Australia Day needs a re-think…

I was born in England. I migrated from Britain when I was 9 years old, with my family.  We were known as the ‘ten pound poms’.  
I have received most of my education in Australia, and our school history classes always started with Captain Cook’s landing in Sydney Cove.  

I have no recollection of learning the historical accounts of Australia’s indigenous people. 
I have now lived in Australia many more years than in my country of birth.  

Australia feels like my home.  I have travelled for lengthy periods around this beautiful country, and there is much to celebrate – its vastness, diversity of people, culture and land, the unique biodiversity, flora and fauna, and a country that has the oldest living indigenous culture in the world.

So I understand cause for celebration of this rich and vast country, but I do not support the tradition of celebrating this on Australia Day, which marks and honours the establishment of the first permanent European settlement at Sydney Cove on January 26th 1788, and what subsequently followed in pursuit of British possession of indigenous land.
Why would it not feel like a celebration for indigenous people? 

European settlement in Australia disrupted a significantly important way of life, connected to land, waters and culture.  
White colonisation was a process of taking land by stealth and dispossessing first nations people of their place of belonging, which had existed for 40,000 years.  

Brutal frontier wars raged for more than 100 years, in efforts of indigenous people to preserve their connection to the land, against the Crown who wanted it all at whatever cost.  
It is estimated that during these wars, around 78,000 indigenous people (men, women and children, entire families, whole tribes) were killed, many from Government sanctioned massacres.  Those who survived were forced off their land, corralled into specified camps, dispersed into other areas of the country. 

Many died from displacement, starvation, white man’s diseases. By 1900, it is estimated that the aboriginal population had reduced by 90%, from around 1 million to less than 100,000.  
Most lost connection not only with their tribal lands, but also with their mob, their families, their children, their parents.  
They were not allowed to practice culture, forbidden to speak their language, unable to travel their songlines, curtailed in performing important ceremonies, and white man’s law superseded their own previously effective community laws.  

Until the late 60s, they were denied the right to raise their own children, through forced removals by Government, in an effort to eliminate the indigenous race altogether.  

The fallout of this tragedy still reverberates today, where the gap between white Australians and indigenous people is seen in areas such as, over-representation of indigenous youth in the justice system, higher rates of certain diseases, higher rates of indigenous women experiencing family violence, lower rates of employment, lower life expectancy, and third world housing conditions in remote Indigenous communities.
Does this sound like cause for celebration?  

On the contrary, it is a day of deep mourning for our first nations people who suffered greatly, and continue to do so more than 200 years later. On Australia Day I would rather respectfully stand with our indigenous people, and as a white Australian, acknowledge our history, know the truth, hear their grief, honour their pain.
We have much to celebrate as a country, but not on this day.  Out of respect, not on the 26th of January.

Alison Normanton, Corinella