Don't Just Change The Date, Re-Purpose The Date
Australia Day, Reflecting on History
Information:
Australia Day - History
Author: Dr Elizabeth Kwan
National Australia Day Council
https://www.australiaday.org.au/about-australia-day/history/
Extracted Reference:
1788 - Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain, and the first Governor of New South Wales, arrived at Sydney Cove on 26 January and raised the Union Jack to signal the beginning of the colony.
Information:
Australia Day - Reconciliation
National Australia Day Council
https://www.australiaday.org.au/about-australia-day/reconciliation/
Extracted Reference:
Our national day provides an opportunity to acknowledge and learn about our nation's past. It's a time to reflect on and learn about our national journey including the ongoing history, traditions and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
Information:
Australia Day - An Encyclopedic History
Author: Multiple Wikipedia Contributors
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Day
Information:
Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day: What's in a name?
Author: Karina Marlow
SBS TV, NITV
Published: 20 January 2016
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/explainer/australia-day-invasion-day-survival-day-whats-name
Sub-Reference:
Nakkiah Lui, a Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander actor and playwright, wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian explaining why she refused to celebrate the day but instead viewed it as a day of mourning.
"We mourn the declaration of Australia as terra nullius (land that belongs to no one) as well as those who have died in massacres, those who were dispossessed of their land and homes, those were denied their humanity, those who were shackled, beaten, sent to prison camps, and made to live in reserves."
Information:
Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day: What's in a name?
Author: Karina Marlow
SBS TV, NITV
Published: 20 January 2016
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/explainer/australia-day-invasion-day-survival-day-whats-name
Sub-Reference:
Lowitja O'Donoghue who was awarded Australian of the Year in 1984 pleaded for dialogue about changing the date of Australia Day.
"Let us find a day on which we can all feel included, in which we can all participate equally, and can celebrate with pride our common Australian identity."
Information:
#ChangeTheDate
Authors: Rachel Siewert and Lidia Thorpe
The Greens Party
Published: 19 January 2018
https://greens.org.au/magazine/national/changethedate
Extracted Reference:
"January 26 is a potent reminder of that history and our efforts to airbrush it. To continue to celebrate Australia Day on January 26 is to ignore that dispossession.
That is why The Greens will continue to push for a national conversation around an appropriate and inclusive alternative date, and over the coming year will be looking for ways that we can work with local councils and local communities around the country who want to start a conversation about changing the date."
Information:
#ChangeTheDate
Authors: Rachel Siewert and Lidia Thorpe
The Greens Party
Published: 19 January 2018
https://greens.org.au/magazine/national/changethedate
Sub-Reference:
MP for Northcote in Victoria, Lidia Thorpe
"Every Australia Day, I am reminded that this was a process that began on January 26.
We can no longer ignore that suffering.
I'm so moved to see people from all walks of life start to recognise that this is a day of great sorrow.
But it is not a sudden shift. This year marks the 80th anniversary of respected Aboriginal activist William Cooper calling for a day of mourning.
I am a proud Australian and I believe we should celebrate the diversity and community spirit that makes us a great nation.
But our First Nations people are hurting. We must find a way to walk forward together in hope and healing."
Information:
Cooper, William (1861–1941)
Author: Diane Barwick
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Published: Volume 8, (MUP), 1981
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-william-5773
Extracted Reference:
"His grave is at Cumeroogunga; his main achievement was the establishment of a 'National Aborigines Day', first celebrated in 1940."
Information:
NAIDOC History
National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC)
http://www.naidoc.org.au/about/naidoc-history
Extracted Reference:
"From 1940 until 1955, the Day of Mourning was held annually on the Sunday before Australia Day and was known as Aborigines Day. In 1955 Aborigines Day was shifted to the first Sunday in July after it was decided the day should become not simply a protest day but also a celebration of Aboriginal culture."
Information:
Celebrating NAIDOC Week
National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC)
http://www.naidoc.org.au/celebrating-naidoc-week
Extracted Reference:
"NAIDOC celebrations are held around Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The week is celebrated not just in the Indigenous communities but also in increasing numbers of government agencies, schools, local councils and workplaces.
Here are some ideas on how to celebrate NAIDOC Week:" A list of suggested actions follows.
