26 January 2026 began like any other Invasion Day. I felt the usual anticipation and anxieties of what could unfold, when we bring our people together to tell the painful truths of this boodja (country) to a nation that doesn’t want to hear them. We laid out the carefully painted banners and shade, water and chairs for the Elders. People began to arrive and Uncle Herbert Bropho began the smoking ceremony to cleanse ourselves and the space.

The speakers began with a Welcome to Country from Uncle Hedley Hayward. We were on high alert, as we had received threats and warnings that March for Australia was going to try to intercept our rally and cause harm. Investigations have found that March for Australia has links to white nationalists and pro-Nazis. Receiving threats from such groups isn’t unusual — I’ve helped organise Invasion Day rallies from Naarm to Boorloo for seven years, and each year, organisers try to plan how we deal with, or avoid, such threats. As we do each year, we informed the police of the threats we received. We also organised Legal Observers, marshalls and community defenders to monitor risks on the day.

Several speakers shared stories, of massacres, of genocide, injustice and solidarity on stage. Then, police arrived at the side of the stage and seemed to be trying to get onto it. As one of the organisers, I jumped onto it myself to find out what was going on. At first I was told there was a threat, and that police required all protesters to evacuate. There were now at least thirty officers forming a line at the back of the stage and moving forward. Shortly after, another police officer told me that there was a bomb, that something had been thrown into the crowd.

One officer yelled at me: “We are not serious, we are not serious, it’s a bomb”. I asked him to clarify, and he corrected himself, I assume he had misspoken — but it illustrates the confusion and chaos unfolding on the ground in those minutes, as well as unclear police communication channels. Different people were told different things, and some were even told there were explosions, some were told it was a “packet” or a “device”. This lack of clarity, combined with how police were treating us — smirking, using force and aggression — including to Elders and people with wheelchairs and mobility aids — like we’d done something wrong, in addition to the long history of mistrust and violence between police and Aboriginal people, led to mass confusion about what was actually going on.

Within minutes, Uncle Herbert Bropho got on the microphone and calmly asked everyone to clear the area, and told the audience the police said there was a bomb. We moved to the back of Forrest Chase, where we regrouped briefly and then began to march.

I know the ancestors held us that day. We were informed by police that the threat had been real, the fuse had been lit and the device was a homemade bomb that should have detonated. Many of us would have died, including myself, had a bomb successfully exploded. I know the ancestors came through the Noongar yorga that the device hit, through the smoking ceremony and our lovingly created banners. I’m so grateful to the ancestors for protecting us, once again. I know I’ll never be the same. The trauma from what police have alleged was a targeted attack has meant some days I’m crying all day. I’m also having spiralling thoughts about what could have been and what we could have done differently as the organisers. About what it means to gather safely to call for our rights as Aboriginal peoples again.

Of course, I’m grateful to authorities for keeping us safe (those of us that weren’t harmed by poor police conduct, anyway), and I recognise the need for a solid working relationship between the police and rally organisers to address these risks in the future. I know there are lots of learnings, on all sides, about how we deal with this. But it never should have got to the point where, allegedly, a terrorist threw a live bomb into the crowd at the Invasion Day rally Boorloo on 26 January 2026, and we must make sure it never happens again. This starts with immediate Government action.

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From January 26, the identity of alleged terrorist had been protected by a suppression order — a protection that we rarely, if ever, see afforded to non-white people.

Three weeks after the attack, the alleged terrorist finally had a name: Liam Alexander Hall, thirty-two years old. The Commonwealth’s prosecutor and media outlets argued successfully for the order to be lifted, in the name of open justice. Hall lived alone and according to police was “self-radicalised”, his views escalating in recent years. The police allege that Hall threw a homemade bomb into the crowd at the Invasion Day rally and that this was a racist act of terror and hatred targeting Aboriginal people. The police have stated that he had “pro-white”, “neo-Nazi” material and “that ideology is prevalent across his access to the internet”. They additionally allege that he was acting as a “lone wolf” — which we know is a long-term strategy of the far right, to decentralise the movement and make it more difficult to apportion blame. White accused and perpetrators are always framed as “lone wolves”, rather than members of groups spouting hateful ideology and fuelling fear.

Additionally, Hall’s lawyer told the court he was too mentally unwell to appear in court on 17 February to face his terrorism charge. Framing an act of alleged terrorism or violence against mob as a case of individual “mental illness” is a grace constantly afforded to white accused and perpetrators, and we have seen this increasing in recent Black death in custody coronials.

