Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's talk about genocide. Genocide is considered the crime of all crimes—'genos', meaning 'tribe', and 'cide', meaning 'killing'. As Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who first defined genocide, understood it, genocide began long before World War II or the drafting of the genocide convention. Lemkin saw genocide across the colonies as the destruction of Indigenous peoples everywhere for private and imperial gain. Lemkin's definition of genocide held that cultural destruction was an essential part of any attempt to destroy a racial, ethnic, religious or minority group.

Destroying cultural items, targeting cultural leaders or places, banning cultural practices, and forced assimilation are the tools of cultural genocide. All of these were used in the bloodied history of this very colony. This element of genocide is missing from the current law. The legal definition was altered by nations that should be convicted of it. Leaving cultural genocide out of the international and domestic law was deliberate. Colonial states like Australia had to denounce the barbarism of World War II while protecting themselves from accountability for their own destruction of First Peoples.

The destruction of rock art at Murujuga is cultural genocide. Fifty thousand years of cultural history is under threat for gas. Exempting damage caused by gas emissions in the very document that gives it World Heritage status trivialises that very process. It is impossible to ignore that this colony is still committing genocide.