A Day That Keeps Us Divided
By Ella Noah Bancroft
The day that divides a nation.
A day that we are told we must celebrate.
Otherwise its unAustralian.
What if we don't want to be Australian? Perhaps we never did, so why the shame in being so unAustralian?
A day that causes so much pain for some and joy for others.
The day that keeps us divided.
Perhaps it's time we stop taking cues from the dominant culture and reach into our heart, remember our purpose to be beings of deep custodianship and to reflect and take accountability for our part in a society that thrives off and promotes division, conflict and supports wars.
The light shining through the cracks of this system is brighter than ever and now it’s not just Indigenous People or migrants that feel and see the injustice of this colonial project.
2024 will see younger generations, in the masses, standing up for our soils, waters, justice systems, fighting the corporate control machine, fighting oppressive and racist systems that keep people trapped in poverty cycles, the list goes on…
There is a great understanding now that people and the planet have to go before profit or none of us or our children will have a future.
Perhaps we really have to sit in what it means to be Australian?
What does our culture see as success?
What are the key values and belief systems of this current mainstream culture?
For our migrant communities, does becoming Australian mean they must let go of their ancient traditions and change their name to something western so aussies can pronounce it? Do they have to change the way they dress or the food they buy? The language they speak? Do they lose their ancestral connection to ceremony and ritual?
Is becoming ‘Australia’ just another assimilation process for many people to disregard their innate ancestral connection and cut the cord to their human stories and ancestral understandings? All in order to become a culture that is the most immature on this continent.
To understand conflict we must ask questions, be curious and never assume to understand but continue to try too.
Who and what was destroyed in order to birth the Australia we know today? And if things were destroyed, do we need to mourn rather than celebrate?
Whose land was stolen? How many thousands and thousands of an entire group of people were intentionally killed and how many people were forced to cut ties with their ancestral ways to fit into a culture that prioritizes individual needs over family and community;that prioritizes wealth and greed over love and timelessness? A culture so dangerous it has a belief that our more-than-human kin species are commodities and resources and not sentient beings, existing within the landscape of our community.
What does it mean to even be Australian. How does it feel in your body?
To take on the cultural beliefs of this society is to be competitive, greedy, individualist, famous and rich. When we continue to raise our children with these core beliefs being the pinnacle of success then we end up with the world we have now: one where the monetary poor are punished, where they are stripped of their lands of waters, so that those resources may travel all over the world to allow the wealthy and rich to remain comfortable, unhealthy and mentally ill. I feel like the system’s not working for anyone.
Imagine a culture where we raise our children with these pinnacles of success: knowing the names of plants and trees rather than actors and musicians, knowing how to be in right relationship with the earth and our more than human kin, that creating community is the greatest way for self-preservation and that empathy, love and trust are above all the most important things for us to give one another.
So what does this day mean? Are we celebrating all the beings, both human and more than human, who have had to die to allow Australia ‘the lucky country’ to thrive?
Who is lucky in our communities? Those who want to profit off the fertile soils, the old growth trees, the crystal clean waters and use these resources to build the wealth of individuals and the nation?
These resources are not for trading or for selling or for making money. These resources are literally our ancestors. The stones, the sand, the waters, the soil - they are our ancestors and so we must start to see how the capitalist colonial project continues to hold power over all living beings on this continent in the name of profit and privilege.
Remember that your privilege rests on the bodies of many beings taken to fuel the continuation of this now more recent and destructive culture known as Australia.
Our oldest living culture thrived on this land mass for more than 60 000 years and in that time preserved the waters, the soils and lived in deep harmony and relationship with the natural world. Being in alignment with the LORE not the Law.
I pray that January 26 is a time that we reflect and mourn the deep grief that the land holds. A day we remember all the sentient beings who have been dispossesed to make way for the Australia we know today. To all of the deep sea mining that now makes up the materials that build our urban cities, all of the trees that are continually taken before their time.
On this day, I mourn, I grieve. I am sad my family and community have lost so much and in turn all of the people living in this country also have lost so much through our loss.
A day to mourn our poisoned waters, our degraded soils, our old cedar trees taken and cut down. A day to mourn the bloodshed from both human ,and more than human, to make way for this culture of dominance and power to take over. A time to mourn the death of our old people, the stolen land that keeps our communities in a poverty cycle and our languages that we are so desperately trying to reclaim.
I do not want to celebrate that Australia has taken hold of this continent with unsustainable systems of oppression, I know that the land, our more than human kin and the waters are crying.
They are mourning the loss of the custodial culture that protected them since time immemorial.
I am mourning the silencing of our magic as humans in order to exist within the realism of the concrete jungle, creating more disconnection separating us further and further from our truth and purpose to be in the right relationship.
The truth about January 26th is that it's the day that captain phillip and the british ships came to shore and built a colony that values extraction, greed, destruction and profit over people.
This isn't a us vs them day, it's about realizing that the current system that was forced upon this continent is one that doesn't serve many of us. Our nation might be getting richer, but our people and our planet are getting sicker.
I do not want to celebrate the use of the dispossessed peoples of Europe to build the new empire in the name of christianity, to continue the colonial project that killed so many human beings and our human kin in an attempt to try and destroy the oldest living culture on this planet.
Amongst the symbolism of that day January 26 marks the day in which our ancestors would die trying to protect their more than human kin, children and women.
It marks the day that the European empires continue their great reign over the world. It marks a day of a changing of consciousness on this planet as so many of our Indigenous peoples' lives were taken, and with some of them, went the knowledge systems of 60,000+ years.
The culture that knows more magic than you could even imagine, the culture that was thriving in amongst the harsh Australian bush and desert landscape, the culture that made and protected the soils that yield the harvest and fruits that this country so relies on to be a part of the big global trade system.
This day is a day not to celebrate but to reflect on what was lost; on the symbolism not only to Indigenous Australians but for all human beings on this planet who are fighting for love and connection to country, for the people who want community and village living, for those who care about the waters, the food, the soil and most importantly the next generations.
What happened on that day was a domino effect to one of the most extractive systems this world has ever seen.
Our ancestors protected this country, the soil was moist and fertile, it was soft and mostly it was so alive that every seed would thrive. On Bundjalung country where I live, it was where the forest met the sea, our old big cedar trees, our ancestors of protection, tree trunks bigger than you can ever imagine, trees that were allowed under our original culture to thrive, to be in connection and kinship, taken in a one swift blow by the colonisers.
These are not just resources, these are our ancestors.
Suddenly the boats came, gun shots fired, poison given, the land cleared, death and destruction filled the air, the blood poured into our river ways, our cedar trees fell to the ground with a great thump. A thump so loud it echoed to the ends of the earth. In one action, gone, a cedar tree that has lived in our ecosystem for thousands of years, carrying so much energy, gone, sent back to England to build buildings for the colonisers.
This day is not a day for us to be divided, but one for us to come and unite through our common humanness, stating that this system is not sustainable and helpful for our communities and our future. It’s important we all take time to reflect upon the death and destruction that is caused by our “first world” and think: