NOT MY DAY
It was January 26, 2017. I found myself sitting in the corner of the deep, light grey fabric couch, with my MacBook on my lap, my eyes glaring out the floor to ceiling windows, in the Prahran apartment I was living in that overlooked High Street. I could see revellers from the night before making their way up the street, dodging in and out of traffic, chanting the national anthem. My mind cast back to the previous decade of how I had spent the day, getting pass out drunk at backyard barbecues, or being shoulder to shoulder, dripping in sweat in the mosh pit at Big Day Out.
I was experiencing a discomfort, I was unsettled, and I had an urge for enquiry into what the day actually meant. I’d gone through a 18-24 month period of personal enquiry, turning inward to figure a lot out about myself, including what had been at the root of the dissatisfaction and emptiness I had been experiencing. This period of time led me to examine a lot of my behaviour, values, beliefs and what had influenced them up until that point in time. This curiosity then led me down a path towards my position on matters outside of my own life. After the experience I had focusing on my own health, I started to look at the overall picture of Australia’s physical and mental health, and came to understand that it was/is at crisis level. I delved into Climate Change, and came to understand our commitment to the Paris Agreement and what was necessary to see real change. It was then I became aware of the grave state of the Great Barrier Reef, and that Global Warming was also at crisis point. And on our national holiday to celebrate the settling of what was then New South Wales by the First Fleet in 1788, I started to question my understanding of what the day represented. It was at this point that my mind and body started to fill with confusion, frustration, and a sense of denial, that what I was reading about our history, I was only coming to know at the aged of 30.
I started to question myself, what I was reading, and my attention turned to why did I not already know this? Why was I not taught this critical information during school? I was aware of Dirk Hartog, James Cook, Abel Tasman, Van Dieman’s Land, and somewhere amongst that, the name Truganini came up. At no stage was I ever informed that humans first made the way to what is now called Australia 65,000 years ago on man made boats from Timor, after leaving Africa 5-10,000 years earlier. Those humans then developed into thousands of nations of people with different languages, cultures, traditions and beliefs that spread out across the land. The history that I was taught was from 1788 onwards, and no where in those lessons was I ever taught about Terra Nullius or ‘Land belonging to no one’ which was used to justify the acquisition of land by the British without treaty or payment. This effectively denied Aboriginal people prior occupation and connection with the land. At no stage was I made aware of the hundreds of thousands of Aboriginals lives that were taken so that land could be claimed for ownership by the settlers. At no stage was I made aware of the Civil Wars across Australia, including the most extensive conflict in Australia’s history, ‘The Black War’ that started in 1824 in Tasmania the state where I grew up. The civil unrest saw the creation of ‘The Black Line’ in 1830 that saw settlers make a human chain and make their way from the north of the state, south, attempting to remove traditional owners from their land by force. This eventually lead to the approximate 300 remaining Tasmanian Aboriginals being moved to Flinders Island.
The names of Aboriginal warriors Windarayne, Jandamarra, or Yagan were all new to me, and the role they played in protecting their traditional lands in Civil Wars in NSW and WA. I had never heard of the kidnapping and life in British settlement of Bennelong, and the voyage he made by sea to England with governor Arthur Phillip to be presented to King George III.
The remaining notes that I took in 2017 are as below:
- The Aboriginal culture is the oldest remain culture in the world
- Australia or ‘New Holland’ as it was known was first discovered mistakenly in 1606 by Dutch Navigator Willem Janszoon
- Australia comes from the Latin term Terra Australis meaning ‘Southern Land’ and its first documented use in english was in 1625
- It wasn’t until April 29 1770 that Captain James Cook mapped the east cost of the country and claimed the land for Great Britain on the basis of European Law ‘terra nullius’ (land belonging to no one)
- On this same visit by Cook in 1770 was the first recorded conflict between Indigenous Australians and European settlers in which one of Cook’s men fired upon the Tharawal tribe
- 16 years later in 1786 the British Government decided to establish a prison colony in Australia
- The First Fleet under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney Cove, Port Jackson on January 19, 1788 (although the British Crown Colony of New South Wales wasn’t promulgated until February 7, 1788)
- Over the next 146 years of European settlement (Van Dieman’s Land 1803, Western Australia 1828, South Australia 1838, Victoria 1851 and Queensland 1859) more than 20,000 Indigenous Australians were killed in conflict, whilst thousands more were killed due to disease introduced by the settlers
- The largest massacres in Australian history occurred over these years through fighting and poisonings up until as recent as 1934 with records indicating up to 200 Aboriginal people killed in isolated incidents
- Under the European doctrine 'terra nullius' Indigenous Australians were not recognised as having property rights having originally occupied the land for 40,000 years, instead territory could be acquired by settlers through ‘original occupation requests' rather than conquest or consent
- In 1869 the ‘Aboriginal Protection Act 1869’ was introduced in Victoria which gave extensive powers over the lives of Aboriginal people including where they could work, live and who they could meet and marry
- In 1886 the Victorian Government passed what was known as the ‘Half-Caste Act’ which was to remove Aboriginal people from mixed-descent from their Aboriginal stations or reserves and assimilate them into white society in an effort to decline the Aboriginal population
- On January 1, 1901 federation of colonies was achieved after 10 years of planning which established Australia as a dominion (autonomous community) of the British Empire
- From 1905-1970 the government started forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families in a process that is now known as the ‘Stolen Generation’ in which the government claimed it was protecting the children from abuse, but it was seen to remove miscegenation between full blooded Aboriginals so that the population would further decline
- It wasn’t until under the Menzies government in 1965 that a move was made to amend the Australian Constitution which would identify the Aboriginal people as Australian citizens, the referendum was completed during 1967 under the Holt cabinet which gave Indigenous Australians, Australian Citizenship and the right to vote (previous referendums in 1949 for Australian Citizenships did include Aboriginal people as did the 1949 Commonwealth Electoral Act which gave Aboriginals the ability to vote)
Each year following 2017 I have spent reflecting on what it means to me to be Australia. Today I am asking myself what is it as Australians we want to represent? What are our values? and as a nation who is it we want to become?
