Australia Day?

In my last post I wrote

"11. Celebrate (or commemorate) the holidays well (Australia Day, birthdays, Chinese New Year, Anzac Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Mid-autumn (moon) festival, Christmas and Christmas tide, Boxing Day, New Years Eve and maybe others)."

Two things stand out to me about this goal. One is that I completely forgot Easter, which as a Christian seems a pretty big oversight. The second is that I did include Australia Day. I suspect when I wrote the list, I was going through all the public holidays in my head (yet I left out Easter (why?) and (as I can't imagine how to celebrate them) the "Queen's birthday" and Labour Day).



As Lyn S discussed (she seems to think my thoughts ahead of me sometimes), I feel this uneasiness and uncertainty about Australia Day. Should we be celebrating our nation on "Invasion Day" (or legally more correct after Mabo, "Conquering Day", although that took a longer period of time - I'm not sure what the Indigenous population perceived of a few boats in 1788 and what it would mean)? In light of that, should we be celebrating our nation at all? Should I live in this country? What do Indigenous people think about this? (I think the answer to that is that there are probably as many answers as Indigenous Australians but I would like to know some of them.) And then I get more caught up in my thinking and not knowing what to do at all. How does this all fit in with other people groups that have been conqured around the world and what if the conqueree was once the conqueror of the same place? I'm not saying we don't compensate/seek to make restitution etc Indigenous Australians for the horrible atrocities that white Australia has laid on them over the past 222 years, I just so confused about where to start and what to think. (I'm sorry if I've said something offensive. Please let me know, I'll seek to lift my thinking.)



But there are Australian things such as Vegemite (although owned by a US company), Tim Tams (also owned by a US company), damper etc. I suppose that we should have a space to acknowledge these things even if part of their history as Australian is tainted.

So not sure what to do and feeling uncertain, I ate my vegemite on toast and spent the day at the beach with friends (which may be the "Australia Day" thing to do but is also just a nice thing to do, so why not go to the beach on a nice day with friends).

I'm just very confused.