On January 26th (Invasion Day)

[Gandalf]

Many years ago, there was a continent which looked like this:

Look at all of those diverse peoples and languages spread across that land!

About two hundred and thirty years ago, some British explorers "discovered" said continent, because apparently the people who got there tens of thousands of years earlier didn't meet the colour requirement for discovery. This is a day commemorated on January 26, also known as Australia Day.

Today there is a push for the date to be changed, because what was termed "discovery" was in fact an invasion. An horrific one from whose policies we're still picking up the pieces. This movement is finally getting some decent support:

The federal Greens will continue to argue for Australia Day to be permanently rescheduled out of respect for Indigenous Australians in 2018, leader Richard Di Natale has revealed.

The renewed push from the Greens, who hold nine Senate seats and one seat in the House of Representatives, comes just weeks before this year's Australia Day.

Some local councils in Victoria have changed the date of their local celebrations already, including Yarra, Darebin and also Fremantle in WA.

Senator Di Natale said he wanted more councils to follow their lead.

He said the federal party would coordinate with more than 100 local councillors around the country to prosecute the case.

"We want to choose a day that brings the nation together," Senator Di Natale told reporters on Monday.

"We need to acknowledge that there are people who see January 26 as a day that represents pain and suffering, the ongoing effect of which can still be felt today," he said.

"It might not be this year, it might not be next year, but I'm very confident that ultimately we'll see the date changed."

The issue has attracted more public attention in recent months following the decision of the ABC's youth radio station Triple J to move its popular Hottest 100 countdown away from January 26, in keeping with feedback from a listener survey.

Many Indigenous leaders have been pushing for the change for years.

January 26 marks the date the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove in 1788 and the beginning of British colonisation in Australia.

The Turnbull government is strongly opposed to moves to change the date of Australia Day and has punished councils that make efforts to separate the occasion from January 26 by revoking their right to conduct citizenship ceremonies on the day.

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce criticised the Greens' emphasis on the Australia Day issue, speaking at a Monday morning press conference about the government's inland rail project.

"They dwell in the philosophical, we build the things that actually make our nation stronger," Mr Joyce said.

"I don't care, wherever you've come from, you've come to this nation and this nation is now your home.

"We have a day to celebrate it, and it's called Australia Day. I look forward to celebrating it this year."

Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott aired his opinion on Twitter. He said there were "364 other days a year for the Greens to be politically correct".

Every year this call gets a bit louder, so I'm hoping something will happen in time. Personally, I'll be listening to A.B. Original's January 26 on repeat.

[Gandalf]

EDIT: Image tags fixed.

[Gandalf]

How unexpected. [/sarcasm]

Victoria's first female Aboriginal MP says she has been threatened with death and gang rape for her comments over Australia Day.

Greens MP Lidia Thorpe has previously called for flags to be flown at half-mast on January 26 to recognise the crimes committed against Aboriginal people.

But her calls earlier this week were met with threatening emails and notes, which she has since reported to Victoria Police.

One threat was slipped under the door of her electorate office in Northcote.

"These are about rape, and these are quite graphic and detailed threats for me," Ms Thorpe said.

"I'm a mum, I've had to ensure my children are safe.

"My staff have been affected, my family's been affected. It's just unacceptable behaviour."

The Greens have made changing the date of Australia Day one of their key priorities, after three Melbourne local councils moved to cancel official celebrations on January 26 this year.

Federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale said the council decisions marked the start of what he hoped would become a national movement.

Ms Thorpe said she would not be silent despite the threats.

"I am not going to stand for this kind of behaviour and I'm not going to back down from the message that I'm trying to send out there to the people of this country," she said.

"We need to deal with the true history of this country.

"This is not going to be tolerated and it's not going to silence me. It's going to make me more determined to put the message out there and to stand up as an Aboriginal woman."

On Friday, Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion claimed not a single Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person had approached him about changing to date of Australia Day.

