Australia Day or Invasion Day

January 26th is the day we celebrate 'Australia Day'. It is the day in 1788 when the ‘First Fleet’ moved to Port Jackson in Sydney (after initially landing at Botany Bay) and soon announced that this country was now under the control of the British Empire. Over the next 50 years the British established settlements around the country.

The basis upon which ‘we’ took the land was the doctrine of terra nullius. Meaning ‘no mans land’ as no one seemed to own it. The land was not inhabited in a way we recognised, and there were no identifiable leaders to negotiate with.

200 years later and we have now established that the original inhabitants did in fact have a system of ownership in place. Tribes had identifiable areas where they could hunt and travel – and had to ask for permission to travel across a neighbour’s territory. The Tindale map shows the approximate boundaries for each language group. Sites were visited year after year depending on when they were most plentiful. Food was hunted and collected with a view to a sustaining the supply of food into the future. Houses, roads and fences didn’t define the boundaries, but knowledge held by tribal elders did.

What appeared to us as nomadic wandering with no apparent purpose was a pre-determined journey following the seasons. While we divide the year into 4 seasons the original Australians divide the year into finer detail in order to guide their search for food, water and shelter. Their relationship to the land is well-documented with each landmark across the country having significance in their dreamtime stories of creation. Belonging to the land is another concept that is foreign to us. Indigenous people recgonise a special spiritual relationship with specific places and derive meaning from that relationship.

As we expanded our settlements across the country we inevitably claimed land previously owned and used by aborigines. We set up sheep and cattle runs and put up fences to protect the farm. Local aborigines then followed traditional law which stated that animals on your own territory were your property and available for hunting. So they took sheep or cattle to feed their families. The settlers understood this action as stealing and reprisals followed. Sometimes involving the killing of one or more aborigines as a ‘lesson’, and the cycle of violence escalated from there.

That summary reveals the nature of ‘Australia Day’ to original Australians. The day commemorates the day that another people arrived, took their land and effectively destroyed their way of life by preventing their ability to travel within their homelands. We eventually herded them from their own homelands into stations in foreign places (reserves) for their own protection, removing them from the places that brought meaning to them and their tribe. January 26^th 1788 was the start of a process that brought so much grief, death and dysfunction. How can we expect original Australians to celebrate this as a great national day? Isn’t it an annual slap in the face to indigenous Australia?

And while we consider that, how attached to January 26^th is the average whitefellah ? We might love our country but do we retain any pride or fondness for the original settlement of Sydney? Aren’t there other events in our history that we could all celebrate?