Royal news live: Lidia Thorpe breaks silence to tell King Charles ‘your family has our bones and skulls’

Australian senator Lidia Thorpe has made headlines around the world after denouncing King Charles following his Parliament House reception speech.

Ms Thorpe, an Indigenous woman from Victoria, has long advocated for a treaty between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to recognise their autonomy and set right historical wrongs.

Ms Thorpe, a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung mother, grandmother, is a well-known activist for Indigenous causes. Her recent actions, however, have been described as her most high-profile protest to date.

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The Indigenous senator who confronted King Charles has spoken out once more to claim that the “bones and skulls” of Aboriginal people are still in possession of the royal family.

She told Sky News hours after her appearance at parliament: “We have our bones and our skulls still in his possession, or in his family’s possession. We want that back.

“We want our land back and we want your King to take some leadership and sit at the table and discuss a treaty with us.”

Lidia Thorpe, the Indigenous Australian senator who confronted the King, has explained why she called him a “genocidalist”.

She told SkyNews: “There’s thousands of massacre sites in this country from invasion and someone needs to answer for it. He is the successor then he needs to answer.”

She went on to say: “We are the real sovereigns in the country. The King is not our sovereign. The King lives in your country [the UK]. He’s from your country he can’t be our King.

“I have the support of Aboriginal people around this country. I have the support from my grandmother, I have the support from elders around the country.”

Senator Lidia Thorpe is now speaking after confronting King Charles during his royal reception in Australia’s parliament.

After his speech, Ms Thorpe approached Charles and told him: “You are not my King”.

She is now speaking to Sky News about her decision to challenge the monarch.

“I did it for truth telling,” she told SkyNews. “Global-truth telling about the royals who caused so much devastation to not only people in this country but indigenous people around the world.”

King Charles and Queen Camilla visited the Australian National Botanic Gardens on Monday after being confronted during their reception at the country’s parliament.

On the second day of their royal visit to Australia, the couple met members of the public as they also visited the National Bushfire Behaviour Research Laboratory on their visit to Canberra.

Lidia Thorpe’s colleagues have responded to her confrontation of King Charles during his visit to the country’s parliament.

Senator Ralph Babet took to social media to condemn Ms Thorpe’s comments, in which she told Charles “you are not my King,” and accused him of committing “genocide against our people”.

He wrote on X: “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the actions of Senator Lidia Thorpe today at Parliament House where she hurled verbal abuse at our King.

To show such utter disrespect to King Charles, who has traveled to Australia, despite ongoing cancer treatment, is disgusting. Senator Thorpe has disgraced not only herself and the Australian Parliament, but every Australian man, woman and child.

“Senator Thorpe demanded an apology from King Charles, I’d say it’s King Charles and the Australian people that should be demanding an apology from Senator Thorpe.”

The King and Queen after continuing their tour of Australia after they were confronted by an Indigenous MP during their parliamentary adress.

It is understood the King was unruffled and did not let the outburst overshadow what the royal party viewed as a wonderful day in the Australian capital, which had seen them greet hundreds of well-wishers at the national war memorial – including a sneezing alpaca.

Earlier, hundreds of people had gathered outside Australia’s parliament house for a chance to meet the royal couple.

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In his speech to the Australian parliament on Monday, Charles spoke affectionately about his relationship with Australia, a country he first visited as a teenager, saying he arrived as an “adolescent” and left more “chiselled” after his experience studying in the Outback.

He also highlighted the debt he owed to Australia’s Indigenous people.

Charles said: “In my many visits to Australia, I have witnessed the courage and hope that have guided the nation’s long and sometimes difficult journey towards reconciliation.

“Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have done me the great honour of sharing, so generously, their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom.”

During his parliamentary address on Monday, Australian senator Lidia Thorpe confronted King Charles, telling him  “You are not my King”.

She is an Indigenous independent politician and became the first Aboriginal senator for the state of Victoria in 2020.

Born into family of prominent Aboriginal activists, Thorpe regularly speaks out about the monarchy’s impact on Indigenous people.

She was sworn into parliament wearing a traditional possum-skin cloak in 2020, carrying an Aboriginal message stick with 441 marks, representing each Indigenous person who had died at the time since the 1991 royal commission into deaths in custody.

In 2022, she was forced to re-do her oath into parliament after she referred to the late Queen Elizabeth as “the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II”.

The Prince of Wales has shared the simple parenting motto he and the Princess of Wales use to keep their young children happy at an engagement.

William, 42, made the revelation while attending a game hosted by the NFL Foundation UK in London on Tuesday, where he was gifted a football for Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six.

Expressing his appreciation for the gift at the Kennington Park hockey pitch, he said: “Oh, that’s very kind. Never go home empty handed! That’s a crucial motto of being a parent.