He made his comments after one of the Prime Minister's Indigenous affairs advisers, Chris Sarra, told 7.30 holding Australia Day on January 26 was dividing Australians and excluding Indigenous people.

Senator Scullion said it was "good to have heard that advice" from Dr Sarra, but that "outside of Chris", nobody had raised it with him.

Ms Thorpe had a message for the people who were threatening her.

"It's bullying, it's intimidation … it's illegal," she said.

"Take a moment to reflect on your behaviour. I'm someone's daughter, I'm someone's mother, I'm someone's sister. I'm sure you have mothers, sisters and children yourself.

"It's signed off as the true Australians. Well I challenge that. I want to know what a true Australian is, because I come from the oldest living culture in the world."

[mr friendly guy]

linky

Tony Abbott says January 26 marks a ‘good thing’ for Aboriginal people
TONY Abbott has stepped up his defence of Australia Day, arguing the event it commemorates was good for indigenous Australians.

TONY Abbott has argued the events of January 26, 1788, were a “good thing” for Aboriginal people.

The former prime minister defended his view that the controversial date — which marked the beginning of British settlement and kicked off a massacre of indigenous people — was the best date to mark Australia’s national day in a radio interview on Monday morning.

“What happened on the 26th of January, 1788, was on balance, for everyone, Aboriginal people included, a good thing,” Mr Abbott told 2GB host Ray Hadley.

“It brought Western civilisation to this country. It brought Australia into the modern world.”

While a campaign is under way to have Australia Day shifted from the anniversary of the First Fleet’s arrival, which many Aboriginal people have come to refer to as “Invasion Day”, Mr Abbott has become a vocal supporter of keeping things as they are.

“It’s very rarely a one-way street, so to speak, but if you look at the Australian achievement over the last couple of centuries, it is overwhelmingly a positive story, and increasingly it’s a positive story for indigenous Australians as well,” he said.

Tony Abbott believes Australia Day should be celebrated on January 26, by everyone. Picture: Adam Yip/The Australian
Tony Abbott believes Australia Day should be celebrated on January 26, by everyone. Picture: Adam Yip/The AustralianSource:News Corp Australia

Mr Abbott’s comments followed his robust defence of Australia Day published in The Australian on Monday in which the Liberal backbencher argued the benefits of British settlement to all Australians.

“It’s hard to imagine a better Australia in the absence of the Western civilisation that began here from that date,” he wrote. “The rule of law, equality of the sexes, scientific curiosity, technological progress, responsible government — plus the constant self-criticism and lust for improvement that makes us so self-conscious of our collective failings towards Aboriginal people — all date from then; and may not have been present to anything like the same extent had the settlers fanning out from Sydney Cove been other than British.”

Mr Abbott suggested all Australians “grow up and treat Australia Day as a good time to reflect on how far we’ve come as country and, for those in public life, how far we’ve yet to go”.


“There are 364 other days of the year when we can wear a black armband and strive to overcome our national failures,” he wrote.

The change the date movement is spreading. Picture: Matt Thompson
The change the date movement is spreading. Picture: Matt ThompsonSource:News Corp Australia

Mr Abbott has become a leading voice against the push to change the date of Australia Day as support for it increases.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale earlier this month launched the party’s campaign to change the date and Greens councillors across the country have begun local campaigns.

After reading Mr Abbott’s defence of the date on Monday, Senator Di Natale suggested another occasion was worthy of national celebration.

“If we want a national holiday to unite the country, let’s celebrate the day he retires,” he tweeted.

A survey by The Australia Institute last week revealed that only 38 per cent of people knew what January 26 commemorated, and 58 per cent said they didn’t mind when Australia Day was held.

Neither Labor nor the government endorse a date change.

I don't think Tony Abbott is the best person to tell anyone to "grow up".

Going on, apparently mass killings and treating human beings as flora and fauna is good for them, because they get exposure to Western civilisation. I am pretty sure we can get exposure to western civilisation without needing to undergo genocide. Just sell to other country's what your cultural products or ways of doing things, and if they like it they will trade for it.

