On the eve of Australia Day eve, I feel it's a suitable time to express my disdain for a certain group of Australians.
They are the people who suggest we should be ashamed of Australia Day, for one reason or another. Some of them call it Invasion Day and say it's shameful to be celebrating the fact that a race was abused by invaders. Others suggest that anyone who takes pride in Australia Day is a red-neck bogan who gets drunk and beats up middle-eastern immigrants or shouts racist slurs.
First, the idea of Invasion Day. As the American-born, Australian citizen James Morrow says, "the fact is that no free country spends its national day navel gazing." Most developed countries have shameful periods in their history. As Morrow puts it, in the lead up to Independence Day you won't find Americans "picking over the lowlights of their history from slavery to Vietnam", and in the lead up to Bastille Day, the French "don’t use the day to focus on the Jacobin terror into which their revolution quickly descended, or bemoan their forebears uniquely brutal colonial history around the world".
Instead, their national day is to celebrate the creation of their country - not necessarily how it happened, but the fact they now have France, or the USA, to live in, in relative freedom. (France's freedom is increasingly fading, but that's another issue).
Yes, there were some awful things done to the Aboriginals when Australia was first settled. But there is a significant difference between the time when Australia was first settled (late 1700s) and the creation of the actual country, in 1901. We're celebrating the country we have now. Should it be January 26th? Some might say it too closely marks the 'invasion' of Aboriginals' territory. But is it not also the starting point of Australia as we know it?
The creation of many countries is interwoven with serious mistakes by the people who were there at the time. It goes back thousands of years. But it shouldn't interrupt the celebration of what is good about the country. And if you really think there's nothing good about Australia to be celebrating, well perhaps you shouldn't be living here.
We are not celebrating the awful things that happened in our history. We're celebrating the good and what has shaped our nation, and the nation it is now. Obviously we've got a pretty good thing going here, or we wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of people trying to immigrate every year - sometimes so desperate to get here, they put their children's lives at risk in a rusty boat. Every other country manages to balance an understanding of their country's past while being able to celebrate its freedom and benefits on a specific national day of celebration. Are we that morally handicapped that we can't find a balance too? As Morrow so aptly put it, "we have 364 other days every year to work through these issues".
As for those who think Australia Day is just about being a bogan racist who gets drunk... I'll borrow from James Morrow again. "Last year 92 people in NSW were arrested; that leaves nearly seven million who were not." There are a minority of people who are idiots and go out and riot, beat up people who look like immigrants (whether they are or aren't). I'm also not aware of any other time of year when most Australians have an objection to getting drunk. That aside, I'd say the majority of Australians have no more than one or two drinks on Australia Day. From my experience, most of them are playing some form of cricket (backyard, street, local park), having a BBQ or are in the pool.
They're not downing drink after drink, prowling Cronulla for people of Lebanese appearance.
The idea we shouldn't celebrate Australia Day because of this idiotic minority (who the media displays in disproportionate amounts) is absurd. It's like saying we should ban Muslims from the country because a minority are terrorists. The suggestion that wearing Australian flags, having your face painted (or even having a southern cross tattoo) makes you a racist bogan is downright stupid.
How about we just treat Australia Day for what it is - a celebration of Australia. Let's not pretend the dark shadows in history didn't happen, but let's debate that and sort that out on any of the other 364 days we have, and leave Australia Day as one special day when we can take time out to celebrate our country. And if you really think there's nothing worth celebrating, then I really don't know why you're even here.
7 comments:
Hi Leah,
First time visiting your blog, so perhaps it's impolite to disagree with you! But I appreciate your thorough reflection on this topic, so I thought I'd respond, as I'm one of the people you 'disdain' :) I hope you'll take this as a respectful response, rather than an aggressive one - I'd like to explain why I feel so ambivalent about Australia Day.
I don't think people who celebrate Australia Day are all drunken bogans, so I won't address the second part of your comments. But my concerns about the celebration of Australia Day are for the first reason you mention - the connection between 26 January and the beginning of white settlement. I should note that I'm a lecturer in Australian/Indigenous history, so a lot of my ideas about this come from my study - as well as my personal involvement with Aboriginal Christians.
