Invasion Day

I first heard the term Invasion Day when I was living in Alice Springs in the late eighties and early nineties. I don't know if the place has changed since I was there, but in those days the people of Alice Springs would celebrate pretty much anything by drinking more than is recommended by the health authorities. This would usually be augmented with some half-arsed effort at providing a legitimate excuse for the gathering; such as a street parade, 'novelty' sporting event or a concert of some description. Indeed, most of the alleged concerts were better left undescribed. For some reason, there were also Philipino fast food stalls at every event.

More relevantly, at one Australia Day march/ concert/ novelty sporting event I was confronted by one of those professional aborigines who are so lacking in any other marketable skills that they have to eke out a living as victims of the evil white overlords. He started batting on about Invasion Day. I had never heard the term before, so I asked him what he was talking about.

He became most vociferous about the White Invasion of the sovereign Aboriginal nation and genocide etc., etc. He stopped when I started laughing. Became quite indignant, he did. When he asked me what I was laughing about, I said "Let's get this straight - you want me to feel guilty about being on the winning team? I don't think so."

I don't have any ill will towards Aboriginal people, nor do I doubt that there were a great many injustices perpetrated against them. You know what?

I. Don't. Care. Stop blaming all your woes on me and my particular demographic cohort. The battle has been won. The responsibility for your condition is now yours - and yours alone. How many Vietnamese refugees from the seventies and early eighties suffered loss and trauma greater than you (or I) could possibly imagine and arrived here to find themselves in the same sort of circumstances as you find yourselves in - and then built themselves a new life? Quietly and industriously and without begging for handouts or blaming Da Man.

While I'm setting myself up to be accused of being a white supremacist/ racist by all those who would preach the orthodoxy, let's address a couple more issues: until the 1960s, there was no Aboriginal nation. Or rather, there was a shitload of them. Some of them got on with some of the others, some of them didn't. Even when I was in the Alice, the Warlpiri people didn't like the Arrernte and vice versa. Nobody liked the Pintupi. There exists evidence to suggest that there were councils involving leaders of a great many different tribes and language groups. Some activists have suggested that this 'proves' that there was unity among Aboriginal people. To which I say "Iran and Israel both have seats at the UN."

Nor have I seen any evidence which would convince me that there was a genocide. Vast numbers of Aboriginal people were killed. This happens in invasions. Europeans had better equipment, better communications and were better organised. Therefore they were better at killing Aboriginal people than Aboriginal people were at killing them. In the majority of cases, when hostilities with the ousted occupants ceased, so did any killing. There were never any "Indian Wars" type campaigns waged against Aboriginal people. Not because of any moral superiority, more because of economic inability. We couldn't afford it. Nor - because of the lack of warmaking abilities of the Aboriginal people - did we need to. We could move them into the low rent districts with far less resistance and bloodshed. I make no judgement as to whether this was fair, just or even inevitable. But it happened.

So today, when I saw another professional Aboriginal at an Invasion Day rally on the news burn an Australian flag, I said "If you ever do that shit around me, you had better have something more to defend yourself with than a bottle of metho and a cigarette lighter, you cunt."