[mr friendly guy]

The rule of law, equality of the sexes, scientific curiosity, technological progress, responsible government — plus the constant self-criticism and lust for improvement that makes us so self-conscious of our collective failings towards Aboriginal people — all date from then; and may not have been present to anything like the same extent had the settlers fanning out from Sydney Cove been other than British.”

equality of the sexes
I am no historian, but I am pretty sure equality of the sexes didn't come into Western culture in 1788 (for Tony Abbott it still hasn't arrived). In fact I believe this thing didn't start becoming a thing until the start of the 20th century ( depends on which western nation of course)

responsible government
I am also going to question the responsible government bit in 1788, and even now given how Abbott criticises the ALP when they are in power.

self criticism and lust for improvement
How many cultures didn't desire improvement? The Spartans maybe? This is unique among Western culture?

[K. A. Pital]

Sounds like „good thing we wiped you out“.

[Simon_Jester]

The rule of law, equality of the sexes, scientific curiosity, technological progress, responsible government — plus the constant self-criticism and lust for improvement that makes us so self-conscious of our collective failings towards Aboriginal people — all date from then; and may not have been present to anything like the same extent had the settlers fanning out from Sydney Cove been other than British.”

equality of the sexes
I am no historian, but I am pretty sure equality of the sexes didn't come into Western culture in 1788 (for Tony Abbott it still hasn't arrived). In fact I believe this thing didn't start becoming a thing until the start of the 20th century ( depends on which western nation of course)

responsible government
I am also going to question the responsible government bit in 1788, and even now given how Abbott criticises the ALP when they are in power.

self criticism and lust for improvement
How many cultures didn't desire improvement? The Spartans maybe? This is unique among Western culture?

Meh, I'm pretty sure Frenchmen would have been no worse. Dutchmen would probably have been worse. Those were the main choices on offer in the 1790s.

Besides, the English settlers in question weren't some kind of elite colony pod, they were convicts. Granted, most of them were convicts under the Bloody Code and charged with something dumb like stealing a rabbit, but still.

[Thanas]

Meh, I'm pretty sure Frenchmen would have been no worse. Dutchmen would probably have been worse. Those were the main choices on offer in the 1790s.

French would have been better in policy and impact, Dutch about the same in policy but probably still better in impact because they never quite had the number of emigrants the british did.

Both portugese and spanish would also have been better options.

[Elheru Aran]

Weren't the Dutch incredibly exploitative and inhumane towards natives in the Indies, though?

[Thanas]

Weren't the Dutch incredibly exploitative and inhumane towards natives in the Indies, though?

Not any worse than the British in India.

Edit: And it is hard to argue how much worse they could have been in Australia.

[Elheru Aran]

Weren't the Dutch incredibly exploitative and inhumane towards natives in the Indies, though?

Not any worse than the British in India.

Edit: And it is hard to argue how much worse they could have been in Australia.

Yeah, fair enough. Of course if you want to talk about inhumanity, it's hard to find European powers that *weren't* particularly horrible at some point to native peoples... one really has to wonder what was wrong with them.

[mr friendly guy]

These counterfactuals have been used as a defense for our treatment of the Indigenous population. Although they tend to use Germany and Japan.

Germany was not a unified state in 1788, and arguably its colonies in Africa with genocide was possibly worse than the British treatment of Indigenous Australians. Still not the best example since Germany wasn't a colonial power in 1788.

Japan was pretty bad as well, but it didn't even have its Meiji revolution until the 19th century, so its was clearly not a colonial power in 1788 (in fact it was pretty isolationist). When it did become one, its geopolitical interest is unlikely to have reached Australia until well into the 20 th century. It predominantly focus on Asia because in their own words, they worried about attacks from there. Its not like Japan feared an attack from Australian Aborigines requiring them to colonise the place as "self defense."

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. German or Japanese colonizers wouldn't have had time to destroy the Aborigines as thoroughly as British colonizers, because as you note, they weren't active colonialists until well into the late 1800s.

The realistic comparisons (for people still in the business of founding new colonies in the late 1700s) are France, the Netherlands, and maybe Portugal and Spain.

[Gandalf]

These counterfactuals have been used as a defense for our treatment of the Indigenous population. Although they tend to use Germany and Japan.

In conversation, people tend to throw France at me when trying to defend Britain's Genocidal Landgrabs. I love how the basic point behind it always seems to be "You guys were always going to be fucked. Better glorious Britain ramming it into you than some other lot."

Besides, the English settlers in question weren't some kind of elite colony pod, they were convicts. Granted, most of them were convicts under the Bloody Code and charged with something dumb like stealing a rabbit, but still.

Don't so much think of them as convicts, but more of a pre-made cheap labour class for the Imperial Machine, in that the Glorious Crown saw fit to send mostly convicts who could serve as skilled labour at prison prices. Once the convicts started to build a functioning colonial infrastructure (for the white ruling classes), the Empire invited free "settlers" to live on the newly "vacated" land.

[Simon_Jester]

These counterfactuals have been used as a defense for our treatment of the Indigenous population. Although they tend to use Germany and Japan.

In conversation, people tend to throw France at me when trying to defend Britain's Genocidal Landgrabs. I love how the basic point behind it always seems to be "You guys were always going to be fucked. Better glorious Britain ramming it into you than some other lot."

It's a ghastly argument on many levels, one of them (perhaps the least of them) being that it isn't even factually true. Being a French colony would have been little or no worse for Australia than being a British one, and might have been better.

About the only thing that could possibly have been noticeably worse than what actually happened under the British would be getting handed over to King Leopold of Belgium. King Leopold might have come up with something worse. Somehow!

And even his guys didn't manage to kill off literally the entire non-hybrid population of the oppressed groups in the Congo, as happened to the Tasmanians.

Obviously of course this isn't the entirety of the conversation that can be had about how objectively terrible the "be glad it was the British" argument is, but it's extra double plus shitty when the argument is factually false on its own merits in addition to making grotesque assumptions.

Besides, the English settlers in question weren't some kind of elite colony pod, they were convicts. Granted, most of them were convicts under the Bloody Code and charged with something dumb like stealing a rabbit, but still.

Don't so much think of them as convicts, but more of a pre-made cheap labour class for the Imperial Machine, in that the Glorious Crown saw fit to send mostly convicts who could serve as skilled labour at prison prices. Once the convicts started to build a functioning colonial infrastructure (for the white ruling classes), the Empire invited free "settlers" to live on the newly "vacated" land.

Okay, that's fair.

Nevertheless, the point is, not exactly an elite colony pod of the best and brightest.

WARNING: PREJUDICED RANT FOLLOWS. MAY BE FACTUALLY UNTRUE TO SOME EXTENT. PROBABLY SUPER UNFAIR.

About the only place that ever got an elite colony pod of Britain's best and brightest were Puritan New England (who got really educated people with very productive habits, at the price of being a bunch of crazed anti-fun dystopians) and Pennsylvania (who got the Quakers, and Quakers are awesome, albeit with some less pronounced anti-fun dystopian tendencies).

Unfortunately for the United States, the British made up for this by sending over actively shitty colonists in other parts, including the crazed hillbillies and emigre defeated Cavaliers who went on to evolve into the morass of fuckuppery that is the white American South.

[Gandalf]

It's a ghastly argument on many levels, one of them (perhaps the least of them) being that it isn't even factually true. Being a French colony would have been little or no worse for Australia than being a British one, and might have been better.

About the only thing that could possibly have been noticeably worse than what actually happened under the British would be getting handed over to King Leopold of Belgium. King Leopold might have come up with something worse. Somehow!

And even his guys didn't manage to kill off literally the entire non-hybrid population of the oppressed groups in the Congo, as happened to the Tasmanians.