I'd like to make a couple of points:
- James Morrow is simply wrong that Australia is the only country that has controversy over its national days. Any nation with a colonial past has controversies over the way that colonisation is remembered. With his American background, Morrow knows full well that there is huge controversy in the US over Columbus Day, which is the American national holiday commemorating the beginning of European colonisation of the Americas. And while Independence Day is not tied to the date of colonisation in the same way, every Independence Day in the States produces lots of self-reflection and agonising over America's past and present. There are similar controversies over Canada Day etc - Indigenous people in Canada hold 'Anti-Canada Day protests.' So there is nothing unusual about Australian debates over this, (especially given that we celebrate our national day on the date of colonisation) - it is an issue for any nation coming to terms with its past.
- I would encourage you to take more seriously the pain of Indigenous people who object to celebrating Australia on the day that marks the beginning of colonisation. The 26th of January marks a dark day in their history. The immediate consequence of that arrival was the death of thousands of Indigenous men, women and children through horrific disease; the loss of access to hunting grounds and waterholes; the introduction of alcohol that would take a massive toll on their communities. And that was just the first couple of years. I understand you may feel that this happened a long time ago - but can you understand that Indigenous Australians feel deeply hurt and angry that other Australians (who have benefited from colonisation through the enormous wealth generated by lands and resources taken from Aboriginal people) want to celebrate the 26th of January as though it was uncomplicatedly good?
- I love Australia - I love living here and I enjoy lots of things about the culture. There are things about our past that I am happy to celebrate (but on a day rather than 26 January!) It's because I love this country that I am ashamed of some aspects of our past and deeply sad about the ongoing impact of that past in our current society. Unlike you, I don't think that people who are ashamed of their countries should leave them. After all, what would have happened if all the Germans who were ashamed of Germany during the Third Reich had left? There would not have been a Resistance movement! (Of course, I don't think Australia is like Hitler's Germany, but I think the point stands!) Instead, I think it's important to stay and try to change things. In my case, in this instance, that means seeing 26 January, with my Aboriginal brothers and sisters, as more a day of mourning than celebration. And arguing (in lengthy blog posts like this!) that if we are going to celebrate Australia, we need to choose another day!
Thanks for reading - I'd be interested in your thoughts!
I don't think Morrow was saying there's no controversy, just that people manage to appreciate the good of the day as well.
I also didn't say that having shame for some aspects of your country's history means you should leave. I said if you honestly saw NOTHING good about your country worth celebrating, you should leave. So please read and respond to what I actually say and don't suggest I said something when I didn't.
Your analogy of Nazi Germany is way off. The people you say "how would it be if they left" were people who were there while it was happening, and could have had a direct impact on what was happening - not 200 years later. If there were still Germans, now, who whinged about Germany due to its Nazi history and carried on as if there was nothing good about Germany, then I'd tell them to find somewhere else to live too.
I also don't think you have any way of knowing how 'seriously', or otherwise, I take the issue of what happened to aboriginals during settlement. This blog dealt purely with the aspect of its impact on how we celebrate Australia Day, not the topic in general.
(To be honest, though, I find the issue of what happened to aboriginals during settlement to be of much lower importance than the stolen generation, who is still alive and who we can still directly impact.)
I also find a lot of the debate highly racist. It's all "white Australians" this and "white fellas" that, but if we dared call an Aboriginal "black" we'd be declared racists; also, they act like today's "white" Australians somehow shoulder more responsibility for what happened than Asian or European or Middle-Eastern Australians. Yes, it was our ancestors who were involved in the initial settlement, but that's like criticising today's Germans for what the Nazis did eighty years ago.
Thanks for responding, Leah. I feel like you've taken what I said as an aggressive attack on your post. That's not what I meant to do and I apologise that in places I seem to have misread or misinterpreted what you wrote. That said, you started by saying you have disdain (quite a strong word!) for people that don't want to celebrate Australia Day. That's me! - and I'm trying to explain why I feel that way. In particular, I think my reasons for being very ambivalent about Australia Day are a bit more defensible than those you outlined in your original post.
