Is King Charles responsible for the wrongs of the past? Indigenous folk are having their say

King Charles III’s first visit to Australia as the head of state has sparked mixed opinions from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people impacted by British colonisation.

Basket weaver Abe Muriata is a Girramay traditional owner and elder who has previously met the king and says he isn’t expecting an apology.

Yorta Yorta man and stolen generations survivor Ian Hamm agrees, and says Australians need to grapple with our own dark past.

“The colonisation of Australia happened in the name of the king, I think it was George III at that stage, and continued with every subsequent monarch,” he said.

“So things that were done in the name of the crown, everyone should know that history.”

This will be King Charles’s seventeenth visit to Australia, and this time he is bringing his wife Queen Camilla to Sydney and Canberra, ahead of Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Among the public engagements, they will go to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander memorial in Canberra, and the queen will have a conversation about domestic violence, as well as meeting with the charity she is a patron of, GIVIT.