Author's Notes: Through my obervation of the history and the different views that have come from it, the call to "Change The Date" doesn't appear to be coming as a direct and unified request from Aboriginal people. Instead, having a day to celebrate Aboriginal history, culture and achievements as has been promoted by NAIDOC, this appears to be working to grow awareness and understanding of the role that the Aboriginal people have had in Australia's history. This same work is furthered on Australia day with existing events being run with the title of "Survival Day" and "Invasion Day" and events where the general public are invited to come to understand the concept of mourning that happens on the 26th of January. However, having something legitimate to protest against appears to have given these initiatives on the 26th of January, a fame and a fire that doesn't appear to have been replicated in scale by other initiatives such as NAIDOC Week which was moved to July.
There do appear to be signs of continuing governmental oppression and often a widespread oblivion towards the issues that the Aboriginal people have been facing. This certainly would put a dampener on any call to celebrate something which includes laws, systems and bureacracies that either haven't been kind to Aboriginal people or haven't been helpful. In response to calls to give Aboriginal people political power that they may use to build solutions to the issues they face, there is evidence to suggest that the constitution of Australia has been blamed as lacking the legal and bureacratic framework to give them that power. It is hoped the Politify platform could be used to bypass those legal and political issues which are currently creating a roadblock to the removal of perceived opression by allowing those oppressive elements to be directly targetted and solutions found.
Wondering where the call to change the date has come from, there appears to be no polling of Aboriginal people that I can find so it is hard to say if this campaign is indeed an action driven by the Aboriginal people as a majority view or if it is perhaps a compassion fuelled beatup. A stirring of misplaced do-gooding sentiment channeled into a Greens party point scoring effort. Not that I am in any way against the Greens or their initiatives, I mean only to suggest that we may need to look deeper than a hashtag slogan.
The one thing that can't change is the date on which the First Fleet ships arrived. The question is, how do we respond to this as a fact?
To me, the date doesn't appear to be the issue. The issue appears to be the celebration, the potential for a lack of respect from a few minority groups and perhaps the ongoing lack of voice that the Aboriginal people feel they have in parliament. Problem is that all of us as individuals lack a voice. Unless we align with one popularist group or another and have the numbers aligned with an issue we care about, all of us are largely powerless within this not-so-representative democracy.
Are Celebration and Respect, mutually exclusive ways of being? I think it depends on what part of the story an individual has within their mind at the time they celebrate. It is certainly possible to shift an individual's focus, so shifting the story for more and more Australians is what I think the campaign should be about.
I reserve my judgement on this issue and reserve the right to change my mind with the view that there are still unanswered questions but I call for an objective and measured understanding of the history contributing to Australia Day and a logical, socially beneficial response to it.
Personally I hold a view of consent. I don't have any hold on the idea of keeping it on the 26th of January and I don't have any hold on the idea of changing it, however, I think any decision should be a conscious decision. Throughout writing this article, I have found myself changing positions several times but having analysed it as thoroughly as I can in the time of writing this, I do now feel that there is more reason to keep it on the 26th than to change it. Further, I think that the push to change it can only cause more division and more harm within our community and it will pull the fire and drive out of education efforts that are staged as protests. If it brings any benefit at all it will only be an emotional benefit to a very few which we absolutely should aim for but there is perhaps a better approach to delivering this emotional shift.
Defining the Problem
There has been a lot of debate recently around the idea of changing the date of Australia Day. Australia Day which currently occurs on the 26th of January each year and which marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British convict ships in Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, New South Wales. Championed by some as a day to celebrate the start of what is today's modern Australia. Championed by others as just a day off work, some fireworks and a long weekend. However, it is believed by some that celebrating on this date is showing disrespect for the violence that followed the historical event. The violence that could be described as the British colonist's dominance and slaughter of the Aboriginal people. Further the history since then is thought of by some as the British occupation of aboriginal land. The rule of governance, law and bureaucracy which is the legacy of the British colonists, largely being seen as tools that have oppressed and decimated aboriginal culture. And, I must acknowledge that in a population of 23 million people or so, there are going to be some idiots amongst us who intend disrespect and who might even think it is their right to be disrespectful for whatever self-righteous reasons they have made up in their mind. There is of course, a lot more to the history and a lot more views about it but I would say this paraphrases some of the headlines contributing to the controversy.
