By Ella Noah Bancroft
Invasion, Survival and Mourning Day. Every year since I was born my bones and body have felt awkward on 26 January. In my youth I found refuge at Yabun, a Survival Day festival, which is held in Sydney City at Victoria Park. It provided a space for me to celebrate the continuation of our culture as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; to celebrate the blood that runs through my veins that binds me to the longest living culture on the entire planet. A place where I could be both sad and happy.
While all the other Sydney streets, shops or places were flying the Australian flag, here in the heart of the city, surrounded by trees, I was held by the community, our flag was flying and there was softness inside of me as I felt part of something and not excluded.
Why does 26 January create so much anger, sadness and frustration? Because it’s a day that is not inclusive. It’s a day that celebrates inequality in this country. It’s a day that says 97 per cent of our population can celebrate the injustices done to thousands and thousands of innocent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the name of advancement and expansion of the British Empire. Through celebration the nation is condoning the continual attempt to destroy Indigenous culture, lands, waters and our more-than-human kin.
Ask any sociologist and they will tell you that inequality breeds hate, sadness and war. Imagine you’re at home about to eat dinner with your family, a group of uninvited people arrive at your house with alcohol in hand, invite themselves in, remove your children from the dinner table, remove you from the dinner table and take their own seats at your dinner table, announcing to you and your family that your house is now theirs and that your food is now theirs.
Imagine they shoot your grandparents, they take your partner as a slave and now you stand outside of your home cold, hungry and alone.
Imagine how you would feel? Then imagine every year that same house throws a big house party and you’re expected to show up and enjoy the combined smell of sunscreen, sweat, sausages, beer and the sounds of Triple J that now permeate what was once your balanced home.
The smells of colonisation, the smell of the culture known as Australia. A combination of VB and toxic masculine sweat.
I recently heard a great joke from a friend; what is the difference between modern day Australia and yoghurt? Yoghurt has culture!
And it’s true. We are asked, as all peoples, to celebrate the most immature culture on this planet and completely ignore the longest lasting, most advanced, complex, creative and sustainable culture in history on the entire planet.
‘Australians’ can do better
It’s not just us, the Indigenous population asking for change, it’s millions of allies too. We are all awakening to the true value of our Indigenous history, knowledge and culture that preserved and helped the natural world thrive pre British invasion.
26 January is a day of mourning and loss for so many people across this continent. It’s not just a day of mourning for Indigenous people. It should be a day of mourning for all peoples; the day of mourning for what we have all lost – our birthright to live within a system of balance, reciprocity, connection, equity and harmony.
To celebrate this day is to say: ‘I celebrate discrimination, inequality, and climate change. I celebrate politicians’ ever-growing wallets, big corporations who don’t pay taxes, capitalism, mining and extraction of resources, incarceration of children, the degradation of soils, land and waters and I celebrate attempted genocide and the continual theft of land, culture and children.’
So what will you celebrate on 26 January? An immature hybrid Australian culture that draws from the worst of American and British culture combined? To celebrate a culture that breeds addiction, extraction, greed and individualism? Or will you sit with us by the waters, meet us on the land at Main Beach, Byron Bay and commemorate the wars, the loss, the grief; and celebrate the continuation of one of the most important cultures to survive on this planet?
A note from Mandy Nolan:
For 21 years I have written this opinion piece. I have never missed a week. Every year I write about why Australia Day needs to be moved to another date. But in writing that I am still a white woman occupying space. So this week I have invited Bundjalung woman and Director of The Returning Indigenous Corporation to write the Soapbox. Please don’t congratulate me. It’s the least I can do. This year I encourage those of us with platforms to step aside and demonstrate allyship by handing over to First Nations voices. It’s time for us to listen.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
