Lidia Thorpe has been sworn- in as the first Aboriginal senator in Victoria today. I can\u2019t explain how proud and moved I am to see Lidia achieve her goal. She cast such a striking figure proudly entering the Senate chamber, wearing a traditional possum skin cloak and holding a message stick that has been etched with 441 lines representing the Aboriginal deaths in custody since the 1990 Royal Commission investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a real shame that it has taken this long since colonisation to have the most basic and minuscule representation in the Senate let alone the Parliament. Being a woman of colour especially an Aboriginal woman in any public role is not easy. The trolls and racists always surface at times like these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can imagine it wasn\u2019t easy for her to swear allegiance to the coloniser. In her own words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s not an easy thing to do as a sovereign black woman to then swear allegiance to the Crown and the very people who caused great harm to this land and the people who belong to it,”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has done so nevertheless and hopefully her presence will be a force for good in not only upholding the rights of Aboriginal people but of all Australians who want a country free from bigotry, racism and inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is an inspiration to so many young brown girls. Its again a timely reminder that representation is so important for us and to see her proudly in that role is just so satisfying. I wish her my very best and every success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lidia Thorpe has been sworn- in as the first Aboriginal senator in Victoria today. I can\u2019t explain how proud and moved I am to see Lidia achieve her goal. She cast such a striking figure proudly entering the Senate chamber, wearing a traditional possum skin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drumberrind.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}