Happy Australia Day everyone!
January 26th is the day that Australians celebrate their country, its history, and recently, its diversity.
Australia day has gone through a few different names, like Foundation day, First Landing Day, and even Invasion Day. As an American, to me it most closely resembles the 4th of July, in the sense that it is a holiday dedicated to celebrating the nation’s birth. Like the founding of America, though, Australia has a dark, colonial past.
Australia’s native population, known as the Aboriginal people, were here for more than 65 thousand years before Captain Cook landed on the continent, and certainly well before Captain Arthur Phillip formed the initial colony in New South Wales, at Sydney bay, on January 26, 1788. That is an unbelievable amount of time, amounting to more than 12 times as long as the time period between the founding of the ancient Egyptian civilization (circa 3100 bc) and today. To some then, obviously, the day has a very different meaning: not the birth of an Australian identity, but the destruction of one. Hence, “Invasion day”.
Representing this tension, there have been numerous protests and acts of vandalism over the years, including one just a few days ago in Melbourne, in which a statue of Captain Cook, the 1700’s era explorer who mapped and named much of the Southern Pacific for the Kingdom of Britain, was defaced with pink paint. Other acts of vandalism have included slogans such as “change the date”, or “no pride in genocide”.
Responding to this, there’s been a recent movement to reconcile the tensions between Aboriginals and European-origin (Euroriginal?) citizens of Australia. Yet another name for this holiday is “Survival Day”, striking somewhere in the middle of Foundation, which ignores the Aboriginals, and Invasion, which demonizes the Europeans. Survival acknowledges the continued presence of the Aboriginal culture in modern Australia, in which Aboriginals are now citizens.
Personally, I like “Australia day”, as an idea of the unification of Aboriginal and Euroriginal cultures. I know I’m treading into political and emotional territory here for some, and no offense is meant, but I believe that it’s always best to view things from a perspective of utility. Do acts of vandalism help people in the present? Probably not. As for Captain Cook, like Christopher Columbus, he is a historic figure who, for better or worse, had a significant impact on the world. I’ll leave the moral judgment to the professional historians, but it must be acknowledged that these men changed the world.
Consider this passage, from the 1893 introduction to The Journals of Captain Cook:
“Cook’s knack of finding names for localities was peculiarly happy. Those who have had to do this, know the difficulty. Wherever he was able to ascertain the native name, he adopts it; but in the many cases where this was impossible, he manages to find a descriptive and distinctive appellation for each point, bay, or island….Cook’s names have rarely been altered, and New Zealand and Australian places will probably for all time bear those which he bestowed.”
That’s an incredible thought. Google a map of the Southern Pacific, and almost every island listed was given a name, to the Western world, by this single man. More than 100 places in Australia alone bear names assigned by him. Whatever your views on the morality of the issue, it is indisputable that this man had an impact, and we can appreciate that impact without championing the exploitation of populations of human beings.
That’s why I believe the date should not be changed. Placing the date on January 26th, the date that the initial English colony was founded, not by Captain Cook, but by Captain Philip, forces one to consider both the birth of possibility represented by the colony’s foundation, and the loss of potential represented by the destruction of the Aboriginal way of life. It is to see that in history, as in life, endings and beginnings are indelibly linked. Scenes in the great tapestry of human civilization are both tragic and heroic – what is a great victory for some comes as a great loss to others.
In fact, in Australia I see a maturity in approach that seems sorely lacking in America. We celebrate the 4th of July with no real consideration for the native populations that we displaced. Perhaps we should spend some moments reflecting on the fact that the birth of our country came at the cost of another, not so that we can live lives consumed by guilt, but so that we can reconcile our past and move forward into the future. There is a beautiful picture on the Instagram account of Australia Day, in which an elderly Aboriginal woman paints a young Euroriginal boy’s face. You could cynically write this off as propaganda, but why not celebrate it as two people rising above the conditions thrust on them by history? A woman, proud of her culture, sharing it with an outsider, and a young boy with a culture of his own, open to the possibility of another’s experience?
Anyway, I hope you’ll think of Australia day a bit, or Captain Cook, or the Aboriginals and their past, this weekend, or whenever you read this. Have a great day!
From down under,
Max