Senator Lidia Thorpe has called for the referendum to be cancelled in her first National Press Club address, rejecting what she called the "powerless" Voice to Parliament.
Senator Thorpe, a Gunnai Gunditjmara Djab Wurrung woman, has previously advocated for a No vote in the upcoming referendum on a constitutionally enshrined advisory body.
Rejecting the Voice as a "colonial" project, Thorpe's speech described the “continued cultural genocide” against Indigenous peoples as “our inheritance … [and] our struggle”.
That included mass incarceration, lower life expectancy, the destruction of cultural sites, and a colonial system which oppressed and exploited First peoples "just so a handful of people can profit", she said.
“We know how to care for Country, but we are not allowed to do so,” she said.
“Your laws, your metal bars, concrete and police stand in the way, keeping us from our mother [nature].”
Indigenous sovereignty 'must include veto'
Thorpe, a leading member of the Blak Sovereign Movement, described Indigenous sovereignty as “much more than just the romanticised spiritual notion” outlined in the Uluru Statement.
The independent said it must include a right to veto “anything that has a destructive impact on our mother [nature]”, and a total moratorium on the sale of land by the Commonwealth.
“We will continue to resist the colony until our sovereign peoples have freedom, and until we have regained rights over our own lands,” she said.
“It is the right to enforce our own laws, the right to economic independence, and the right to self-determine our own destiny. Our sovereignty is real.”
'Peace and treaty'
Despite her opposition to the Yes campaign, the independent senator said she would not actively work for a No vote.
"I'm investing and campaigning on ... an alternate way forward from the Voice, which is peace and treaty," she told the ABC.
"We're being conned and set up and it's not good enough. 230 years and they give us a voiceless, powerless advisory body that has parliamentary supremacy over it at all times.
"This country is not settled. A war was declared on our people; guns were fired at us when those boats hit our shores. That is an act of war. We just want peace, and justice."
Senator Thorpe also responded to reports from Tuesday that an advisory board member of Advance, a prominent conservative lobby and No vote advocate group, .
"It's water off a duck's back," she said.
Pushed on her response to the practice of calling a person's Blak heritage into question, the senator said it was a matter for individual Aboriginal nations.
"It's racist. No one has the right to question someone else's Aboriginality, unless you come from that clan or nation."
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