We're enjoying celebrating lucky to have a experiencing a long weekend this weekend for Australia Day, or Invasion Day, depending on where you sit with the discomfort of celebrating this day. For a lot of Australians, it's a bonus day off. For others, it's a time for reflection on who we actually are as a nation.
On January 26th, 1788, the First Fleet landed on the shores of the southern land in which I live, changing the course of the First People of this continent forever. What followed was the complete dispossession of a people who'd lived here for upwards of 40,000 years - a dark past indeed, and one that would echo down the centuries until today, where the gap between Aboriginal Australia and white Australia is still shamefully present.
Cricket Australia, after consulting with it's Indigneous advisory committee, decided not to refer to January 26 as Australia Day. It's just a show of respect for the indigneous players and fans who see that day as a day of mourning. Fair enough. Sport is a wonderful vehicle for social change and getting conversations going about big issues.
But our prime minister didn't think so. My rant is thus about his assholery - statements that have me cringe in shame for being white Australian, and angry that our leader doesn't seem to have the first clue about how the First People of this land might feel about this day of grief and mourning.
Of course, he dismisses any grief over the past with this brilliant gem:
"When those 12 ships turned up in Sydney all those years ago, it wasn’t a particularly flash day for the people on those vessels either"
Oh dear. I think 48 people died on that first fleet and they travelled 252 days to Australia. The other thousand odd people - convicts, crew, soldiers and family members - must have felt awfully sea sick.
Thanks Adam Bandt (he's the Greens leader here). He had the spine to call it - you can't compare seasickness to genocide and systemic racism, dispossession and stolen children. No, Scotty, you absolutely can't. Even if your ancestors had a hard time of it, what, marking this land as their own, making their fortunes and dispossessing the first people.
But maybe Scomo just wants to enjoy the cricket:
"I think a bit more focus on cricket and a bit less focus on politics would be my message to Cricket Australia"
Everything is political, asshat.
Hey, just crack a tinny, ignore the suffering of a people, and shut up and watch the cricket. It's the Aussie thing to do.
He did make a little show of pretending he knew something about history:
"I think one of the great things about Australia ... is we are pretty up front and honest about our past."
So at least he knows we have a past.
Remember it though? We're renowned for our collective amnesia. We weren't taught about it in school - save the brave white people facing the black savage (you know, usual colonisation story) and most Australian people believe they were primitive and nomadic and have no idea at all about the culture. I don't. I dont' even pretend to. I try my best to learn, of course - it's my responsibility as someone who walks this land. I'm not even quite sure what right I have to speak, but it tweaks my social justice nerve and I feel so angry because he's so wrong and insensitive. The fact that he dismisses the experiences, the trauma of the first people suggests he either never learnt, or has forgotten, or doesn't care about how the trauma of history filters down to this day.
The amnesia doesn't extend to other memorials of nationhood. We remember the wars alright. In fact, the months leading up to Anzac day are great for commemorative mugs, injecting council money into statues and gazebos, and buying pins. Lest we forget and all of that.
62,000 died in World War One. We know all about that. But most Aussie kids will tell you that Australia itself never had a war. Tell them about the massacres of First Nation people here, the genocide and dispossesion, and they're horrified. 'Why didn't they tell us this?' they ask. They deliberated poisoned them with flour. Put to the bayonet children. Drove them off cliffs.
Then they're told they need to let the past go. To forget about it, because it's 'history' and we need to look to the future.
Fuck off Scotty from marketing. You've just shown the only thing you love to remember is white colonisation and how great it was for this country.
So when you change one line of the anthem, or even if you thought that not mentioning Australia Day was a good move, or hell, even if you changed the date of Invasion Day - that's not even a start.
You need to fight for all your people, not just the few that look like you and talk like you and have your convict history. You need to take a treaty seriously, to fight for justice for the Indigenous people, and truly bring this nation into a reconciled one where all it's people can reflect, grieve, remember and heal the wounds of the past with a togetherness and spirit of true one nationhood that's never been seen before.
Until then, I'm always going to be uncomfortable with this weekend.