Aboriginal Australia has struggled for a very long time to have its voice heard by British monarchs. Now it is King Charles’ turn.
Indigenous Australia has long experienced the frustration of trying to deliver its cries of pain and outrage to the royal family.In 1933, Cooper and fellow members of the Australian Aborigines’ League began gathering signatures for a petition to be sent to King George V, asking him, among other things, to intervene to prevent the genocide of “the Aboriginal race” and to grant Indigenous people a voice in parliament.
It asked that the King act “to prevent the extinction of the Aboriginal race; to secure better living conditions for all; and to afford Aboriginal representation in parliament”.And then, in 1938, it turned it down. Those efforts were not helped when, on her first visit to Australia in 1954, organisers erected screens so she could not see the humpies in which Aboriginal people lived on The Flat at Mooroopna, near Shepparton, as her motorcade drove by.
As the protests and number of petitions grew, the Queen’s attention appeared to sharpen, according to a 2022 retrospective by Dan Butler on SBS/NITV. As Sydney – and much of Australia – celebrated and protested on January 26, 1988, Burnum raised the Aboriginal flag beneath the white cliffs of Dover and claimed England on behalf of Aboriginal Australia.Credit:The Queen’s efforts to understand and listen to Indigenous Australians eventually peaked in 1999 when she met a delegation of senior Aboriginal figures at Buckingham Palace.
Gatjil Djerrkura, Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue, Peter Yu, Professor Marcia Langton and Patrick Dodson, stand in front of Buckingham Palace on October 13, 1999, after meeting Queen Elizabeth II.Reports that the delegation would ask for an apology from the Crown were not realised, but the discussion was said to have touched on reconciliation and the continuing pain the British invasion had caused Indigenous communities.
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