Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples need to know there is an image that displays deceased people.
“Australia Day” January 26 marks the anniversary of the arrival of the first fleet at Port Jackson in 1788. For most indigenous people this is known as invasion day. Their treatment to this day has been brutal and in the least one of denial and rejection. It is a hard history to read and on the part of the colonial architects, even to this day, a very shameful history. I am one of many Australians who would rather move the celebration to a new date in conjunction with a dialogue with indigenous peoples as to how to achieve that. But then I believe that nationalism and patriotism are poisonous, as history and our nightly news shows, so maybe no day is needed.
Photo: Australian National University: Aboriginal men in chains in the Kimberly, date unknown.
“Obviously colonial arrogance is a long time dying.” Alain Badiou
Your Disapproved Skin
We dug our wealth from under your feet,
and we housed ourselves in your delicate bones,
scarifying your disapproved skin
with our tribal markings,
chaining your bodies but never your hearts,
we hunted a perception of you
and caricatured our values as superior;
as a weak parent blames their child
we laid a burden of blame upon you,
a fiction of conscience,
a trick of justification,
that had no purpose other than
to exploit the very breath of you,
surely our sorry must be
the very breath of us.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Image: The Australian Aboriginal Flag – Formally recognised in 1995 as an official flag, was designed by Harold Thomas, a Luritja man in 1970 and first displayed at the National Aboriginal Day in Adelaide in 1971. The design is significant: the colours represent the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, the red ochre of the earth and a spiritual connection to the sun the giver of life and protector (as stated by Harold Thomas).
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