what are we celebrating?

I wasn't sure whether to share about what's been buzzing around in my brain and heart over the past couple of weeks, but considering that I was laying awake at 2.30 am after Bethany went back to sleep and was unable to go back to sleep cause I was thinking about all this stuff I figured maybe I should just write it all down for the benefit of my sanity.

For those who have only met me through the blogging world let me just say straight up that I am a passionate person when something has stirred me and if my thoughts and opinions bother you it is not intended with any malice. So here goes....... Australia day, I deliberately didn't celebrate it, let me share why!

Now don't get me wrong, I love living here. We are so blessed in this country with public education, medicare, clean water, freedom of religion etc, things I know I too often take for granted, but I am not comfortable celebrating that I have these things, when I know all too well the price others paid so I could have them!

I am a lover of history. I loved it at school, did both modern and ancient for my HSC and then continued to uni where my initial degree was teaching history and english, until a little down the track I realised my love of history did not include wanting to teach it to teenagers and so I embarked on a new path doing community development until it ground to a halt last year due to babies and home schooling. History at school was all well and good but once I got to uni I took my first Australian history unit and I have never looked at things quite the same way again.

At school we did the first fleet, gold, bushrangers, gallipoli and that was about it in terms of Australian history, and we didn't do any in senior school, and this may sound rather cynical but I think back in my school days it was quite possibly deliberate that we were taught this sugar coated version of a mythical Australia where people could arise from convict origins and tame the bush and forge a great new world here and other such nationalistic ideas. I never noticed that the faces in these stories were always white.

Well that's only part of our history and a lot of people seem quite content to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that's the full story. January 26th is also known as 'invasion day' by Indigenous people and to be honest that's how I feel too. That day was the beginning of the end of a whole way of life for a group of people that our ancestors decided were animals. Some of the historical documents I've read have made me shudder with the blatant brutality they advocate in getting rid of the people who were in the way of British expansion here. And I'm not just talking about the early days. Child removal was still going on when my mother was young in an attempt to "breed Aboriginals out" (yes that is written in a government document), and in Qld many Aboriginals were in basically slave like labour conditions where they were paid in theory but their wages were held in 'protective' custody for their own good, except they never saw it and just last year there was legal action going on over these lost wages. I could fill pages with the injustices but I wont.

Have we changed? Have we moved on? Well we finally have a Prime Minister who realised an apology was a good first step, but so much more is needed. The statistics on life expectancy, child mortality, juvenile incarceration etc do not paint a pretty picture for our Indigenous population. They have been marginalised for so long and in the spiritual realm I believe their spirit has been crushed. Even at the moment Aboriginals in the NT are still living under the conditions of Howard's "emergency intervention" that basically tarred all Aboriginals with the same brush as child abusers, alcoholics etc. There was no case by case scrutiny, just a sweeping judgement. No government would ever get away with doing that to an entire white community, yet people applauded when Howard did it. The stereotypes and comments I hear people make about Aboriginals make my blood boil, and yet we proudly say as Aussies that we are the land of 'the fair go'.

It says in the Bible that the sins of the fathers will be punished to the third and fourth generation (Ex20:6), so just because we didn't personally do anything doesn't mean we have no part to play in doing something about it. I know that Governor King and his family used to own most of the land around here where I live and he made a proclamation in 1800 that any Aboriginal could be shot on sight if seen 'trespassing' on anyone's property, it makes me wonder who died so I could live here????? My ancestors were convicts so I know they had no choice in coming here, but how they lived and what they did once they got here is a different story.

So why am I sharing all this??? Because it matters very much to me. Even watching the movie Avatar a couple weeks ago was so disturbing to me because it depicts a people invading the land of Indigenous people, knocking down things sacred to them, declaring their way of life invalid, because they wanted to use and exploit the land these people were living on and when they wouldn't move out of the way they just killed them. Sounds all too familiar and yet people forget that is our history!! When we celebrate Australia day, whether we realise it or not we are saying 'we came, we conquered, we stayed'. It is basically a celebration that we won a war, except no-one acknowledges there was a war. And when we drape a flag all over the place that has absolutely no recognition on it of the people who were on this land when we arrived we are saying 'we won' over and over again.

That may sound harsh but the symbolism is poignant!! Whay was it such a big deal in the media during the 2000 olympics when Cathy Freeman picked up the Aboriginal flag to celebrate?? It may not be 'our' flag, but it's her flag, and that's my point, if we are all going to live here as one nation shouldn't we have a flag that reflects that? shouldn't we have a national day of celebration that truly incorporates everyone instead of choosing a day that brought so much misery to some of our population????

Perhaps as in the book of Nehemiah in the Bible we should repent and pray for this land just as the Israelites "confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers", so too we should stand in the gap for what was done here and pray for healing and peace!! How can we move forward if we don't acknowledge the sin of the past?!

There are great things happening with Indigenous people too and some of the things I learnt about when doing community development were great, but there's not enough. The prograns that are working are the ones where Aboriginal people are actually listened to and are running things themselves to suit their culture, language etc, when the white people stop trying to be the experts at what is best for them, like we've been trying to do for over 200 years!!

Anyway I will now get off my soap box. I have probably offended you all but I had to share what's on my mind. Feel free to disagree but I wont be arguing back, I have said my piece. Besides I'm a stubborn redhead so arguing with me is pointless :-) I love Australia, but I see it as a broken land in need of healing and that after all was my point!