Australia Day: Why young Aussies are shunning their national holiday
BBC NewsJan 25, 2023
Thousands of Australians on Thursday protested the nation's Australia Day holiday, which commemorates the first British fleet to land in the nation on Jan. 26, 1788. Opponents of the holiday call it "Invasion Day" due to the impact colonialism had on Indigenous peoples.
Protesters gathered in the business district of Sydney — the capital of Australia's most populous state of New South Wales — with some people waving Aboriginal flags and others partaking in an Indigenous smoking ceremony.
The Aboriginal people have voiced their opposition to Australia Day for decades, but the majority has ignored them. Today, however, a new generation of Australians is joining forces with Indigenous communities in the fight to expose the country's history of racism and genocide and abolish the holiday that celebrates such a horrific past. This is no longer a controversial demand, and the government should take note of that.
While no one would deny the past discrimination faced by Aboriginal peoples, Australia Day is not a celebration of historic brutality. Before it even became a federation in 1901, the Irish, English, Welsh, and Scottish settlers worked alongside the Indigenous peoples to build the remarkable modern state we see today. Australia Day is a celebration of Australia and the entirety of its people. The small faction who oppose it seems to have forgotten that.