While most Australians fire up the barbecue and crack open beers to celebrate national day on Friday, Robbie Thorpe will be marching in the shadow of Victoria’s state parliament.
Like many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, he doesn’t see anything to cheer on Australia Day, which marks the arrival of the First Fleet in 1778 to establish a British penal colony.
For him, January 26 is “Invasion Day”, a reminder of the dispossession, violence, and loss that colonisation inflicted on the continent’s first peoples. As far as the veteran indigenous activist is concerned, it’s a day for mourning, solemn reflection, and resistance.
“Colonialism is a disease and this country has got a mental health problem known as denial of their genocidal acts,” says Thorpe, who will march in Melbourne’s annual Invasion Day rally aimed at changing the date of the national holiday.
“If it wasn’t for their acts of terror and their policy of genocide, Australia wouldn’t exist.”
More than simply symbolising a painful history, January 26 serves as a reminder to many of how Aboriginals remain marginalised to this day. Almost 250 years after European settlement, indigenous Australians on average die a decade earlier than the general population and have access to two-thirds the amount of disposable income.
“People don’t realise how peaceful and how beautiful this country was when they arrived here,” says Thorpe, who hosts a programme on indigenous affairs on community radio. “We had want for nothing.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who make up just three percent of the population, have organised en masse against Australia Day since at least 1938, when campaigner William Cooper held the first “Day of Mourning” in downtown Sydney.
More recently, though, the effort to change the date has gained momentum as an increasing number of white and other non-indigenous Australians have become attuned to the sensitivities around the date.
Earlier this month, the leader of the left-leaning Australian Greens, the third force in the country’s politics, said moving Australia Day would be among the party’s priorities in the coming year.
Richard Di Natale, the son of Italian immigrants, cited growing awareness, particularly among young people, that the day represented “hurt and suffering” for Aboriginal people.
In November, Triple J, a youth-orientated public radio station, announced it would move its popular annual music countdown from January 26 to the following day, pointing to the controversy around the date.
Source: Al jazeera
