Every year, the political and media elites, propping up the interests and profits of billionaires, start a culture war about January 26.
It’s a cynical exercise in manufactured nostalgia, wholly endorsed by the LNP, that obscures the truth that the celebration of so-called Australia Day is only a very recent phenomenon in this country.
I’m all for people enjoying a public holiday, but celebrating a “national day” that is connected to the arrival of a colonising force and the dispossession and targeted killing of First Nations people is pretty horrible when you think about it.
To non-Indigenous readers who reject this interpretation, how do you think you would feel if foreign invaders violently occupied and settled on your land, then expected your family and descendants to participate in a flag-waving celebration on the anniversary of that occupation every year? I don’t think you’d enjoy it very much.
So I say good on Gladstone Council for disconnecting citizenship ceremonies from a day that marks the British invasion of what they called New South Wales 236 years ago.
Becoming a citizen should be a great day for everyone, not tarnished with that shameful history.
Interestingly, the majority of Queensland councils who’ve chosen to hold their citizenship ceremonies on another day are in LNP seats. They’re all in the regions, too.
Maybe it’s not about being “woke”, after all.
The Greens acknowledge the work of First Nations Elders and activists who have stayed strong and resilient in the fight for generations, and in solidarity, we call to observe January 26 as a Day of Mourning.
This idea has a long history. First Nations Elders and activists held the first Day of Mourning on January 26 1938, the 150th anniversary of invasion.
It’s a way of marking respect and paying tribute to the resistance and resilience of First Nations people, and coming together to reflect and heal.
We have a choice. Do we continue to do the bidding of the billionaires and political and media elites by squandering more years bickering?
Or do we collectively do the work with First Nations peoples to mutually heal and truly get to grips with the colonialist history of this country?
This kind of work, this process, would undermine the structures that keep the real enemies in power over all of us.
No wonder they’d rather we fight in their culture wars against each other.
