Let’s Yarn the 26th
Words by Phoebe McIlwraith.
I’ve always been a summer child. Since coming earthside in December '99, I’ve become a fiend for the heat and all the appendices of it; ice cold dips in ocean baths, the dusting of salt crystals on your skin as you lizard up in sun, with fragrant mangoes, fridge-cold watermelon and fried fish galore.
For me, the appearance of fruit stands on the sides of freeways more accurately signals the passage of time than any calendar ever could. December is always fun after the rush of end-of-year shutdowns. There's mine and Nan’s birthday only nine days apart, Christmas is less than a fortnight later and the New Year not even a calendar week’s wait in tow.
It’s a sluggish, slow, delicious time and then it ends.
When you’re Blak, the New Year period elapses to a site of emotional, spiritual and political turmoil. In my local Coles, January parades in Australia-flag pattern thongs, shirts and beer stubby holders, and they're seated in the display normally reserved for sale items. The usual throne for $2.50 (40% off) Oreos now morphs into a glaring reminder of what is to come. If January could speak, I’d imagine it would say, "Welcome back to the colony, my girl."
I’ve always known January 26 by many names: "Day of Mourning," "Invasion Day," "Survival Day," or "Jan. 26," but others may know it as "Australia Day."
A white-washed education could say that the reasoning behind the 26th being the national day is to commemorate the landing of the First Fleet in 1788, when the Union Jack was raised in Sydney Cove by Captain Arthur Phillip and British sovereignty was declared. For white Australia, this could simply represent the birth of a nation, but for First Nations people, the day represents much more.
January 26th marks the beginning of a struggle for survival. It is the day a foreign power invaded sovereign Gadigal land, illegitimately claimed sovereignty, and began a tirade of over two centuries of invading hundreds of sovereign territories, profiting from stolen natural resources, performing massacres, stealing our children, and denying us agency and self-determination over our own futures. Many Blackfellas around the continent even recognise and commemorate January 25, 1788, as the "last day of freedom."
Mainstream pro-Australia Day narratives make it appear like it is a holiday steeped in long, unmoved history and that it is a tradition that would be impossible to reconsider. However, this is just not the case; the 26th of January was not consistently seen as a day of national importance until the 1930s, and it was not a national public holiday in all states and territories until 1994. This is despite consistent and influential Aboriginal political action against the date, such as the first declared Day of Mourning in 1938, which protested the mistreatment of Aboriginal people across the continent and demanded citizenship rights.
For the life of myself, my mother and her mother, this has always been a time of formal protest, and beyond my grandmother, this was no time for celebration. It’s time the country caught up with that fact. It has been amazing watching the conversation grow around the date, and this is a testament to the tireless work done by Blackfellas annually, but I do have one major qualm: why are our conversations about the date only aimed at white people?
White Australians are not the only demographic susceptible to settler privilege in Australia, and they are not the only demographic that can reproduce harmful ideas about Indigenous people. I have been fortunate to have multiple friends from non-Indigenous POC backgrounds. I feel blessed to have been able to cook with their families and be invited to time-honoured celebrations relevant to their culture and spirituality. I love my friends and their communities wholeheartedly.
For me, telling the truth is the ultimate expression of love. I show love for the people around me by wanting them to have a holistic relationship to place and I show love by letting the people I care about understand me in my entirety.
I cannot be detached from my Aboriginality, and the reality is that my Aboriginality cannot exist in isolation from the impacts of invasion.
There are a number of ways we can all engage with January 26, like attending a protest or rally, engaging with educational material about First Nations people and history via platforms like NITV and SBS On Demand, or attending First Nations-led events like Yabun (this is a fantastic way to show up, especially if you have visa requirements that restrict your ability to protest).
One of the simplest ways to engage is also one of the most powerful. It can happen on and beyond the 26th; it requires an open mind, respects truth above all else, and is about connecting your knowledge with the people around you. It’s simply talking about all this.
These conversations are also not limited to English or to white Australia. We have the collective people power, ability and skills to start conversations in all our communities on our own terms. I refuse to believe that conversations about truth and progress must be limited to English; this was never a monolingual continent before the invasion, and it will not become one now.
Beyond what I refuse to believe in, what do I believe in?
I believe in the ability of all people to learn and grow, and I believe in the good nature of people to reconsider old beliefs and attitudes when presented with new information. Ultimately, I believe in the courage of the everyday person to express love through the truth.
Truth, love and courage are the only ways forward.
Language Contributors
It can be incredibly difficult to translate and communicate particular cultural and social nuances across languages, so thank you for your energy and care.
Mandarin: 2 contributors, who wish to be unnamed
Cantonese: Peter Lee and David Ngai
Arabic: Nour El-zmeter and another contributor, who wishes to be unnamed
Spanish: Laura
German: Annie Fucha
Tamil: Divya Lakshmi
Greek: Tom Zephyros
Portuguese: Paula Navarro
Language holds power, and so from my ancestors to yours, bugulwan!