Since January 26, 1938, when greater than 100 Aboriginal individuals gathered at Australia Corridor in Sydney and declared it a Day of Mourning, it has been a robust day of resistance and Indigenous group energy. Now referred to as Invasion Day, it belongs inside a constellation of Aboriginal resistance efforts encompassing warfare, walk-offs, marches and quiet on a regular basis resistances and refusals, starting from first contacts and invasions of our lands and waters by to the current day. Every act is highly effective and vital, calling for justice, land and life whereas defiantly reminding “we’re nonetheless right here”.
In 2024, Invasion Day is located inside a worldwide motion that’s reckoning with Israel’s occupation and genocide dedicated towards the Palestinian individuals. It is usually located a mere 15 weeks after the failed Voice referendum that put Aboriginal lives and voices up for debate.
It has left most of us questioning: what is going to this colony do to us subsequent? The failure of the referendum has emboldened racists and given licence to those that search to divide — people who find themselves already utilizing it to additional wedge the inhabitants, similar to Peter Dutton.
In the meantime these Black conservative careerists preserve betting on white, and whereas they debate, whereas they divide, they climb their ladders on our communities’ backs as our individuals are nonetheless dying. We’re all nonetheless struggling the psychic toll of the stark unveiling of this nation’s colonial core, with 13YARN, the nationwide helpline for First Nations peoples reporting a greater than 100% improve in help calls from individuals reporting abuse or trauma within the lead-up to the referendum.
We’re nonetheless dying a lot youthful than we must always, with our outdated individuals hardly ever reaching retirement age and our younger individuals dying preventable deaths. Far too a lot of our youngsters are nonetheless being stolen by the state.
Communities in north Queensland are going through devastating flooding, and others from the Kimberley to Northern Rivers are nonetheless rebuilding after being ravaged by different colonial environmental catastrophes. Extractive industries are nonetheless destroying our nation, just like the proposed seismic blasting in seek for oil and fuel reserves within the Otway Basin.
The state continues to promote what they name Crown land, as they’d somewhat have it within the fingers of settlers and companies as an alternative of the mobs whose land it’s. States and territories across the nation are locking up extra youngsters than ever, with no indicators of slowing down. We expertise all this in a social and political local weather imbued with individuals saying the quiet racist half even louder.
Every year round this time, whingeing from patriotic sooks has turn into a pastime because the house for them to sizzle themselves like overcooked prawns comfortably in public, whereas waving their Aussie flags, turns into smaller. Every year the pageantry, parades and events diminish.
This 12 months, not content material with having received the No vote within the referendum, they’re rallying to boycott companies similar to Woolworths for now not promoting wasteful and (maybe a better sin) cheesy Australia Day nationalist paraphernalia. Whereas it could be heartening to assume these corporations are on the aspect of Blackfullas like us, simply do not forget that there isn’t a financial profit to promoting this shit, they usually’re nonetheless an organization value gouging throughout a cost-of-living disaster. Nonetheless, if nothing else, it’s an aesthetic win.
What are we to do with all this when only a few months in the past the nation resoundingly instructed us to go fuck ourselves? Whereas the settler and the Black liberal political class hand-wring, questioning how their nation might have resoundingly rejected Blackfullas, there may be work to be accomplished.
We have now all the time identified what we’d like, and if this failed referendum has taught us something, let or not it’s this: we are able to’t await the goodwill of a settler nation. If the settler has been given the licence to be racist, we should give ourselves the licence to unrelentingly and unequivocally demand and battle for greater than we ever have.
It was not that way back individuals had been asking for a change of date to have fun Australia Day. It was the repeated calls for of Blackfullas calling for it to be abolished which have in the end received. We have now efficiently made the day too disgrace to have fun. Need your mates and Instagram followers to know you’re a racist? Throw an Australia Day social gathering. Every year we’ve got restricted the scope of the day as a celebration and pushed it additional to the margins of cringe. This has been accomplished by relentless annual organising by totally different mob across the nation.
We all know relentlessly demanding the seemingly unattainable works. So what else can we obtain? What can we do once we refuse our political calls for to be restricted by a political class with slender imaginations? What freedom and liberation lie on the opposite aspect? Reconciliation is lifeless, and so is recognition. What’s subsequent?
This Invasion Day we demand:
- Treaty/Treaties
- Land again and land rights — cease promoting land promised to us
- Finish Aboriginal deaths in custody and implement all of the suggestions of the Royal Fee into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and each coronial inquest
- Local weather justice
- Finish the theft of Black youngsters and return them to their household and kin
- Abolish police and prisons
- Reparations
We’ll march the streets once more this January 26, and collect like our communities have on at the present time for 87 years. These streets have been well-worn lately, as each week tens of hundreds have marched in solidarity with our Palestinian household being killed by each the Israeli state and settlers. Australia has persistently, albeit in various levels, supported Israel in its many years of occupation and violence, and as peoples topic to colonial forces and land theft, Blackfullas right here should not shocked. As Palestinians have stood with us at our rallies and on Invasion Day, we proceed to unwaveringly stand with them now, as we’ve got in years earlier than. We’ll proceed to remind these individuals, these colonial state forces, “we’re nonetheless right here”, and we aren’t going anyplace.