Lydia Thorpe: The Indigenous Voice (nd-aktuell.de)

Five years ago, the Green Party politician from the Gundetmara tribe was the first Aboriginal representative in the Victorian Parliament, and Lydia Alma Thorpe now represents the southeastern state in the Australian Senate. At Monday’s swearing-in, Thorpe veered off the script. She stood before Parliament in Canberra with a raised fist and swore allegiance to Almighty God and as an “independent citizen” of “the colonist Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II”. Conservative MPs and the media reacted angrily to the insult to old habits. After all, the country in the southern hemisphere is part of the Commonwealth, according to its constitution, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is also the head of state of Australia. Thorpe flaunts such traditions and the national flag with the Union Jack in the upper left corner. You talk about a colonial regime that illegally occupied the country. As a Member of Parliament, she wants to scratch it hard. In addition to indigenous issues, women’s rights and social issues are high on Thorpe’s agenda, and billionaires want to ask them to pay for the common people.

Born in 1973 in the Melbourne suburb of Carleton, Lydia Thorpe inherited her activism for Indigenous causes from her mother, Alma. Having become a mother at the age of 17, the single parent later earned a degree in Public Administration from Swinburne University. In the Green Party, she was one of the founders of the First Nations Network, an association of representatives of Australian Aboriginal peoples. She was elected to the Victorian Parliament in 2017 to replace the deceased MP. In September 2020, Thorpe secured 12 Victorian seats in the upper house of the Federal Parliament for the first time. At that time, a stick showed 441 degrees. They represented the indigenous people who died in prison.