The same discomfort that swelled in my stomach 4 years ago still sits with me today, because I don’t believe any real progress has been made in answering or determining the above questions. I do have the sense that momentum is shifting towards what January 26 represents, specifically with the younger generations who are more inclined to self educate and question the education they have previously received with the help of today’s technology.
The discomfort that I am experiencing is based on a day that we should all be able to share, a day that should bring us all together to celebrate everything that makes our country an amazing place to live, is doing the opposite. It's creating division over a day that only since 1994 has been recognised as a national holiday, having previously being declared as a ‘Day of Mourning’ in 1938 by a group of Aboriginal people. It’s tearing at the very fabric that today’s Australia was built on, because for the majority who have no issue with what today marks, because 230 years of what has occurred to get us to where we are today is ignored or Aboriginal people are told to ‘get over it', and 65,000 years of culture, tradition, and ownership continues to go on being denied. We also have a leader who continues to intentionally fuel the division with racial rhetoric, only demonstrating his lack of care, understanding and ability to sense what is negatively impacting the people he is responsible for representing.
For those that do fall in the ‘get over it camp’ my message is simple, put yourself in the shoes of those who you are asking to do so. Imagine if tomorrow we were invaded by a superpower, ours homes taken from us, we were placed into camps, the majority of men were killed, women raped, children taken away. Diseases we had not previously experienced wiped out a large portion of us, and we were then asked to change our religion, language, and be educated by the foreign superpower. Then in 200 years time, as the intergenerational trauma, grief, disrespect and anger is still being felt in the DNA of our ancestors, you would be ok with them being told to ‘get over it’?
Colonialism isn’t an event that occurred, the remains of it still exist today in the institutions that are meant to help, support and protect us, but they are not doing a good enough job of protecting Aboriginal people - Aboriginal people die earlier, are less likely to finish school, more likely to be incarcerated, and more likely to die in custody. The people from the ‘get over it’ camp, are also expecting Aboriginal people to just get over this? Just be ok with this happening, and move on like it doesn’t exist?
Racism stems from ignorance, fear and greed, and it breeds the need to control. We only need to look to our closest ally to see the systemic issues it causes, and how we are only a generation behind following down the same path. I came into contact with racism at a young age - I witnessed my brother being on the receiving end of it on the football field by old men who had been drinking, screaming from behind the boundary line. My brother had no Aboriginal ancestory, and even if he did why would this be used against him in a game of under 16 football? I sat along from the row of cars where the men sat, feeling powerless, looking at the men who supported my brothers team stand in silence, doing nothing, pretending that it wasn’t happening. Only a few years ago, these memories came flooding back watching what Adam Goodes was going through on one of our nations biggest stages. It’s one of the main reasons why I don’t watch AFL anymore.
Australia has a better opportunity than any other country around the world to become the greatest nation on the planet. But this will only happen if we lean into the big issues that are impacting and making Australians suffer, and finding solutions to them. For Australia to do this, we need to create an identity for ourselves, a set of values that we live by, a way of living that we can all come to expect the freedom to pursue. Happiness is an individual pursuit, but everyone should have the equal opportunity to do so. Happiness is based on living with freedom, with a purpose that gives meaning to life, and in harmony physically, mentally, spiritually and in society. This will mean needing to have an imagination and creating a vision for where we want to be in 10, 20 or 50 years time. It’s going to mean having some courage to face up to the truth of our past, and identify where we need to all make changes. And it’s going to mean needing to have some conviction, to look ourselves in the eye and make the commitment to come to terms with what has been done, and to acknowledge, respect and embrace our traditional land owners. We have an opportunity to create and start a new chapter for a modern Australia. One where everyone who is fortunate enough to call themselves Australian both currently and in the future, has the right to quality health, education, the law, to build a career, and a better future for themselves and their loved ones.
Until the day is moved to a date that can be recognised, embraced and celebrated by all Australian’s, it’s not my day.
Drew