Indigenous Australian senator Lidia Thorpe referred to Queen Elizabeth II as a "colonizing" Queen as she read the nation's oath of loyalty on Monday.
Thorpe, a senator for the Green Party from Victoria, raised her fist as she approached the parliament's altar to take the oath. The senator's promise to support the 96-year-old British monarch, still Australia's head of state, was met with hesitation.
As she reluctantly vowed to serve the 96-year-old monarch, who is still Australia's head of state, Greens Senator Thorpe raised her right fist in a Black Power salute.
"I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising her majesty Queen Elizabeth II," Thorpe said per Independent.
Australia's Labor Senate president Sue Lines interrupted Thorpe afterward and urged the Indigenous senator to recite the oath as printed on the card before her. There were also complaints from other senators in the chamber about Thorpe's activities.
"You're not a senator if you don't say it properly," one of her colleagues says off-camera (per Insider).
Thorpe followed the directions and seemed to be giggling as she swore "true allegiance" to the Queen.
Thorpe proclaimed on Twitter after saying the vow as required: "Sovereignty never ceded."
PEOPLE mentioned that the British government called Indigenous Australians "terra nullius" — meaning land of no one — despite having one of the planet's oldest civilizations to legalize the Western country's conquest of the area.
Australia was a British colony for more than 100 years, settled as a penal colony where Indigenous residents were expelled or killed. Despite becoming a separate country in 1901, the country joined the Commonwealth, a political alliance of 56 members led by Queen Elizabeth.
An estimated 20,000 Indigenous people were killed in conflicts as a result of the dispute for land ownership between Australia's aboriginal tribes and the country's colonizers.
According to the Australian War Memorial, thousands of other indigenous people perished from sickness and other effects of European colonisation.
Australia is no longer a British colony, but it nonetheless maintains a constitutional monarchy, with the Queen continuing to serve as the country's head of state.
Thorpe, a member of the Australian Green Party and a descendant of First Nations tribes in Australia, has advocated for a hotly contested treaty between the Australian government and Aboriginal peoples to preserve their rights.
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