The concept that is Australia Day is not unique to our great
southern land, it is a day that lingers offensively around nations that fail to
recognise and deal with the subjugation of indigenous peoples.
Australia Day has more
than one name
It is becoming common knowledge that not everyone in our
vast country agrees on what to call January 26.
Our mainstream media and society refer to it lovingly as
Australia day, but to many others it is regretfully remembered as Invasion Day,
or Survival Day.
I argue that Australia Day has more names than this, because
the commemoration of the events that transpired beginning on January 26, 1788
is not a concept that is unique to our Country.
There happens to be another southern land in which this day has
an entirely different name.
In South Africa, the Day of the vow on December 16 once
encompassed no more or less than what we still celebrate as Australia Day.
Like Australia, South Africa is a land that was stolen away
from those who had lived there for consecutive generations over many thousands
of years.
Like us, the white South Africans came to commemorate what
they considered to be their God given right to conquer the lands of the Zulu people
on a day which befell a monumental slaughter upon the resisting local
populations.
To me, the only difference between the Day of the Vow and
our Australia Day is in name, apart from which they are entirely the same
thing.
Perversely, this racist occasion continued on through modern
times and was annually celebrated by many white South Africans during the
Apartheid years.
While black citizens suffered the humiliation of segregation
and the neglect of their civil rights, white South Africans celebrated The Day
of the vow in pride.
This carried on until 1994 when the election of Nelson
Mandela ended Apartheid and the December 16 commemoration was altogether
transformed.
Since then, South Africa’s Day of the Vow, its Invasion Day,
its Survival Day, its Australia day ceased to exist and became a new day:
Reconciliation Day.
Over the Indian Ocean in Australia, our Day of the vow
clings on, it saunters around every year, and it continues to drape cheap
Australian Flags over uncomfortable secrets.
It falls over the legacy of our wretched Imperial past, but
also over the faces of First Australians found dead in police cells, the scores
in our prisons, those who are suffering preventable diseases of poverty, those
who live in squalor, the children that continue to be removed from their
families, and those who die far younger than they should.
We know what to think of those South Africans who celebrated
this day with impunity during Apartheid, so why don’t we think of Australians
in the same way?
Until the time comes that a treaty is signed with the First
Australians and their human and collective rights are respected, January 26
will remain a day of exclusion.
It is perfectly reasonable to celebrate your identity and
good fortune on Australia Day, but the denial and obfuscation of the legacy and
present reality of First Australian suffering mars the day in shame.
