Melbourne, Australia – The image is striking.
Draped in a possum-skin cloak Senator Lidia Thorpe entered her first day in the Australian Federal parliament last September with her right fist raised in a Black Power salute.
In her left hand, she carried a stick engraved with 441 stripes representing the number of Indigenous people to die in custody since a landmark Royal Commission in 1991.
Thorpe tells Al Jazeera she raised her fist “as a sign of resistance and as a sign of our struggle and in solidarity with Black people across the world”.
She also described the responsibility as “carrying the voice of my people into a place which denied our rights for so long” and confirmed her intent: “I’m not saying anything different to what the people on the ground are calling for.”