Onus Browne is a community organiser for Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance and made headlines five years ago for telling an Invasion Day rally they hoped Australia would “burn to the ground” – a remark they said was about the need for total change to the political system.

“I agree with much of what the progressive No represents,not the racist No – they are two very different campaigns,” they said.

Anti-Voice campaigners such as Nyunggai Warren Mundine have rejected claims their campaign appeals to racism in the community after Yes leader Marcia Langton said earlier this month the No case used racist tactics.

Meriki Onus,a Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman and an organiser for the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance,said a key factor for her was the way the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria showed how a federal body could work.

“I agree with much of what the No position is,however,I’m leaning towards voting Yes,” she said.

“We’ve seen an example in Australia where a body similar to the Voice to parliament already functions,and I think that they do really good work and there’s amazing opportunity there. So I would be leaning towards a Yes.”

The Victorian assembly has 32 members who are elected by Indigenous people to represent their communities,with voters choosing representatives from five regions across the state. Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney joined the assembly members in Melbourne on Thursday morning to back the Voice.

Onus,who is Thorpe’s younger sister,said she agreed with many of the Victorian senator’s views but had her own personal views about the “yes or no” choice at the referendum.

She said she was not concerned at the claim that setting up the Voice would mean ceding sovereignty and her view was not based on any concerns about Dutton or Hanson.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be put in the same camp as those two – my politics are very different,” she said.

Yes campaigners saw Victoria as a stronghold for their causeuntil a slide in the opinion polls showed the state was slipping toward the No side,making every vote count and increasing the importance of voters once swayed by Thorpe’s arguments against the change.

In Darwin,chief executive of Uprising of the People,Mililma May said she changed her mind to become an “active educator” on the Yes side of the Voice debate because she was concerned about the way a No victory would be seen in the community.

“The idea of a No vote in the Northern Territory scared me in that it could mean a majority of Australians do not care about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices. And that fundamentally felt wrong to me,” she said.

May,whose Darwin-based group acts for Indigenous young people in detention,said she had taken a No position at first.

“I was scared that my sovereignty would be impacted. And I was wary of trusting the government after Australia’s history,” she said.

“Moving beyond those fears,I realised that sovereignty can’t be impacted by voting Yes. And I think it’s healthy to have a level of mistrust of the government,but in a way that can make the government accountable.”

While the comments are at odds with Thorpe’s call to Indigenous Australians to reject the Voice,May made no criticism of the Victorian senator.

“I think that Lidia and I have different understandings of what is going to work for our people,and I think that’s valid,” she said.

Thorpe said the Blak Sovereignty movement had grown on social media and she was not changing her position on the Voice. “I’m not going Yes,I’m not betraying the movement,” she said.

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