The tradition of having Australia Day as a national holiday on 26 January is a recent one. oldonload(); } else { The unfortunate reality for the Australia Day Council, and for the rest of the nation, is that this isnt an issue that is ever going to go away. The disparity between these two experiences couldnt be starker. No & it wasnt 1994, it was 1946 that the 26th January became our National Day & as a Ngadjuri Aboriginal all my Mob celebrate our National Day with pride. You can buy her debut book How to Win Every Argument (from $4.99) here. Many companies have actually started giving their employees another day off, like January 27th, and leaving January 26th as a working day. Celebrating on this day is an acknowledgment of the first time Europeans inhabited Australian land: men, women and children. The date change is like the key to your house, you need it to open the front door, Sarra wrote. Formidable employer power, Jacky and his boyfriend were 'flatmates' for years until his mother found out about the truth, 'Momentous occasion': Spears taken by Captain Cook in 1770 to be returned home, This youth worker can't talk about youth crime without mentioning the kids sleeping in nearby public toilet blocks, Prince Harry and Meghan told to vacate UK home, 'The biggest mistake of our lives': US fertility clinic sued for using embryo with deadly cancer gene, Pedestrian killed after being struck by car on major Darwin road, 'I pretty much cried all day': Devil in one of the last 'disease-free' populations found with facial tumour. The information shown on this site is general information only. (Supplied: Australian War Memorial)January 28. Earlier this year the Prime Minister said it was important to mark the day as one on which "the journey to modern Australia began". Consider also using January 26 as an opportunity to donate to an Indigenous organisation or charity, take in anti-racist resources, and refresh yourself on how to support BIPOC in the long term. He knew that Australia Day was not a celebratory day from an Aboriginal perspective, and did not bother with the pretense that it ever could be. Australian Ethical acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the country on which we work, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and recognise and celebrate their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. var oldonload = window.onload; Maybe then we might see people who arent fascists and racists declaring themselves patriots. I choose not to repeat myself, because the date will change. What is Australia Day? Since Australia Talks last surveyed Australians on changing attitudes around Indigenous recognition in 2019, tens of thousands of people have marched through capital cities as part of Black Lives Matter protests. But Its Not True, Indigenous X published on The Guardian, 22 January 2018. Having lived on this continent for close to 80,000 years and surviving the violence of colonisation and ongoing injustices of non-Indigenous settlement, the voices of First Peoples cannot be dismissed. Crazily enough, it wasnt until 2008 that the then prime minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the Aboriginals for the atrocities committed against them, like forced child removals and cultural destruction through assimilation. document.links = document.getElementsByTagName('a'); Each person will have an individual journey of building their Ihsan in everything they do, whether that relates to character, spirituality or work. It's a day "for all Australians, no matter where our personal stories began, [to] reflect on being Australian, celebrate contemporary Australia and recognise our history," according to the National Australia Day Council. Australia has a long way to go. Equity Trustees Superannuation Limited (ABN 50 055 641 757) is the trustee of the Crescent Wealth Superannuation Fund. January 26 is the legacy of the horrific past and the connection of this trauma to the present. Despite generations of violence and interference from settler colonialists, First Peoples have not been defeated. Much like the work you need to do to become an effective anti-racist ally, having conversations about this with your family and friends brings the issue to the forefront. //