Rethinking Australia Day 26 January
Australia Day is on 26 January every year. This marks the day that the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove, on 26 January 1788. This came after James Cook and his crew arrived in 1770 and “claimed” the land that was already occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
I want to note here that the remote Indigenous people I’ve ever spoken to about Australia Day care very little about it. They know it’s a token change that doesn’t actually make a difference to their lives. But there are many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people advocating for a change of date because it is another important symbolic step towards reconciliation. And especially when we have an opposition leader declaring they won’t stand in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags because it causes “division”, symbolic steps matter.
It’s a date that represents the continued destruction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges, cultures and ways of being. It’s also a date that glorifies the people and system that implemented terra nullius. Terra nullius is the legal concept that this land was “land belonging to no-one”, which was “proclaimed” in 1835 so that Britain could “legally” settle Australia. (Yes, that was 47 years after they already had). In other words, even though the British government acknowledged there were already people living here, they made up a law 65 years after Cook arrived to justify stealing the land anyway.
That same racist thinking led to the White Australia policy in 1901, when the Immigration Restriction Act aimed to limit non-British immigration and speed up the “dying out” of First Nations people.
I don’t know about you, but I want Australia Day to be about celebrating our melting pot of cultures and languages, our natural environments, and how it all comes together to create what is now contemporary Australia. I want it to be a day where Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia can celebrate that we’re on land that hosts the oldest living cultures in the world. I want it to be a day to celebrate our shared values, not a day of division because it forces us to reckon with the wrongs of the past.
How can we keep choosing January 26 as the date for Australia Day if that’s our goal?
What instead?
Join Change It Ourselves to register your support as a business or individual, and check out the resources.
Flexible public holiday leave - employers can allow staff to take their public holidays on days that are significant for them, and work as normal on existing designated public holidays. With so many businesses now continuing to operate during public holidays, this can be a real win-win from an inclusion as well as operational perspective.
Use the terms Invasion Day, Survival Day or Day of Mourning to remind us what 26 January really symbolises.
References:
Australian Museum: Terra Nullius
National Museum Australia: White Australia policy
Peter Dutton Pledges to remove Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags