January 26
It is called Australia Day- a national “celebration” of our “founding”.
On the highways utes cars and trucks parade the flag triumphantly. I walk around my neighbourhood to see cheap Australian flags manufactured in China hanging from flagpoles and verandahs. . Picnic areas begin to fill early as the advance party stakes out the best park position and waits for the others; the kids, the barbecue cooks, the mates with eskys, frisbees, footballs and camp chairs to arrive. By midday the strains of Cold Chisel and lawn mowers will mingle with the scent of burnt sausage and onions greeting me on the breeze.
This notion of ‘Country’ intrigues me. Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders speak of belonging to country, of caring for country and listening to country ; truly being from a place, knowing it’s stories, seasons, spirits. This place we call Australia was made up of over 250 countries. Over 250 individual locations with differing languages and dialects, spirituality, customs and communities.
To westerners (for want of a better term to describe non First Nation immigrants, settlers, invaders) we attach notions of nationalism to the place we live. Binding ourselves to overarching political agendas, and supposedly unifying customs. If Australia is a nation then we are a bastard, mongrel nation. It is this nation this construct that is Australia. This place, this continent, is a land of huge diversity, extreme contradictions, rare beauty, and many stories. It is ancient, it is the birthplace of the songbirds, it is Gondwanan, isolated but inhabited for millennia.
a model of the Endeavour at Cooktown Museum
Australia, the nation, was overlaid on top of this place like a smothering cloak, a mantle shrouding what was here before colonialism found its way to these shores. Holes dug through the cloak have exposed and isolated hidden gems; the minerals, the rich alluvial soils, tourism, opportunities. Australia could have been populated by any of the colonizers of the time- the French, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish but it was the politicians of the British Empire who laid down their cloak and flag on this land. Cook spent four months sailing up the coast. 8 days in Botany Bay, 1.5 Days at what is now the town of 1770, and the longest period of 48 days on the Endeavour River at what is now Cooktown. He then sailed up to Possession Island in the Torres Straits where he claimed this place for the King and empire.
plaque outside the Agnes Waters museum
Lieutenant James Cook’s journal, 22 August 1770:
Notwithstand[ing] I had in the Name of his Majesty taken posession of several places upon this coast I now once more hoisted English Coulers and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession of the whole Eastern Coast from … Latitude [38° South] down to this place by the Name of New South Wales together with all the Bays, Harbours Rivers and Islands situate upon the said coast after which we fired three Volleys of small Arms which were Answerd by the like number from the Ship.
Diaries of Cook and Banks described sighting of campfires all along the coast as well as interactions with “the Indians”. This was not an empty land.
However, with problems of overcrowded Hulks in the Thames it was expedient to ship problems far away. January 26 marks the arrival of what Aboriginal people took to be visitors- temporary guests who would eventually depart, because how can anyone leave their real country.
The cloak was pinned down progressively. Blocking out what was. It fit tightly over the landscape. It became a new place, a new nation with new laws, its own language and stories not from the ground beneath it but poured on top and over it.
The custom of laying down the cloak meant forcibly pinning it over the 250 countries, communities and people who had lived on it before. Removing and killing people, customs and languages so the colonial fabric fitted snuggly.
In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
Weeping Paperbark on the Endeavour River Cooktown
So January 26 sits uncomfortably with me as a celebration of what Australia is today. I cannot partition it from its roots-(and those are also my roots) the advantages I have from the displacement of others. I cannot be proud of the condoned act of piracy. I cannot buy in to a One Nation under one flag ideology.
As an artist what can I say? How can I vision forward? I know that after any natural disaster or trauma there is a curve that describes the trajectory towards recovery. It includes the initial phase when community pulls together- a sense of shared camaraderie. Then there is a period where stress surfaces- some have support and security others are isolated and fall through the gaps- pressures mount and things can disintegrate. Later the world appears to have moved on and while trauma is still being experienced by some, others are getting on, getting ahead and those who carry the burden of trauma are left feeling disenfranchised and forgotten. The gap between the haves and have nots widens. Creative recovery projects focus on this trajectory to tell and share the stories, to create memorials to mark anniversaries, to build communities of understanding, expression and support.
Better, more learned people than myself have detailed and documented the atrocities that have occurred in this land. It is fact not myth or hearsay . People still carry and live with unacknowledged trauma. (See Rachel Perkins documentary The Australian Wars.)
Hearing and deep listening (Dadirri) to the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must be part of the healing. When we listen deeply we reach greater understanding, we make better decisions we act with more compassion.
So too should we listen to the stories of all the migrants to this constructed costume that is Australia. Wave upon wave of migration has followed since that first January 26. We stepped onto the cloak laid down for us and made our homes not knowing what lay below.
Ignorance is not an excuse to keep perpetuating damage.
The birds, animals and trees
poke their way
through holes
in the fabric of the cloak.
Their roots go deep.
#iftreescouldtalk #australiaday #invasionday