Part 1, by Flynn
In what is now 'Australia', stolen from the hundreds of First Nations and their people, a Western society and liberal democracy has been built.
Most of us know someone, have family, or have at least some loose concept of competition with so-called ‘Australia’.
But 'Australia' Day, celebrated on the 26th of January each year, ignores what the day signifies for the indigenous communities
Despite what we’re told, the day was not about the first fleet arriving - it was the first day that white settlers were legally considered ‘Australian’.
Until 1949, white Australians were British. Indigenous people were treated like animals until 1971 when they were recognised as human beings on a federal level.
On 26 January 1949, the Nationality and Citizenship Act was passed and established Australian citizenship.
Except that’s not true. The Bill was actually passed the year before in 1948.
As colonial politicians do, they chose for the citizenship bill to become law on 26 January 1949 because it was a day already celebrated by most states as the arrival of the first fleet to Sydney Cove.
They did it to merge the celebrations of a violent occupation.
When the fleet arrived, the land was deemed ‘terra nullius’, meaning ‘land belonging to no one’. This is despite the fact over 400 indigenous First Nations had been living with the land for more than 65,000 years.
In 1788, it’s thought that around 750,000 indigenous people were on the main island and those surrounding.
“James Cook first set foot on Wangal land over at Kundul which is now called Kurnell, he said ‘oh lets put a flag up somewhere, because these people are illiterate, they’ve got no fences’,” said Aunty Beryl Timbery Beller, a Dharawal Country elder.
“They didn’t understand that we didn’t need fences … that we stayed here for six to eight weeks, then moved somewhere else where there was plenty of tucker and bush medicine and we kept moving and then come back in twelve months’ time when the food was all refreshed.”
Celebrating 26 Janauary is celebrating genocide, land theft, and ongoing oppression.
“If Aussies want to dance on graves they can do it on ANZAC Day.”
Zak, of Gamilaroi Nation, says that “the date is totally inappropriate no matter how governments try to reframe it, and attempting to make it “inclusive” for Indigenous people is an attempt to coax us into accepting that day as the national holiday.”
He says that as long as that date is the national holiday, where the “whole purpose is to put a flag up and get on the piss,” it isn’t appropriate.
For many indigenous Australians, it's a day of mourning what they lost through generations of genocide and integration. For them, it's not a day of unity as one nation — it's a reminder of what was violently and unabashedly taken from them.
To pretend that colonial ‘Australia’ was built from the hard work of white settlers to build a new life for themselves ignores and legitimises ethnic cleansing, eugenics, and genocide.
Some of the most horrific atrocities you can think of were committed against the First Nations people - why celebrate the day that marks the ‘beginning’ of this?
Research from the current colonial institutes suggests that upwards of 302 massacres took place, killing upwards of 10,000 indigenous people. Less than 170 settlers were killed in the major retaliations.
Settlers kidnapped First Nations (Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander) children to assimilate them into the Western way of life, and those who weren’t murdered were subject to generations of ‘breeding out the colour’.
The effects of this remain, with the overwhelming majority of incarcerated people in the Northern Territory being indigenous and First Nations being disproportionately represented in poverty.
Breeding out the colour
James Cook thought that the colonial state should encourage marriages between indigenous women and settler men because after four generations the “stain of [Aboriginal] blood could be bred out altogether.”
Although initially they weren’t considered to be humans at all, Cook eventually concluded that First Nations people were actual descendents of Europeans with a “biological throwback,” and were “not of any [African] race.”
These disturbingly racist narratives made their way into the institutions as they were established and now, alongside the countless other atrocities, sees the First Nations peoples disproportionately represented in incarceration, poverty, and poor health outcomes.
‘Sorry’ means you don’t do it again
Many settlers continue to ignore the root causes of the current outcomes, like in Aotearoa and all other colonies, through supporting liberal democracy and a system that our ancestors built that still favours us.
Nobody is asking us to be personally responsible for our ancestors and the things they took advantage of. Our job is to help dismantle the system of oppression that we currently benefit from.
We, as settlers on land that was taken from the original kaitiaki, need to address our own biasses, and use our position of privilege to support the indigenous voices to bring the system down - even though it benefits us.
But don’t change the date: abolish the state.
Part 2, by Jez
When discussing the date of so-called ‘Australia Day’, it is pitted as an argument between keep the date and change the date - or even keep the date and abolish the date.
The two great sides of conservation and progression battling.
This debate is so mainstream that you could end up thinking that these are the only opinions one could have on the issue - but it is not.
Popularising the ‘keep’ or ‘change’ debate, just like the Voice to Parliament ‘yes’ or ‘no’ debate, is a tool of distraction from the material issues and historical realities of colonisation.
The conversation we should be having is one that leaves behind these arguments as tokenistic at best, and regressive at worst.
Painted as the progressive option, the change the date argument is positioned as the only option for First Nation’s progress and ‘liberation’ and is talked about by its supporters as a ‘step in the right direction’ or ‘fixing the injustices of the past’.
But when did changing the day we ‘celebrate’ genocide ever make a material difference?
You could change it to whatever you want but that won’t do a thing to bring down blak incarceration rates, stop the colony abducting their kids, or solve generational trauma that exacerbates alcohol and drug issues in communities.
The whole argument is a sham to distract from the real solution to the issues that First Nations communities face which is true liberation and the abolishment of the colonial state.
Symbolic gestures like changing the date or a colony-friendly treaty will be used by the government so they can say “we are solving indigenous issues, we changed the date!”
It allows them to ignore the fact that right now there are poisonous chemicals being poured into water sources on country; every single child in prison in the Northern Territory is indigenous, and; that the life expectancy gap between blak and settler is nearly a decade.
Our energy is better expended on fighting for real issues rather than tokenistic settler concessions.
We shouldn’t focus on abolishing the date, but rather abolishing the system.