King charles Heckled in Australia

[Albaamy121]

Did anyone see that King Charles was heckled in Australia this week by an Australian senator, Lidia Thorpe.

She shouted at him "you are not my King, this is not your land, you have stolen our land".

Any thoughts?

I didn't see any thread on it, so I started this one.

Because in many instances, we as a country, you and I still benefit from that colonisation, from the spoils of Empire. The last reparations, from the ending of Slavery, were only paid as recently as 2015. That is completely messed up and terrible! Also all the seemingly “good” things that came from colonisation and Empire, have been thoroughly negated by the devastation and plunder, enslavement and exploitation of millions of people, over generations, throughout the globe.

I am British, and I say oh we most definitely have a lot of apologising to do, to many many people and nations. It’s time that we started the true history of Empire in schools.

I was in Ireland last week and people there were also saying they want an apology forn the UK for the
colonisaiton of ireland and Mass genocide of Irish people. One million people died after colonisation

I do think that acknowledging and apologising is a good way to acknowledge peoples hurt.

And it lets people move forward in a better way

Colonising and oppressing entire indigenous First Nations was also very dumb and inappropriate, wouldn’t you say?

** case in point Carole Middleton - I think here if you were a flight attendant and started a (for the most part) successful business and bought a multi million dollar house, educated your children well, you’d be very well respected for that. You’d definitely not be admonished for a lack of title or your house not being old enough.

Well said!

None of us in the UK personally have to be ashamed of what Britain did in the past.

But we need to acknowledge the hurt and pain that the UK caused many countries In the past. And we need to acknowledge all the millions of people that died.

And our government needs to acknowledge this, and apologise for it

I agree that Thorpe is problematic but the message is important. Australia needs to come to terms with the reality of its history and the continued impact of dispossession and generational trauma

Absolutely.

I just did a unit with my class on the Kilcoy Massacre. There is so very little online about it. What information my class found in museums and history books has been really whitewashed and glossed over. The reality is, it was horrific. I organised some of the local First Nations elders and storytellers to come into my school to share their oral recounts of the period. Heartbreaking.

Basically, their land was taken by a Scottish explorer to be set up as a sheep station. This is the land they had always lived on. They see the land as an extension of ‘self’, so seeing their land brutally being cleared was hurtful. They relied on this land for food and shelter. They were no longer allowed on the land. They became starved. They used to hunt the sheep for food. The farmers got annoyed at their sheep being stolen for food (irony). So they did something horrific. They invited the First Nations peoples to come to the land and receive a gift. The gift was bread and flour. Flour that had been laced with arsenic. This didn’t just happen in Kilcoy, it happened across the country.

And the really astonishing part of the story shared was when one of the elders told me, that is the least horrific of the mass murders that were encountered at the time.

I was very proud of my little humans who were very empathetic to the stories shared. These need to be told continually from a First Nations perspective.

This is exactly the point. Most people do not know the horrific history of the First Nation people, under colonialism. To this day, they have to fight very hard to be heard, and continuously have to jump hurdle after hurdle. It’s actually horrific.

The Voice referendum -, in 2023, and its results, clearly and shockingly illustrate this point.

A bit rich given the Australian oppression of indigenous people. Surely it’s their land actually.

She made headlines all over the world so I’d say it was a successful move. Embarrassing for who ? I am, as an Australian, not embarrsssed at all. She called him out publicly for daring to sit in parliament proudly and unapologetically and shamelessly & flaunt his power & his family’s history and in doing so a history of genocide of Aboriginal people.

If Hitler was an exiled king & his ancestors returned to Germany for a tour and to do some charity work, would that be okay ?

They were not included in the census or as part of the population of Australia prior to then.

So effectively, they were part of the fauna in the same way we do not count cats.

But as another poster just said.

Aren't the Australian people also treating the indigenous people badly?

No, this is untrue. Read the link I provided where Marcia Langston states she first heard this being stated metaphorically in the 1970s and it has grown from there. There are plenty of terrible things to discuss that have happened to Indigneous Australians. There's no need to make things up.

Some of the head nazis grandchildren do go round and do charity work actually

Rainer Hoess is the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, the Nazi commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two. Rainer has made it his life's work to speak out against hate and intolerance. He goes around and gives speeches on peace to organisations and schools

Just because your ancestors were bad doesn't mean that you will be. Each person has an individual choice .

I didn't know that! That sounds very interesting and worthwhile.

Your link was Wikipedia, which can be sketchy.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts li like this

“The 1967 vote clarified, for the first time, the citizenship status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia.

Prior to the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not counted towards Australia’s population, with estimates of Aboriginal people made by authorities responsible for native welfare.

Whilst some Aboriginal people had been counted in previous Censuses, 1971 marked the first time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were fully included in Census results.”

Genuinely interested and not a goady question but is there a point in history where the line is drawn on colonizers who have to apologise for past activity?

Is there are point of (western?) enlightenment where we knew 'collectively' that invading and taking a land from an existing settled people was wrong?

The UK was colonized by the Roman Empire - but is that just too far back in history to care about? Then the Celts, then the Anglo Saxons.

Spain - also a major colonizer in current modern history - was colonized by the Romans and the Greeks and was also a colony of England and France at one point.

Also - Australia is not a colony now - they still have Charles as a figurehead head of state but that's easily changed when they want.

Better to concentrate on the countries which are still colonies in present times:

According to the United Nations, there are 17 non-self-governing territories (NSGTs) that are still under colonial rule:
Anguilla
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Falkland Islands
Gibraltar
Montserrat
Saint Helena
Turks and Caicos Islands
United States Virgin Islands
Western Sahara

Some countries that hold these territories include the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, and the United States.

The UN has declared four decades to eradicate colonialism, with the current decade being 2021–2030. Decolonization has been one of the UN's biggest successes, with around 80 former colonies gaining independence.

I'm very glad that this thread has evolved into the exploration of abhorrent treatment of indigenous people.
I would welcome the opportunity to heckle pointless king and his sudden elevated mistress; wasn't she meant to be titled as a Consort, not queen? The adage that if a bloke marries his mistress it creates a vacancy comes to mind but he's so self absorbed I doubt that applies.

I don't think there is a line drawn until the country apologises.

For example I know in Ireland that there is huge hurt and pain caused by the UK colonisation. And it affects families to this day.

The UK have never acknowledged for or apologised for any of the wrongs it did to Ireland

The wrongs were:
Stealing the land off irish people.
Stealing the food off irish farmland which led to a famine, causing one million deaths
Wiping out the irish language. They killed anyone who spoke irish. Ireland now speaks English as a result. After they were forced to.

There is still huge suffering and pain in Ireland over all of this. The UK government has never once apologised for any of this.

None of that says that indigenous people were counted as fauna which is what you and the previous poster claimed. The word fauna does not appear in the link you provided.

Indigenous peoples were not counted in the census because the commonwealth did not have the power to do so until the referendum. Nothing to do with a "Fauna and Flora Act" that never actually existed.

Here is the ABCs RMIT fact check on the urban myth of Flora and Fauna: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-01/fact-check-1967-referendum-flora-and-fauna-voice/102798950

Its not my argument but does it really matter if they were called fauna or not.

Can't you both agree on the fact that they weren't included in the census prior to a certain date, which is the important part

You left out the countries that are not colonised by the UK anymore, but who still suffer from the colonisation

My god, I didn't realise Charles was that old.

He is a direct descendant of the people that did it. And he has never acknowledged that what happened Was wrong in any way

Why is he even in Australia? What is he achieving?