- Australia Day controversy: protests, statues
- Indigenous perspectives on colonization
- Calls for holiday reconsideration
Thousands of Australians have gathered at rallies opposing the Australia Day holiday, which has increasingly become a contentious commemoration of the arrival of British colonists in 1788.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Invasion Day rallies held in Sydney, Melbourne, and other major cities nationwide on Friday saw the assembly of protesters.
The holiday, observed on January 26—the day a fleet of eleven British ships carrying human convicts arrived in present-day Sydney in 1788—has evolved into a subject of increasing controversy regarding its meaning and purpose. Historically, it was a period when Australians celebrated summer with barbecues and visits to the beach.
They are referred to as Invasion Day or Survival Day by Indigenous peoples because they signified the beginning of a protracted period of treaty-free dispossession and discrimination against Indigenous peoples. Australia is lagging behind nations such as Canada, New Zealand, and the United States without such a treaty.
Protesters damaged two monuments commemorating the nation’s colonial past in the southern city of Melbourne, named after a former British prime minister, on the eve of this year’s holiday.
A monument to Queen Victoria was splattered with red paint. At the same time, a statue honouring Captain James Cook, who first claimed the territory for Britain in the 18th century and charted the coast around Sydney, was severed at the ankles.
Social media posts featured photographs of the Cook statue in a downed state. They were accompanied by spray-painted inscriptions that read “The colony will fall” on the stone pedestal which once supported it.
In January 2022, protesters directed crimson paint at the identical statue.
“Our community has no place for this type of vandalism,” said Jacinta Allan, the premier of Victoria.
The Friday rally organizer in Melbourne, Tarneen Onus Browne, stated that the holiday must end.
“We believe that violence and massacres have occurred every day of the calendar,” Browne, an agent for the Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance, told ABC.
“We have been stating this annually, and we also wish to debunk the myth surrounding the discovery of this colony.”
Additionally, hundreds of individuals attended dawn services on January 26.
“In essence, it signifies unity, peace, and coming together to acknowledge the past in order to move forward,” Jason Briggs told ABC at a We-Akon Dilinja ceremony in Melbourne, which means “mourning reflection.”
According to him, the purpose of such activities is to unite Australians.
We must anticipate a path that leads us to a destination where we can engage in a more constructive discourse concerning the resolution of issues, differences, and outstanding matters, while also recognizing that we are all Australian citizens and a nation with a shared future.
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Polls show that most Australians support the name and public holiday but disagree with the date shift, often politically.
Our most famous sports figure, cricket captain Pat Cummins, suggested a more inclusive date this week.
“I genuinely adore Australia.” “It is without a doubt the greatest nation on earth,” he declared.
“Australia Day should exist, but we can likely find a more suitable occasion to observe it.”
In October of that year, Australians rejected amendments to the 1901 constitution, which would have recognized the nation’s first inhabitants and established the Voice to Parliament, an Indigenous consultative body.
Indigenous individuals comprise 3.8% of Australia’s 26 million inhabitants.
They are among the most disadvantaged individuals in the nation and are confronted with challenges. Such as inadequate education and health, in addition to high rates of incarceration.
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