While there are many compassionate individuals within our society sympathising with the idea of the Australia Day date being a day of mourning and who therfore want the date changed, there are others that call for the national day to be recognised, warts and all, for what it is; not just a day of celebration for what we have become but a day of revision, analysis, compassion and understanding. A day perhaps to overcome the history, to declare triumph over it and to use that triumph as a drive to bring the modern people of Australia together.
Recognising that the events of massacre and violence are largely in everyone's past and the responsibility of nobody alive today, we must ask the question, what carries the pain forward? Why has there been no healing for some? I ask these questions so that by searching for their answer, we may come to a deeper understanding. Let's accept that if a few are calling out their pain, then pain exists and let's understand it so we can help to aleviate it and not make it worse. Changing the date being one proposed answer to help heal this pain but are there other suggestions that could do the same? Might there be other ideas that would work even better? Is it possible that changing the date won't heal this pain? I don't know the answer to this, I mean only to look and to explore and perhaps to give my own ideas on the matter. The ultimate decision on this rests with those individuals who actually experience the pain. They need a public voice. But if all are given a public voice, might we find that Aboriginal people are not the only ones with pain? As an idea to explore, might we find the decendents of convicts, also with a story to tell and injustices of their past to overcome? Might we find there being an injustice to this being made into a race issue? As another idea to explore, I've even seen one expression of opinion that suggests this is a community against government system issue and nothing to do with the past. Is the thing that carries the pain forward perhaps a continuation of opression? Is it fair to say that any continuing oppression is targeted specifically at Aboriginal people? Or is it perhaps a personal or cultural angst that isn't going to shift by the changing of a date? Sorry for the self promotion but I think the only way to get definitive, reliable answers to some of these and other questions is through a direct democracy system like Politify that polls individuals to get their exact views.
While I honestly don't know how many, I am going to assert that there are people hurting here because of the events of the past. I have sympathy for anyone that feels pain. My aim in writing this is to alleviate pain and not to add to it. I hope that I do a good job at this. I move forward with that hope being aware that like any well meaning person, I could put forward one careless point of view or another that could contribute to extra suffering and extra anguish. There are wrongs and injustices here that are deeply felt, having lasting impacts and this is understood. I want my readers on my side. I am not a tabloid writer. I detest sensationalism and devisiveness being used as tools to sell. I seek truth, I seek understanding, I seek benefit. With these aims I don't take sides just to emotionally support a group especially when that support of one group might be at the expense of another and so I find myself occupying the middle ground on this. Here I am talking about the racism against "white people" which appears to come out as a go-to expression from a minority. The suggestion that it is somehow the fault and responsibility of living "white people." My caring here is universal and with accusations being thrown around from one group to another and back often with the intent of causing a degree of harm. Those who hurt often are the most hurting. We need to collectively come to understand this on a big scale but at the same time, we need to encourage people to cut out the throwing of hurt because its not doing anyone any good. It might feel good in the moment to throw accusation and make another wrong and to lump them into a group as one wrong doing bunch but it honestly just doesn't help in the bigger scheme of things and you only fuel an arms race of insult and metaphoric stone throwing. Take that to extremes and the metaphoric can turn into actual violence. Here I try to speak to those on both sides of this debate to try and encourage not the middle ground but the common ground. None of us alive today, chose our history. But our history is made up of facts and now we get to choose how we respond to those facts.
To me, the issue is not the date; the issue is the celebration and the polarisation around the date with a binary change it or don't change it. This I see as divisive and not helpful. It turns the debate into what two opposing and largely uncooperative groups of Australian's are making the celebration mean. Both groups are ideology tribes. They are diverse in their background, diverse in their race, diverse in their social status, diverse in terms of the other views they hold. You can't racially profile these groups without being (by academic application of a functional definition) a racist. You can't even politically profile these groups because there are supporters and opposers on each political team. There is a polarisation of views that has been attached to the headline of "Change The Date" with one group on one end of an extreme and another group on the other. It is creating a tug of war between the idea of changing the date and not changing the date. The two groups are not defined by race but instead by their having taken a position at one end of the polarisation or the other. And each who finds themselves on one end of the polarisation or the other, justifies their position often by outrage at the opposite end.