So let me go back to my original post and your response. Firstly, I'm just not convinced that there is any real difference between other countries with colonial heritages and ours. The reality is that tomorrow there will be lots of official speeches about how great Australia is - there will also be some mention of Indigenous dispossession and some people saying we shouldn't celebrate on 26 January. That's pretty much what you get in the States and Canada, in my experience. Some people positive, some people negative. So I do disagree with Morrow that Australians are somehow more negative about our past than other nations.
Secondly, I apologise if I suggested that you didn't take Indigenous pain seriously. That was unfair. I guess what I'm saying is, all the Indigenous people I know, most of them Christians, find Australia Day incredibly painful. They say that it is a day when they remember a huge loss and the rest of the nation seems to be celebrating. (I am not saying all Indigenous people feel that way - you may know others who feel differently). It seems very important to me that we as a nation respect that pain and I think one way we could do it is move Australia Day to another date.
Thirdly, again, I appreciate the limitations of the Nazi Germany analogy - as I said, I'm not suggesting Australia is Nazi Germany! Though I still think it applies to your final point - if you lived in a country that you thought had NOTHING going for it, surely your Christian responsibility would mean you should stay and spread the gospel!
Finally, I would say that while the descendants of white settlers are not to blame for dispossession, we - and those who have come here since white settlement - do benefit from it. The prosperity of this nation comes from the use of land and resources taken from indigenous people without payment. I didn't steal my house from Indigenous people, but it is built on land that was stolen. So, to return to the Nazi Germany analogy - I don't blame my German friends for what the Nazis did. But if I knew that their money came from a business that had been stolen from Jewish Germans during the Third Reich - I would expect them to think hard about their responsibility to make some reparations.
I have other thoughts about the black/white thing, but I'm sure you've had enough of me! I'd appreciate your further thoughts. And since there's only one degree of separation between us - we both post on my sister-in-law Simone's blog - perhaps we'll even have the conversation in person one day!
Hi. No, it's ok. I came home a bit annoyed already and saw the comment and was like RARGH. I wasn't mad at you. The comment just made me mad at a lot of the other people who probably hold more extreme versions of your opinion.
You're right that we ("white Australians") do benefit from the dispossesion of indigenous people. But other non-white Australians do too, (in fact so do a lot of indigenous people) and they never seem to get as bad a wrap over the whole issue.
I'd also fully agree there's very little difference between the colonisation of Australia and certain other countries. I think James Morrow would too. Neither of us contends that. In fact, I'd say our arguments stem from the fact that the countries' histories are so similar.
If you lived in a country you thought had nothing going for it, then sure, perhaps stay and spread the gospel. But stay and complain, especially about its national day? Also, I think most of the people in the media complaining about Australia Day are not Christians.
It's probably unlikely we'd ever meet, I think. I haven't seen Simone since I was about ten years old, and in all probability, she probably doesn't actually remember me. I got in touch with her blog through Nathan Campbell's blog.
Oh, and to clarify, I don't have disdain for specific people :P Just the group's opinion.
Also, what's with the trend of blaming white people for aboriginals' abuse of alcohol? If a white guy screws up his life due to his alcohol abuse, he's told to take responsibility and straighten out his life; if a black guy does, we're told it's white Australians' (or just the rest of Australia's) fault for introducing alcohol.
Sigh. I probably shouldn't get started. I just see so many things in politics regarding indigenous Australians where people shout 'racism' and 'inequality', but if you turned the issue around so it's affecting other non-indigenous Australians, nobody cares.
Hi Leah,
I spent Australia Day thanking God for this beautiful country he has created and how lucky we are to be living in it. We truly are a blessed land.
Hi again, Leah. Thanks for your gracious response! I have been trying to find a moment to respond properly - I have a couple of further thoughts - but have been too busy. I'll try and get to it in the next day or two, but just wanted to let you know I did read this!
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