I got this news as I was waiting in the public gallery of the WA Parliament, and I told Uncle Herbert Bropho, Uncle Hedley Hayward and Fabian Yarran, the other rally organisers sitting next to me. We were there waiting for the Premier to move a motion to condemn the alleged terror attack.

In Parliament, we heard support from all political parties assuring Aboriginal people that they “stand with us” and our right to protest on Invasion Day. Honestly, it’s quite bizarre hearing this support given the many years politicians and the media have spent demonising Invasion Day protestors and even refusing to call it an Invasion Day protest. It makes me wonder how demonstrating this support serves their individual political agendas. Are we being used as pawns in a much bigger political scheme, or is this country finally ready to reckon with its racism problem?

So far, in response, the police have charged the alleged terrorist and the WA Government has held several community meetings, moved a motion in Parliament, made statements to the media, and made some investment in mental health helplines. After the horrific Bondi terror attack, governments responded immediately (as they should) by providing a hub for impacted people to access services. Sweeping political levers were pulled, resources were mobilised, and far-reaching policy changes were introduced overnight. Every person, politician and organisation was making statements. The Prime Minister was there immediately. Antisemitism education, for example, now forms part of the national school curriculum. Meanwhile, Aboriginal groups have been advocating for our histories and languages to be taught in schools for decades, only to hear crickets in return. This alleged terrorist attack against mob deserves to be treated with the same gravity, with similar political will for structural change, yet it hasn’t been.

But the only significant policy change that the WA Government has introduced (at least publicly) are Bills to increase police powers and restrict the right to protest — without sufficient consultation.

Currently two Bills are before Parliament. The Public Order Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 proposes to give police the power to refuse rally permits if it is “likely to promote hate”, therefore restricting the right to protest. Addressing hatred and racism should not come at the expense of our right to protest. These criminal offences would apply to young people. This law, on its face, would not have stopped the alleged Invasion Day attack, and could be used disproportionately against First Nations people and Palestinians to criminalise our protesting for example, against genocide, Black deaths in custody, systemic injustice. But will they be used to stop the March for Australia protests, and therefore to address actual hatred against our people?

The second is the “Post and Boast” Bill, which seeks to criminalise people — including children — posting about illegal or anti-social activities. In effect, this law would criminalise any person posting about unauthorised protests and other non-violent direct action, with up to three years imprisonment. Police will be given excessive, discretionary powers. The Committee of Inquiry found on review that the laws would disproportionately impact children and First Nations people. Our kids are already mass incarcerated and targeted by the so-called justice system, and abused, and tortured to the point of taking in their own life in the case of Cleveland Dodd in Unit 18, in adult maximum security Casuarina prison.

Increasing the number of police, their powers, restrictions on protest and laws that will likely further criminalise our people will not make us safer. We need to address racism at its very roots. Truth-telling and accountability are the antidotes to racism and hate and are steps towards valuing Black lives. Relationship building between each other, and across difference, is another.

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Racism is killing our people in this country: in prisons, by police, in hospitals, at the hands of radicalised people.

White supremacists, generally speaking, see us — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people — as a threat to them, to their property, to their identity, to their way of life. That is why they are so repulsed by Invasion Day rallies — where we gather to tell the truth of the unspoken and unrecognised violent, colonial history and ongoing injustices that our people experience daily.

Another hard truth is that Neo-Nazis wave Australian flags because they deeply relate and connect to the idea of settler-colonial “Australia”. This idea is celebrated by “Australia Day”, held on the anniversary of Captain Arthur Philip planting a flag in Botany Bay — all the way on the other side of the country. This date also marks the beginning of the bloody massacres of the Frontier Wars, and the genocide against our people that is still ongoing to this day. “Australia” is the only nation who celebrates their national day on the anniversary of invasion.

“Australia” is founded on white supremacy: from terra nullius, to the Frontier Wars, to slavery and dispossession from our lands, to the White Australia policy, to the Stolen Generations, to current day Black deaths in custody and the destruction of country and sacred sites by mining companies. The denial of this nation’s white supremacist roots allows politicians and the media to maintain the status quo of routine police violence and Black deaths in custody. This is necropolitics in action.

I was terrified that the authorities would not charge the alleged bomber with terrorism, given that much of the media and political immediate response — and historically — has been to downplay or erase any racially motivated acts of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly around white supremacists.

WA has a long track record of this. Elijah Doughty was a fourteen-year-old Aboriginal boy from Kalgoorlie who was horrifically chased, driven over and killed by a white man maniacally pursuing him over a stolen minibike. This man was acquitted of manslaughter and only found guilty of dangerous driving causing death, and was released on parole only nineteen months later. The court, in its sentencing remarks, made no findings of racism relating to the killer, despite common knowledge of vigilante Facebook groups in Kalgoorlie regularly posting photos of youngfullas and encouraging locals to take justice into their own hands.

