Who is Lidia Thorpe? What you need to know about the Australian senator who heckled the King

Thorpe, a senator for the state of Victoria, has long been known for her history of activism for progressive causes and Indigenous rights with several of her public demonstrations causing controversy.

During the second official day of King Charles’ engagements in Australia, the Indigenous senator interrupted the parliamentary reception for the Royals in Canberra by yelling her protests before being escorted away.

Here’s everything you need to know about Lidia Thorpe.

Australian senator Lidia Thorpe accused King Charles of genocide

King Charles is on his 16th official visit to Australia, and his first major foreign trip since he was diagnosed with cancer. During his second official day of engagements, he delivered a landmark speech at Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra in which he paid his respects to the “traditional owners of the lands”.

However, toward the end of his speech Senator Lidia Thorpe verbally began to protest the King’s sovereignty over Australia.

She claimed that “genocide” had been committed against the indigenous people of Australia, demanding that King Charles “give us our land back”.

She could be heard yelling: “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.”

As she was ushered from the hall by security, Thorpe also shouted: “This is not your land, you are not my King, you are not our King.”

It is among a number of protests on the matter during their Australian tour from supporters of First Nations who have been seen with “decolonise” banners at a number of events.

Following her protest, Thorpe told the BBC that she wanted to send a message to the King.

She said: "To be sovereign you have to be of the land. He is not of this land."

Her goal was to pass along the message to the King that he needed to instruct Parliament to discuss a treaty with First Peoples.

She added: "We can lead that, we can do that, we can be a better country - but we cannot bow to the coloniser, whose ancestors he spoke about in there are responsible for mass murder and mass genocide."

Lidia Thorpe has history of protests against the monarchy

It is not the first time Thorpe has protested against the British monarchy. In 2022, while she was being sworn into parliament, she called the Queen a coloniser. Afterwards, she was forced to redo her oath of allegiance.

Thorpe was elected into power at the Victorian state parliament as part of the progressive Greens party first in 2017, becoming the first Indigenous woman to do so in that chamber. She lost her seat in 2018 but was preselected in 2020 as a Greens senator for the federal parliament and re-elected in 2022.

Previously, she served as chair of the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (Naidoc) in Victoria, which works to recognise the history and culture of Indigenous Australians. As part of her activism, she has also long called for a treaty between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and the “Pay the Rent” campaign which calls for reparations.

She quit the Greens in early 2023 and has served as an independent ever since.

Her political activism includes opposing the “Uluru Statement from the Heart” an Indigenous community-led declaration calling for a voice to parliament and in 2017 she led a walkout over concerns about a loss of sovereignty and the lack of a formal guarantee of a treaty process.

She has also previously made headlines for protesting against an anti-trans rally, led by British activist Kellie-Jay Keen, outside of Parliament House in 2023. Earlier that year she was also escorted from Sydney Mardi Gras after temporarily blocking the parade in protest of the police being in attendance at Pride.

Legacy activist

Thorpe was born into a family of Aboriginal community organisers and activists and is a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung Indigenous woman.

Marjorie Thorpe, her mother, was co-commissioner for the Stolen Generations inquiry and a member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. Her grandmother, Alma Thorpe, was among the founders of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service while her great-grandmother, Edna Brown, was married to second-generation Scot James Brown.

Her sister Meriki Onus is a co-founder of the Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) collective and her uncle is activist Robbie Thorpe.

She told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2022: “I had no choice in being influenced by black activists and the black struggle of my people. I was born into it and I don’t know anything else.”

She is a single mother of three.