When Aboriginal people around the country continue to refer to Australia Day as a Day of Mourning, Invasion Day, or Survival Day, all Australians should be stirred into greater efforts to achieve the great goal of reconciliation. It has been a long, slow learning process for generations of Australians living in the “Lucky Country” to realise the harmful effect that the British occupation had on Indigenous people whose ancestors have lived here for more than 40,000 years.
The lie of terra nullius, the brutal dispossession of Aboriginal people from their life-giving lands, their non-recognition in the national census that counted sheep, the massacres of families when they struggled for survival, the destruction of their culture and the removal of their children when families were moved into reserves or were forced to live as fringe dwellers near the local tip, are just some features of the life indigenous Australians endured until relatively recent times.
The people of many other occupied countries successfully achieved independence from their colonial masters, but here in Australia – despite the efforts of heroic Indigenous activists – we have much to say “Sorry” about for our negative treatment of the first Australians.
As we move along a belated path to reconciliation we must incorporate issues like a treaty, secure land rights for the families of the dispossessed, and First Peoples status recognition in the Constitution and on the Australian flag, if we are to be true to ourselves and our nation. Only then can we declare ourselves proud Australians.
– Keith McEwan, CLA member, Bonython ACT
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