacres shows, as the litany of disasters visited upon Indigenous peoples has shown.

The recognition by white Australia of the past is an important step in the nation’s psyche. Kevin Rudd’s apology in 2008 to the thousands of Indigenous people who were removed from their families and communities, indeed cultures, was cathartic. Saying sorry means something. It means that as a nation, we care for everyone who constitutes that nation.

Thorpe, if one either condones or censures her tactics, is one small part of a larger reality check. Other, more significant, components are the despairing rates of Indigenous incarceration, health and education rates compared with white Australia.

After Monday’s outburst, Thorpe told the National Indigenous Times: “We all have a responsibility to our ancestors. We talk about the frontier wars and our warriors; we still have a responsibility to resist this occupation and this violent colony that we are dealing with every single day of our lives ... I can’t stay silent when there are injustices going on against our people.”

Thorpe has not always been a force for progress for Indigenous people. This masthead and many Victorians supported a “Yes” vote to acknowledge the First Australians in the nation’s constitution – a cause Thorpe publicly opposed at the recent referendum. She said at the time the referendum was an “easy way to fake progress”. Even if it were only “window dressing”, as she labelled it, it would have been a symbolic victory. The failure of this vote left many bereft of hope for a future of meaningful reconciliation in this country.

Her approach to the King may appear similarly inflammatory, but on this occasion it is a product of the ashes from which her anger has risen. In New Zealand, a treaty was entered into in 1840 between Maori tribes and the Crown. Australia has no such document. In 2022, then-New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern gave a “long overdue” apology to a Maori tribe for warmongering and breaches of that treaty.

King Charles will be in Samoa this week for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting as calls rise for reparations to be made to nations that were the victims of British slavery. The British government has said this will not happen, nor will there be an apology. On a visit to Kenya last year, Charles expressed “sorrow” and “regret” at the “wrongdoings” of the colonial era. He didn’t apologise.

It’s time, King Charles. You shouldn’t take an apology personally. In fact, it could be the zenith of your rule.

The British Empire created many fine things, but it also presided over generations of destruction. It’s time, on behalf of the monarchy, to say sorry to the living and the dead.

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