In 2022, Cassius Turvey, a fifteen-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy, was walking home from school when he was beaten to death, murdered, by two white males, Jack Brearly and Brodie Palmer, and their white friends. Back then, the current Police Commissioner Col Blanch, infamously said “it may be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Despite many witnesses giving evidence that the murderers were using racial slurs during the fatal attack, in sentencing remarks the court found that the murder was not racially motivated, even though the killers spread racial vilification. However, Cassius’ mum Michelle Turvey has continued to truth-tell that this killing was racially motivated vigilantism.

In December 2025, myself and others had been supporting Nadene Dodd, the mother of Cleveland Dodd, a sixteen-year-old Yamatji boy who fatally self-harmed after solitary confinement and abuse in Unit 18 in Casuarina adult maximum security prison. The Coroner delivered his findings on 8 December. Despite his determination that Unit 18 was unfit for purpose and ought to be closed immediately, no action was taken by the Premier or the Minister of Corrective Services. Again, there were no specific coronial findings regarding racism towards Cleveland, which was undoubtedly an element.

There is a direct line from the racism that killed Cleveland Dodd, Linton Ryan, Ms Dhu, Cherdeena Wynne, Wayne Ugle, Mr Ward, JC, John Pat, Jackjack and Chris (as cops chased them into the Derbarl Yerrigan — Swan River) through to the reported racism that allegedly drove someone to attempt to kill us at the Invasion Day rally. It’s also systemic and throughout the police force and the prisons, It’s a dehumanisation and complete disregard for the value of our lives, coupled with a historic lack of accountability.

The media was absurdly quiet post Invasion Day attack. We allegedly had a bomb thrown at us — a bomb said to be designed to kill us — but there was mostly silence from the nation. I don’t have words to describe how gaslit I felt by the entire nation. The contrast — and proximity — to the Bondi terror attack was jarring in so many ways.

This is why, in the days after the alleged terror attack, we were mobilising across the country to build public pressure, so this wasn’t minimised like so many horrific incidents of racial violence have been in the past. Many organisations, groups and individuals came out with solidarity statements, doing what the authorities had failed to do (yet) — characterise what happened at the Invasion Day Rally as an act of terror and hatred. Even the Federal Parliament passed a motion in both houses to condemn “the attempted bombing on 26 January 2026 in Boorloo (Perth) that targeted First Peoples and their supporters”, led by Senator Lidia Thorpe in the Senate and Hon Kate Chaney MP in the House of Representatives.

Finally, ten days post-bombing, the WA Joint Counter Terrorism Taskforce announced that they were charging Liam Alexander Hall with terrorism. The WA Premier alleges the attack on Aboriginal people and other peaceful protesters at the Invasion Day rally was “motivated by racist hateful ideology”.

After the announcement, I sat in a room with the Premier, Police Commissioner, state Ministers and Senators, and Aboriginal leaders and organisers. Having worked on racial justice for almost twenty years, I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen politicians in power, let alone a Police Commissioner or a Premier, explicitly name alleged motivators of violence against our people as “pro-White” or “racist nationalist” in any meaningful way. The contrast between Commissioner Col Blanch’s comments now, and with Elijah Doughty’s case in 2016, is significant. Now that authorities have admitted that they believe racism and white nationalism poses a lethal threat to our people, they can’t backtrack from that. It feels like a turning point, but we need to make sure this leads to real change and accountability.

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One month after Invasion Day, twenty-year-old Jayson Joseph Michaels from Bindoon (one hour out of Boorloo) was charged with planning a terror attack, and alleged to be a white supremacist. It is said that he was targeting Islamic places of worship (mosques), police and WA Parliament for mass casualty events. My heart is broken all over again, as more racially diverse communities are grieving and hurting across the country. In the past three months: Jewish people have been massacred during Hannukah, Aboriginal people were allegedly subject to an attempted massacre on Invasion Day and now Muslims allegedly targeted during Ramadan.
Whether we like it or not, this is the “Australia” we all know. The root cause of racism and hatred towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people — and all Black, brown and people of colour in the colony — is built into the very bones of settler-colonial “Australia”. Yet the violent history of invasion, Frontier Wars and massacres is not part of the national school curriculum. The White Australia Policy was one of the foundational laws passed in 1901, to limit non-white immigration to the colony. Shortly after, the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) was passed to control every aspect of Aboriginal people’s lives in WA, under the Chief Protector of Aborigines.

