King Charles faced protests during his visit to Australia’s Parliament House when independent senator Lidia Thorpe shouted “you are not my King” just after the monarch finished his address on the second day of his official engagements.

Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian woman, interrupted the ceremony in Canberra, accusing the monarchy of genocide and declaring, “This is not your land, you are not my King.” Security escorted her away after about a minute.

Aboriginal elder Aunty Violet Sheridan, who had earlier welcomed the King and Queen, called Thorpe’s protest “disrespectful,” adding that Thorpe did not speak for her.

Despite the disruption, the ceremony continued without reference to the incident, and the royal couple greeted hundreds of people waiting outside.

Thorpe, an independent senator from Victoria, is a strong advocate for a treaty between Australia’s government and its First Nations people, who emphasize they never ceded their sovereignty or land to the Crown.

After the protest, Thorpe told the BBC she wanted to send a clear message to King Charles, asserting, “To be sovereign you have to be of the land. He is not of this land.”

She urged the King to instruct the Australian Parliament to discuss a peace treaty with First Nations peoples, saying, “We cannot bow to the coloniser whose ancestors are responsible for mass murder and genocide.”

Thorpe, who wore a traditional possum skin cloak during the protest, has been vocal about colonialism and had to repeat her oath when sworn in as a senator in 2022 after criticizing the late Queen Elizabeth II as “colonising.”