Who is Lidia Thorpe? Australian senator who shared cartoon of King Charles beheading
Aboriginal Australian senator Lidia Thorpe staged a protest against King Charles after his speech at Parliament House in Canberra.
Watch: 'You are not my King' - Australian senator heckles Charles
The Australian senator who shouted "You are not my king" at King Charles has deleted a cartoon image of the monarch in which he was beheaded.
Charles was heckled on Monday by Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal independent senator who is a fierce campaigner for Indigenous people's rights and has a history of criticising the monarchy.
He was confronted again by First Nations activists on Tuesday, with one Indigenous elder telling the King they wanted "sovereignty", while an Aboriginal protester was arrested at the Sydney Opera House.
It followed Thorpe's verbal attack on the King after a speech he made at Parliament House in Canberra, when she shouted at him, "This is not your land, you are not my king, you are not our king", before she was escorted out of the room by security.
Thorpe then posted a cartoon on her Instagram stories that showed the King after being beheaded, but she later removed the image, writing: “Earlier tonight, without my knowledge, one of my staff shared an image to my Instagram stories created by another account. I deleted it as soon as I saw.
"I would not intentionally share anything that could be seen to encourage violence against anyone. That’s not what I’m about.”
On Tuesday, the final day of the King and Queen Camilla's tour of Australia, Indigenous activist Wayne Wharton was arrested at the Sydney Opera House where the royal couple were visiting.
He was reportedly arrested after shouting anti-monarchist slogans and refusing a police order to move on.
Wharton called Charles the "king of thieves" and, like Thorpe, had shouted, "He's not my king", before many of the crowd waiting for the couple shouting back at him, "God save the King".
Wharton had also protested outside a Sydney church service the couple attended on Sunday, saying: "We are asking King Charles respectfully to begin the process of decolonisation, to join with the Australian government and negotiate with the Aboriginal people for reparations for the illegal settlement and colonisation of so-called Australia.”
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Indigenous elder Allan Murray appeared to reference Thorpe's attack - and the desire for sovereignty - when he met the King at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) in Sydney.
Murray, from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, told the King: “Welcome to country. We’ve got stories to tell, and I think you witnessed that story yesterday in Canberra, but the story is unwavering and we’ve got a long way to achieve what we want to achieve and that’s our own sovereignty. But welcome to Gadigal land.”
There has been a mixed reaction to Thorpe's protest, with many Australians backing her desire to break away from the monarchy.
However, the country's prime minister Anthony Albanese said her actions were "disrespectful" and "not the standard of behaviour Australians rightly expect of parliamentarians".
Aboriginal elder Aunty Violet Sheridan told the Guardian Australia: "Lidia Thorpe does not speak for me and my people, and I’m sure she doesn’t speak for a lot of First Nations people."
Who is Lidia Thorpe?
The 51-year-old politician has a long history of activism, protest and defending the rights of Australia's Indigenous people, as well as publicly criticising the monarchy.
She has been the senator for Victoria since 2020 and is the first Aboriginal senator from that state.
Thorpe had been a member of the Greens and was the party's deputy leader in the Senate but quit her position after revelations she had a relationship with Dean Martin, the former head of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang, while she was serving on the parliament's law enforcement committee.
She left the party entirely to sit as an independent senator in 2023 over its backing for the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum, which she opposed, instead calling for a treaty process with the Aboriginal people.
Thorpe, an Aboriginal woman of Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjmara descent, was born in 1973 and grew up in Housing Commission flats in Collingwood, Melbourne, and became a single mother at the age of 17 - she has three children.
She was declared bankrupt in 2013 and said that it had resulted from domestic violence, and was discharged from bankruptcy in 2016.
In 2017, Thorpe won a by-election as a Greens party candidate to take her seat in the Victorian state parliament, the first Indigenous woman to do so.
Although she lost that seat a year later, she was preselected in 2020 to become a Greens senator in the federal parliament. She wore a traditional Aboriginal possum-skin cloak when being sworn in and raised her fist in a "Black power" salute.
In 2022, after being re-elected, Thorpe criticised the monarchy by referring to the then Queen as "the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II" during her swearing-in ceremony. She was forced to take the oath again, removing her reference to "colonising".
During an Australian national day of mourning following Elizabeth II's death in September of that year, Thorpe protested in an "abolish the monarchy" demonstration in Melbourne, in which she covered her hands in fake blood.
Thorpe said: "This is what today is about, the Crown has blood on their hands. Our people are still dying in this country every single day."
In May 2023, Thorpe dressed in Elizabethan costume and sat down with a man wearing a King Charles mask as part of a protest against his coronation.
In February 2023, Thorpe was roved from the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade after she lay down in front of a float to protest against the presence of police.
The following month, she protested against an anti-transgender rights rally, which included British activist Kellie-Jay Keen, outside Parliament House.