It’s not un-Australian. It’s not unpatriotic.
It’s not anti-fun or political correctness gone mad.
For some people, the 26th of January represents a day on which everything changed. It’s a day that sends a particular message about the history of Australia. And that message is not a happy one.
So for a group of people, particularly the people whose ancestors lived in this country and took care of it for millions of years, the 26th of January is always going to be Invasion Day.
Why do people get so upset about Australia Day?
Primary school history taught every Australian kid that on the 26th of January 1788, the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson in NSW. Captain Arthur Phillip raised the British flag and declared Britain’s sovereignty over Australia. By planting that flag in the soil, Arthur Phillip announced to the world that Britain owned Australia.
Flash-forward some 228 years, and we’re celebrating that day with a public holiday and some form of meat product.
But not everyone sees the day that Arthur Phillip waded through the waves of Port Jackson as a day to celebrate.
Because Australia was already owned. There were people here. The people who had lived here for millions of years. The Aboriginal people owned this land millenia before anyone in Britain even thought about building a boat.
Indigenous Australians were brutalised by the British population. In some cases, entire communities were wiped out. They were treated like a slave race. Even into the 20th century, the Australian government stole the children of Aboriginal women.
The 26th of January was a day that British settlement in Australia began. But it was also the day that things went very wrong for the traditional owners of our country.
There’s a lot of pain associated with 26 January, and using a name like Invasion Day tells that story quite clearly.
Come on – Australia Day has been around forever!
Well, actually, it hasn’t. The title “Australia Day” was adopted in the 1930s – and all States and Territories only got together and consistently marked a public holiday in 1994.
Top Comments
How is it that the wrongdoings of the past.....the things that can't be undone or stopped continue to remain at the forefront of discussion, while discussing the following appears (at great cost to the children) taboo?
Child abuse.
2013-14, 11,270 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were the subject of a substantiation. Nationally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were 7 times more likely to be the subject of substantiated reports than non-Aboriginal children (with rates of 38.8 per 1,000 children compared with 5.7 per 1,000).
Am in two minds about this, on one hand I can see how the day is a day of mourning for indigenous Australians - but on the other I am not sure if changing the date is kind of like denying the history of what happened, and the impact that it has? At least having that day ingrained in our memory might make us more mindful and I guess people can choose to recognise that day how they wish... Similar to Thanksgiving in America where some Native Americans see it as a day of mourning or National Foundation day in Japan where some people see it as a day to honour WW2 crimes - however you personally see it, these holidays also bring up a dialogue of our history.
Maybe introducing another date to recognise unity for all Australians - I don't know what date that could be though.