Australia Day !

There seems to be a degree of confusion about exactly what we are celebrating on the Twenty-sixth of January each year.  Is " Australia Day " a celebration of the arrival of the first fleet or are we celebrating when we shed colonial status and elected our first parliament and became an independent nation ?   Or is this a celebration of both wrapped up together to reflect the success of combining settlers from many different lands and this country's Indigenous people into a prosperous nation on the world stage ?

Some of our Indigenous citizens insist on calling it " invasion day " and in many ways that is perfectly true.  They were not asked for their permission when the early settlers landed and we did force our laws and customs on their way of life, but if they are being honest  they would agree that they were not a united people with a common language and their way of life roughly equated with what Europe would describe as the " Stone age ".  Many Indigenous people are now fully integrated and live a prosperous life.  There is no going back and this Australian nation has no other option than to trade and live in a dangerous world where survival is a matter of having adequate defence and strong relationships with allies.

Some Indigenous people choose not to celebrate Australia day - and that is their right, but the rest of Australia thinks it is appropriate to use that day to welcome new citizens with citizenship ceremonies.  There would be nothing disrespectful in a day paying homage to those who were the original residents in this great land and it has been proposed that the Queens holiday in June be converted to that purpose.  This existing holiday is not even on the Monarchs true birthday and to most Australian citizens it is a day without meaning - just a traditional day off to which few give much thought.

The down side of creating what would become an " Indigenous day " is to widen the " them and us " gulf that has been slowly closing as Aboriginal health improves and young people gain the advantages of education.  We can not change history and it is important to realise that in the distant past people lived by rules and customs that would be totally unacceptable in todays society.  We can not judge the past by the conditions that apply today and yet that is the argument put forward by some combative Indigenous groups of people.

We have lived together for two hundred and thirty nine years and the relationship between the two races has changed enormously - and it still has a long way to go.  Indigenous citizens still have a shorter life span and suffer a number of diseases less common in the general community - and there is still a big wealth gap.   It is a fact of life that this division can only be solved by further integration because that has been the experience in other cultures of the world in which we live.

It will not be easy - and it will not happen quickly - but somewhere in the distant future our Indigenous citizens will have blended in to society, recognisable by their characteristics but not considered unusual in the mainstream that makes up our society.  By all means create a day dedicated to our first settlers, but we need to celebrate the integration instead of what are seen as " differences ".   That old proverb about " First amongst equals " needs to apply !