January 26 represents the day colonisation took root on Koori lands.
Fuck, Marry, Kill national holidays in Australia:
Fuck: Australia Day
Marry: the ANZACs
Kill: … a bank holiday?
When you think about it, and then look it up on Google, you realise that Australia’s only really got a couple of holidays that aren’t religion-based or coincide with the local show. And, given that Aussies love taking a day off – we lead the world in chucking sickies – you can start to appreciate why so many white people have such a strong affinity with January 26 and Australia Day.
However, the problems with a January 26 Australia Day have been documented nearly as well as the Gaps in Koori health outcomes. January 26 represents the day colonisation took root on Koori lands. It’s Redneck Christmas and White Supremacist Festivus rolled into one. January 26 is a day of mourning for many Elders across the nation.
So, considering that January 26 only became a national public holiday in the 90’s, the decade which also gave us post-grunge and took away Tupac, it might just be time to yeet it into our girt-ful sea.
Offering Murris a whole other day for our own little Australia Day demonstrates that Australia, and by extension Australia Day, ain’t for us.
The national Australia Day rhetoric relies heavily on accepting that Australia is a “white” country. Any attempts to bring Murris into that naturally end up whitewashing the ongoing brutality of colonisation. Take last year’s mutton-dressed-up-as-lamb lamb ad for example. Or this year’s suggestion from Dutton-has-got-him-on-the-lam PM, Scott Morrison: have an Indigenous Australian Australia Day on January 25. Offering Murris a whole other day for our own little Australia Day demonstrates that Australia, and by extension Australia Day, ain’t for us. The federal government’s Australia Day is about celebrating whiteness and whiteness only.
In recent years, we’ve played with the idea of fixing Australia Day by changing the date.
Pledges to #changethedate inspire a New-Year’s-resolution-esque commitment to transformation. These’ll never work. Just ask my gut (in that I have a gut feeling that they won’t work, and also, that my last five New Year’s resolutions were to lose weight). Today when you look at it, (that is, the size of my gut, and how sick to my guts I get from weekly stories about the abuse of Murris by the state), it tells us that neither my resolutions nor your pledges hold the weight needed for sustainable change.
Changing the date without changing the nation is the equivalent of flying the Aboriginal flag in front of hospitals – it looks inclusive, but a peek inside exposes negative outcomes for Murris, and a closer look reveals that it’s positively packed with sicko racists.
As with most well-intentioned attempts to bring about equity for Murris (hi, Reconciliation Action Plans!), we’ve come to realise that Australian institutions will more often than not be forced to comply with the status quo, or reduce promising initiatives to tokenistic hand-shandies.
Countless white faces have turned red on our TVs ranting about #changethedate as being an attack on what it means to be an Australian. So I say let them #keepthedate, but rename it “Invasion Day”. It’ll help with truth telling and reconciliation.
For Australia to have a celebration that everybody can get behind, we need a nation that has everybody’s back. So instead of changing the date, lets change the nation.
I want a nation that not only celebrates Indigenous heritage, but finds its entire national identity is based on Murri cultural philosophies.
The vision for our future needs to be informed by our past. Murris are forced to learn colonial history and the ways of whiteness in order to survive. 60% of non-Indigenous Australians haven’t even met a Murri. It’s funny, you’d think that because they’ve got all our ancestral lands, they would be able to see where we’re coming from. And whilst they do have an appreciation for our land, sky and water, they’re yet to learn everything that country can teach. To understand how to create a nation that experiences true prosperity.
I want a nation that not only celebrates Indigenous heritage, but finds its entire national identity is based on Murri cultural philosophies.
A nation that understands that true blue mateship means more than just standing by your mate when he’s in a fight.
I want a nation that has laws and a government featuring entrenched rights for Indigenous people.
Most of all, I want a nation where Murris don’t have to fight every fucking day for the survival of our people.
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