Lidia Thorpe

Aug 30, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Lidia Thorpe

We remember the image. In a bare, concrete prison cell, a child is strapped at the ankles, wrists and neck to a mechanical restraint chair. He has been stripped from the waist up. We can’t see his face because his head, slumping forward, is wrapped tightly in a white spit hood. Eight years ago, this image of Dylan Voller, obtained from inside the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, was broadcast on ABC TV’s Four Corners program. The nation was shaken.

Jun 14, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Lidia Thorpe

On June 4, as National Reconciliation Week came to a close, another First Nations person died in custody in Port Lincoln, South Australia. This young man, just 23 years old, is the 568thFirst Nations person on record to die in custody in the 33 years since the 1991 royal commission handed its recommendations to the government. Very few people in this country would have heard about his death. Deaths in custody are so commonplace and predictable they’re barely considered newsworthy.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebigsmoke.com.au | Deb Turney |Lidia Thorpe |Ingeborg van Teeseling |Rob Idol

Mabo Day honours what progress we have made in the last 32 years toward Reconciliation. But more needs to be done – now, more than ever. It’s Mabo Day, and the final day of National Reconciliation Week 2024. 32 years ago today, Torres Strait Islander, Eddie Koiki Mabo, challenged the Australian legal system, and the doctrine of “terra nullius”.

Dec 3, 2023 | theguardian.com | Lidia Thorpe

Following the failed voice to parliament referendum, the whole country is wondering what’s next. After all the hype leading up to 14 October, the Albanese government has gone completely quiet on how it intends to progress First Nations justice. It has not provided a plan B, when people are yearning for one. There is clearly momentum to progress justice for our people and it is so important not to lose this.

Oct 13, 2023 | sbs.com.au | Lidia Thorpe

This year has been a hard one for my people. The referendum, portrayed by the government as the solution to bringing justice to First Peoples in this country, has instead divided and hurt us. The government has used that pain for a political campaign that paints them as saviours, the solution to our "unique issues", asking us to forget that it is they themselves that write the laws, build the prisons, and fund the police who target us. The day the colony was established, it started killing us.