Obviously of course this isn't the entirety of the conversation that can be had about how objectively terrible the "be glad it was the British" argument is, but it's extra double plus shitty when the argument is factually false on its own merits in addition to making grotesque assumptions.

Yeah, it's basic Australian xenophobia aimed at the various other empires of the day. A small amount of people might have more specific points, but not many. A lot just boils down to "France/Spain/Portugal/other sound/look/act funny, unlike the proper manly men of the British Redcoats."

[Thanas]

How the fuck can one even compare the french and colonial policies and then say with a straight face "The british were better?". Honestly wtf. It requires a colosssal lack of knowledge about the respective attitudes towards natives.

[Wild Zontargs]

A dissenting opinion (possibly technically NSFW due to the domain, not sure about ads as I have them blocked) from a woman of Aboriginal descent:

We can project all sorts of fantasies onto our Aboriginal ancestors. There is scant record of their individual exploits or characters, and very few colonial Aborigines left behind a documented account of their experiences. I could, therefore, decide that my foremothers were courageous warriors of the resistance, or mysterious keepers of ancient feminine wisdoms, or I could envision them as victims and martyrs, enduring the humiliations of colonisation with grace and dignity. These romantic fantasies would be accepted as fact, and my ‘truth’ would be applauded. My own (arguably more plausible) vision is that my Aboriginal foremothers had the good sense to form alliances with the settlers, and that they improved their own lives and their children’s prospects as a result.

I don’t begrudge any Aboriginal person a desire to fill in the blanks in their histories with romanticism, particularly given the rewards on offer. The story of white injustice and black tragedy has become the most acceptable Aboriginal tale to tell, and is now the only perspective on Aboriginal history – despite that dearth of documented accounts - that could possibly be accepted as authentic and true. To suggest that our story is not all about victimhood is bad enough; to suggest that modernity was in any way a blessing is double-plus ungood crimethink.

National angst over Aboriginal history peaks every summer, when we agonise over the meaning of Australia Day. There was no bloodshed at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788; no shots were fired or spears thrown, although plenty of both were to follow. It is understandable that some Aboriginal people regard the arrival of the First Fleet as an invasion, and object to the celebration of this event. If foreign tanks were to roll into your hometown, heralding a new order that you did not anticipate or invite, ‘invaded’ is how you would probably feel. I am comfortable with calling it an invasion, and yet I don’t regard that invasion as a calamity, because one man’s ‘invasion’ is another man’s – or in this case, woman’s – liberation.

Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture. In contrast, the Aboriginal men held no wealth, treated their women appallingly, and there were few taboos to prevent women from straying – and so stray they did. The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain. Modern-day Aboriginal women who mourn the loss of traditional culture have rocks in their heads. (Metaphorically, that is. Back then, it would have been literally.)

Throughout human history, females have almost always been the ones to marry out, to be farmed out, or carried off by a rival tribe. We are instinctively inclined to be adaptable and opportunistic; tribal loyalties and maintenance of traditions are a lesser priority than security and material comfort for ourselves and our children. We will tend to prefer men who hold a winning hand over those who are losing - and we will inevitably be resented by the losers as fickle, greedy bitches for doing so. The orthodox perspective on colonial history portrays Aboriginal women as virtuous victims of mass rape by the white invaders, or as shamefully exploited concubines at best – anything but women acting on their natures and pursuing their own self-interest. The purveyors of the approved version of Aboriginal history try to simplify the narrative to ‘white males oppressing black women’, yet every adult knows that when it comes to sex and money, the power dynamic is more complex than the double helix of our DNA.

It’s those opportunistic Aboriginal women to whom many of us owe our Aboriginal heritage, especially those of us who have benefitted from generations of integration. For insights into the fate of those women who didn’t have a chance to jump ship, visit one of those remote communities that former Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone once so accurately described as ‘cultural museums’, and see the miserable time that the women have of it there. Generations of separatism has left these women more isolated and trapped than Aboriginal women were in 1788. Surely that’s something for feminists to be angry about?