All of this is documented in the file of my great grandma, Magdeline Ugle-Reid. She was stolen, like so many other children, from her family and sent to Swan Native Mission and Mogumber. This was based on her “blood quantum”, which identified her as “half caste”. She was then forced into slavery on a farm far up north in Carnarvon. Every item of clothing she needed, she had to write to request from the Chief Protector. Every dollar she “earned” was held by the government on her behalf. I have letters from the Chief Protector and officials documenting how and why she was stolen, letters from her slave owner and even a letter from the notorious Sister Kate. The language I’ve used is not the language you’ll necessarily see in history books or political speeches. Our truths are often not validated or acknowledged by authorities or the courts, recognising the critical need for truth-telling to be undertaken by Aboriginal-run processes.

Undoing and unlearning 230 years of racism is no easy task, when racism is steeped into every institution in this country. And that’s why all of us need to work hard to undo that, to unlearn that, to eradicate it from all of our systems, starting with recognising it within ourselves. But we can start with truthtelling, and calling out and addressing racism where it exists.

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The context leading to, and immediately after, Invasion Day in Boorloo this year was telling.

This year the City of Perth controversially cancelled the Birak Festival, an Aboriginal run Survival Day cultural event held in the Supreme Court gardens on 26 January 2026. Instead, the City of Perth threw its support behind the “Hancock Prospecting’s Australia Day” event. The Lord Mayor said “It is an honour to welcome Hancock Prospecting and Gina Rinehart back for a third year as Principal Partner of this much-loved City celebration”. This “principal partner” is the daughter of the same mining magnate Lang Hancock who in a 1981 interview said of Aboriginal people “I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in future and that would solve the problem”. Ms Rinehart has never condemned her father’s statement. What’s more, she withdrew sponsorship from the Diamonds netball team after Noongar player Donna Wallam and her team raised concerns about the racist comments in 2022.

On 27 January, the day after the alleged bombing, I attended the Perth City Council AGM with Noongar community organiser Tanesha Bennell, who successfully raised a motion to reinstate Birak festival with Elder Uncle Walter McGuire, on the back of a community petition led by Ilona McGuire. On our way into the meeting, the security guard quipped to us (a group of mob), “I hope nothing is ticking in there”. Racism in the colony is sickening and relentless — even the day after it is alleged that a lit bomb was thrown at us, we are still perceived as the perpetrators. But victimhood is reserved for a select few in the colony.

A few days later, Senator Pauline Hanson – a woman who the Federal Court has held has a tendency to make negative, derogatory, discriminating or hateful statements about persons of colour, migrants and Muslims – came to Boorloo to launch her “horrifying propaganda flick” to a sold out crowd, no doubt full of white supremacists. Hanson, who always has something to say, has remained tight-lipped about the alleged racially targeted terror attack bombing. But this is the kind of racial violence that rhetoric like hers unleashes — unchecked and enabled by colonial structures — since she came into politics in 1996.
In recent years, we have seen the rise of Trump, the increasing platform given to Clive Palmer, Rinehart and Hanson, and the racism unearthed by the failed Voice Referendum. I believe we are witnessing racists in so-called Australia becoming more emboldened, more violent, more organised, and even less accountable. Racism experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has jumped from 39 per cent in 2014 to 54 per cent in 2024, with younger mob being most affected.

We know all of this, and yet, governments are platforming or allowing those spreading hatred, impliedly or otherwise, to continue to do so in the name of “free speech”. We’ve all seen the photos of police high fiving neo-Nazis at their rallies. Everyone has a responsibility to address and call out racism in all its forms – as lives are at risk.

In WA, myself and many others believe that begins with truthtelling by Aboriginal people. We’ve already had significant truthtelling work led by mob here — including healing and apology on Wadjemup, the Pinjarra massacre apology and renaming of Galup. We need to be supported as a community to determine what this best looks like for us, drawing on learnings from the Victorian Truth and Justice Commission, the Queensland Interim Truthtelling Inquiry, and other truthtelling processes. Truthtelling is an important precursor for Treaty and systemic change, and for healing.

I want what we’ve experienced to be recognised for the historical injustice that it is, on par with Bondi. I want to see accountability at all levels and for this nation to reckon with its white supremacist past and present. I want people to hear our truths, address their own privilege and begin the difficult work of unlearning and building relationships. And most of all, I want racism to stop killing our people and our children. I want governments, police, prisons, hospitals, schools and all institutions to stop allowing this and to actively support Aboriginal-led solutions and self-determined futures. No-one else should experience the terror and hatred we felt that day, but it’s going to take all of us to stop this.

Image: Wikimedia Commons