It’s strange how for most people living in these times of heightened valuation of sovereignty and concerns about immigrants landing up on their shores, it’s not mighty odd that countries in the past have come to a foreign land, driven its earlier inhabitants into pockets or worse, and taken it over as their own. While Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine make for grown-up dinner conversation, near-liquidation and takeover of North America and Australia are strangely viewed as ‘let bygones be bygones’. Mega-level double standards have become so normalised that historic theft of land is seen as a tut-tut cliche. Which is why a nice little reminder from Australian senator from Victoria, Lidia Thorpe, is not just refreshing, but points us to the long tail of ‘post-colonial’.
Thorpe heckled Charles Windsor, Britain’s king, who turns out to be Australia’s as well. As a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, Aussies could have made, say, Dennis Lillee or Nicole Kidman their monarch. But it’s Charles from London town. Thorpe, in the presence of the VIP Briton visiting Parliament House in Canberra, called for a treaty and accused the crown of stealing aboriginal land, repeating, ‘You are not my king.’ She deemed Charles, a representative of British imperium and beneficiary of colonialism, of being a ‘genocidalist’. Hear, hear, we say, literally.
