Some years ago I swore I would never write another Invasion Day article, and I know I’m not alone in that decision.
I reckon the argument against “Australia Day” on 26 January is fairly convincing and has been well articulated by any number of Blackfullas. The reality is, it doesn’t particularly matter what we say or do, ‘cause “Australia Day” isn’t about us anyways.
In its current commemoration, it is a day that tells a story of a violent and heartless nation that insists upon our forgetting; forgetting what has and continues to be done to us, and forgetting that we were ever here in the first place. And each year we are forced to engage in this annual mythologising, as though all that is needed is a legitimate counterargument to convince them otherwise.
Spoiler alert – it’s not.
The date of 26 January really is just another day in the colony, which we as Blackfullas know too well.
It is around this time that our emails and DMs are flooded with last-minute requests to feature in a podcast or write an opinion piece, typically just days prior, because it’s not like they didn’t know it was coming, every damn year.
Right on cue, a current or former prime minister makes some idiotic patriotic statement about “modern Australia” and its formations, which conveniently erases 60,000 years of the world’s oldest living culture, and the subsequent two centuries of violence that defines so much of their own culture. Bless.
A lot of Blackfullas will sign off from socials in January, while those who remain lose another high school friend or family member on Facebook over “all the money wasted on Indigenous affairs” or something or other.
But each year on 26 January, Blackfullas, even those who chose not to author that op-ed or appear on that podcast, will still turn up to a rally or protest donning our latest or favourite Black protest tee, marching down the same streets that they did the year before. And each year, we add names to the list of our dead that we speak of, those who died prematurely at the hands of the state.
The date, as a commemoration of this supposed “modern nation’s” story, is a fairly accurate one when you think about it. Since 1788, there has been no change in the relationship it has with us, not substantively. Any sense of Black progress that is spoken of by them is only ever in regard to our ability to be in closer proximity to them, always on their terms, and to be discarded whenever they see fit.
Yet, for me and a whole lot of other Blackfullas, turning up on 26 January at protests is not an appeal to the settlers. It is a rallying call for our people, and despite the repetitive nature of this annual ritual, I will never tire of those words “still here” or “always was, always will be”.
Each year, that cry gets louder and louder as the marches extend longer and longer. Such change does not offer me a sense of hope that the settlers will have a change of heart. Our emancipation is not to be found in their validation. Turning up to that protest, is to be immersed in a sea of Black power and is a most critical reminder of who we are as a people, despite who they are as a nation.
Irrespective of how the nation state chooses to commemorate it (if they continue, change or abolish it), 26 January will always be for Blackfullas. It’s a day of asserting who we are as a people; one of survival, of an unceded sovereignty, and a story that speaks so loudly to the strength of our spirit, in life and in death.
The irony here is you would think that if the settlers weren’t so attached to having pride in genocide, they would see what it truly means to be proud of your people and your nation.
But sure, “chuck another snag on the barbie”.
Dr Chelsea Watego is a Mununjali and South Sea Islander woman and is Professor of Indigenous health at Queensland University of Technology. Chelsea previously wrote under the name Dr Chelsea Bond. Her latest book is Another Day in the Colony
