On the eve of January 26, the Aboriginal flag's copyright was overturned, meaning the flag now "belongs to everyone".

The Federal Government completed a $20 million deal to take ownership of the flag's copyright from a non-Indigenous clothing company, which had a history of sending Indigenous groups cease and desist warnings for using the flag in breach of copyright.

The deal means the flag is now freely available for public use, with Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt saying the news was "profoundly important for all Australians", adding "no one can take it away".

But not everyone is convinced that the red, yellow and black flag is in the right hands now.

Watch: What country means to Indigenous people. Post continues below.

Wait, what - why wasn't the Aboriginal flag free to begin with?

In 1970, artist Harold Thomas, a Luritja man, designed the Aboriginal flag as a symbol of Aboriginal people's connection with the land.

In 1995 the Australian Government recognised Harold Thomas' Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag, which belongs to the people of Torres Strait Islands, as official flags of Australia.

In 2018, Thomas sold the exclusive worldwide copyright licensing to three separate companies: one to make the flag itself, one to make souvenirs and the third who had the sole right to print the flag on clothing.

WAM clothing, which arenotan Indigenous company, was soon brought to the attention of Aussies, and the campaign for the flag's copyright to be overturned began and was found successful in 2022.

A statement from Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: "We have freed the Aboriginal flag for Australians."

So now that the Australian Federal Government essentially owns the flag's copyright, some are debating if the flag is actually "free".

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Many Indigenous activists have argued that ownership should have been transferred to the First Nations community, not the Commonwealth Government.

How do First Nations people feel about the 'freeing' of the flag?

Mamamia'sdaily news podcast The Quicky spoke this week to Senator Lidia Thorpe, the Australian Greens Senator for Victoria, co-founder of the Australian Greens First Nations Network and a Gunnai Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman.

Thorpe shared why many people are angry about the deal and what could and should have been done instead to uphold the autonomy and self-determination of Australia's Indigenous population.

"I felt shock horror that the colonial system that has hurt our people for so long now has the copyright to the one thing that united Aboriginal people across this country. How are we going to get it back again? This fight is not over," Thorpe said.

She noted that many in the Indigenous community hoped the government would pay for the copyright to be ended, but the flag should have been returned rather than kept.

"It wasn't for the government to pay it out and then keep it for themselves. The government heard in the first Flag Enquiry from grassroots Blackfellas around the country saying 'the flag belongs to us. It needs to come back to the people'."

Thorpe continued: "We want to self-determine what happens to our flag. The Torres Strait Islands own their flag: it's not like the Australian Government didn't know what to do, they just chose to use the timing of their announcement to make themselves look good at a time when this country is divided."

Harold Thomas has said he will use $2 million to make an Australian Aboriginal Flag Legacy not-for-profit.

"The Aboriginal flag design is my dreaming. The flag represents the timeless history of our land and our people's time on it," he said. "It is an introspection and appreciation of who we are. It draws from the history of our ancestors, our land, and our identity and will honour these well into the future."

For Rachael Sarra, a Goreng Goreng woman, she doesn't consider the flag as free "while it resides in the hands of the coloniser".

The designer, artist and activist toldMamamia, "It needs to be given back to our people, just like our land should be."

"The #FreeTheFlag campaign has succeeded after a $20 million buyout to free the Aboriginal flag. I've slept on it, and is the flag really freed if its copyright is owned by the same government that has taken and profited off our land? The same government that removed our children? Time to hand back the copyright to the community," she wrote on Instagram.