January 26th, as we should all know by now, is a day that offers up a few mixed emotions. There are those who embrace it, chant the holy mantra of Oi, and generally enjoy the day, and those who sulk behind the banner of Social Media, hashtag their childish complaints to their elite and closed circle of friends, safe in the knowledge they are not only helping Social Justice, but also in that they will never be forced to justify their often-hysterical arguments.
Most of the time they fail to offer up anything new, parroting up the same bland self-hating slogans as every other Justice Warrior in a way that almost suggests that all they have to show for their massive HECS Debt is the inability to think for themselves, and for those oft-repeated attention-seeking outbursts we need go no further.
However, every so often something crops up that is not only a relatively new outpouring, but also has the amusing bonus of actively helping to disprove their own arguments, and it is with this in mind that your author would like to share one that was stumbled across during the course of the Australia Day weekend.
“Why don’t we move Australia Day to the date of the treaty with the traditional owners? Oh! That’s right, we haven’t done that yet! Facepalm.”
Now while the original text has been completely paraphrased in order to protect its creator from the embarrassment of their own stupidity, we here at XYZ are still going to openly mock the argument.
As we know, there was no treaty between the First Fleet and the then Rulers of Australia. Would one have been made? Historical records and prior British customs suggest those mean and nasty evil white people were quite open to the idea, but eventually gave up on the grounds they never found anyone willing confess they were actually in charge.
Why? Why couldn’t Evil White Invaders(TM) have the common decency to talk to the leaders of the Aboriginal Nation?
How about because there wasn’t one.
Or for those still failing to grasp the concept, there was NO ABORIGINAL NATION.
There was a continent with Aboriginals living on it, but that is not remotely the same thing. The culture was one of tribal groups who, like any group – human or animal – conceded to co-exist with their neighbours for as long as there were enough resources to go around. When these resources, and let’s put them in their correct historical context by calling them what they really were – food and water – became scarce, the interactions between competitors devolved in exactly the same way they have always done since life was invented. The strong took. The mobile moved away. The weak submitted and/or died. That is how life works. If there was harmony back in pre-1788 Australia then it was simply shorthand for ‘neither of us are currently facing starvation’.
There was no treaty in Australia because, in the political sense that would have made such a document binding, there was no one to treat with.
Does this mean that every interaction within Australia from 1788 onward was Unicorns and Rainbows? Of course not, but that is not the point. The point is there was no ‘treaty’ because Australia pre-1788 wasn’t a nation and just as there was no single authority that spoke for all of pre-1788 Australia, there can be no single unifying pre-1788 date that stands out and speaks for everyone who lived there. Every single life for every single pre-1788 Australian can be safely summed up as: Birth, Attempting Not to Die, Failing Anyway. And while individuals may have had multiple life moments that were of the utmost importance to them personally, for the rest of Australia, it was Thursday.
No pre-1788 event or personal achievement occurred in Australia that could remotely be considered to have even remotely affected every single person who lived there.
So why is Australia Day on the 26th and why should it remain for ever and always?
Because that is the day the First Fleet arrived, and if sandal-wearing refugees from a constructive society want to run around screaming ‘Invasion! Invasion!’ then they are also openly confessing it is the single most significant day in the continent of Australia’s history.
January 26th.
Australia Day.
Oi Oi Oi.