If you don't feel like celebrating, that's fine. You already know you don't have to. For those that feel sadness when hearing about the wrongs and injustices of the past, that's just very human and compassionate of you; it is an understandable response and learning to deal with that is a part of the education that I can see being intended. For those that want to bring change that is more than just a superficial changing of a date, Australia Day on the 26th, with all its attention, media coverage and a guaranteed audience and its historical significance is the ABSOLUTE BEST OPPORTUNITY to analyse, reflect, highlight and educate and to call for meaningful change.
In Summary:
- If we do actually change the date then those same people who want to highlight the injustices of our history and the continuing injustices built into our political, legal and social framework, they all of a sudden lose justification for their campaign. Why? Because you won. You got your date change and now a large number of people think you need to be satisfied with that.
- Changing the date to one that avoids protest has been proven by NAIDOC to be a PR mistake with a reduced attention on the history.
- If we do actually change the date, the history hasn't gone away. We will still have to highlight all those same issues on that new date only now with less credibility.
- Its unlikely to be supported universally so division is guaranteed.
- Even the aboriginal communities who are the focus of the call, are divided in their views about the date and many have made the point publicly that there are much bigger issues to tackle.
- If we change the date, we collectively miss an opportunity to promote the solutions to the injustices that are continuing to be faced by Aboriginal people. Changing the date being no practical part of that solution.
The Proposed Solutions
In order to keep all of the benefits of a national day of celebration with its implied intentions of national pride and national unity, while at the same time maintaining respect for the wrongs of the past that have allowed our present to happen, I propose the following as solutions:
- Use Australia Day, with all of its historical significance, use the attention, the media coverage and a guaranteed audience, to review the history, to analyse, educate, inspire and unite. Repurpose it with education as the cause.
- Continue with the education campaigns, the Invasion Day and Survival Day campaigns. Make them a feature.
- Stop with the wrote learned statements of fake respect for Aboriginal land and culture coming from government officials and instead work to encourage some real respect by giving real people a voice.
- Politically empower aboriginal people at the same time as empowering every other individual by giving them a platform on which they can provide facts about the issues they face and discuss the solutions they seek and let's crowdsource some solutions direct from Aboriginal people themselves. The solutions channeled through the Politify platform.
- If the pain felt on the 26th of January is real for any individual and would not be healed by a change of date, let's train/employ Aboriginal councillors to assist with cultural/historical pain or pain born from thoughts of the past. Let's make this a personal development issue for individuals allowing them to take back their personal power.
- Acknowledge the pledge of the National Australia Day Council: "We aspire to an Australia Day that can increasingly include a recognition and celebration by all Australians of the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to our nation."
- Acknowledge that Australia Day on the 26th of January is already a very inclusive day with the majority of people showing respect when given the chance to do so. Expressions of respect and understanding only growing in popularity through time. Celebration and respect not being mutually exclusive ways of being.
- Let's work to fix some real social issues instead of spending time on a superficial date change.
- After all this is said, if I have got it all wrong and we give Aboriginal people a voice with Politify and we hear directly that a large percentage of Aboriginal people genuinely do want the date of Australia Day to change and for it to be a triumphant day of celebration that is not at all scarred by considerations of the past, let's react to the statistic as a fact and confidently move forward with change.
The Benefit of the Solutions
The solutions being proposed have the theme of promoting a decision being made consciously and without subconsciously drifting towards one pole or another in response to the binary "Change The Date" campaign. If we are going to change the date then this should be based on a polling of the views of Aboriginal people having regard for the fact that there may actually be no long term benefit to changing the date.
If we keep the date, we avoid creating further division and disrespect within our society.
The benefit of the solutions being proposed, would make use of the facts of history to inspire greater respect and understanding. The history being made even more of a feature of Australia Day.
Suggested Discussion Topics
- Poll of views coming direct from Aboriginal people.
- Do you participate in a day of mourning on the 26th of January?
- Do you feel pain when you see people celebrating on a day of mourning?
- How can Respect and Celebration coexist on the same day?
- The role of personal responsibility when shifting pain.
- Accepting the existence of disrespectful idiots.
- Do you want the date to change?
Author
Cameron Gibbs
Politify Founder
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