Social critic Camille Paglia once said that if the world were run by women, we would all still be living in grass huts. Perhaps – but only if we never saw anything else. If we were to see something better, a grass hut would no longer do. Our hunger for something more and better - more rights and more freedoms, better housing and quality of life – prods our menfolk to innovate and trade, and forces traditional cultures to either reform or die. On 26th January 1788, modernity hit Aboriginal Australia like a tsunami, and the women suddenly saw possibilities beyond a grass hut.

This Australia Day, I will celebrate all those fickle, greedy, opportunistic bitches who walked away from their camps and went after something more. I’ll celebrate that I live in a time and place where I don’t have to make such a choice, where I don’t have to put up with beatings, where I am not merely a thing to be traded and discarded, and where I have more freedom, security and material comfort than even the most ambitious of my Aboriginal foremothers could ever have imagined.

[K. A. Pital]

What you are is abject human trash who is very good at dodging actual rule violations while still being human trash.

I can't say it better, so just repeat word for word.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd like sourcing on the accusation of endemic domestic abuse of women in pre-contact Aboriginal society, yeah.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I mean, what she is saying is potentially, partly true in-so-far as that there almost certainly were SOME subset of Aboriginals who improved their own personal prospects through collaboration/cooperation with the colonists, but it is factually and ridiculously false that cherry-picking any such examples (not that she gives any specific, documented ones, mind) is in any way a valid counter-argument to the genocide that was perpetrated and the ongoing marginalization of their descendants. It sounds similar to the idiotic argument that "Obama was elected president, so there's no need to reckon with the history of racism in America because we sure can find some black people who've succeeded!"

[Thanas]

Anybody who thinks penthouse is a legitimate source in a historical debate deserves to suffer through ten hours of greek drama.

[mr friendly guy]

I am at work so I am not going to click on the link (thanks for the warning), but it says penthouse on the disguised link.

As in this magazine from the wiki link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penthouse_(magazine)

Penthouse is a men's magazine founded by Robert C. "Bob" Guccione. It combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, temporarily evolved into hardcore.

This penthouse, or is there another magazine with the same name?

[mr friendly guy]

I'd like sourcing on the accusation of endemic domestic abuse of women in pre-contact Aboriginal society, yeah.

Especially when she says that there is scant record of what life was like for Indigenous Australians at that time.

But the whole spiel looks mighty suspicious. You could change Aboriginal history parts of it with natural history ie humans evolved from earlier non human species, and then say talk about how if she said it, her claim would be "accepted as truth", but its not, and it would read just like creationist literature, down to the poisoning the well tactic that people believe it not because of evidence, but because of groupthink.

[Simon_Jester]

I mean, what she is saying is potentially, partly true in-so-far as that there almost certainly were SOME subset of Aboriginals who improved their own personal prospects through collaboration/cooperation with the colonists, but it is factually and ridiculously false that cherry-picking any such examples (not that she gives any specific, documented ones, mind) is in any way a valid counter-argument to the genocide that was perpetrated and the ongoing marginalization of their descendants. It sounds similar to the idiotic argument that "Obama was elected president, so there's no need to reckon with the history of racism in America because we sure can find some black people who've succeeded!"

Which is a very Zontargs kind of argument to advance, now that you mention it.

I'd like sourcing on the accusation of endemic domestic abuse of women in pre-contact Aboriginal society, yeah.

Especially when she says that there is scant record of what life was like for Indigenous Australians at that time.

But the whole spiel looks mighty suspicious. You could change Aboriginal history parts of it with natural history ie humans evolved from earlier non human species, and then say talk about how if she said it, her claim would be "accepted as truth", but its not, and it would read just like creationist literature, down to the poisoning the well tactic that people believe it not because of evidence, but because of groupthink.

Not to provide covering fire for the stupidity you're criticizing, but I honestly don't even understand what you're saying in the second paragraph. Could you expand on it?