Coloniser control and the art of disremembering a “dark history”: Duality in Australia Day and Australian history

Abstract

Often, colonisation is considered a single, past event; in actuality, colonisation is a continual enculturating practice that galvanises historical Indigenous inequality and colonial privilege. This study deconstructs social tension surround Australia Day—the national day of celebration that for some is seen as the date marking the beginning of Australia but for others marks invasion. Given that the date of celebration marks the beginning of non‐Indigenous privilege and Indigenous disadvantage in Australia, debate exists as to whether the date should remain the same. Twelve people, self‐identified as wanting the date of Australia Day to stay the same, participated in semistructured interviews; transcripts were analysed using causal layered analysis. Findings suggest an unstable national identity centred on a denial of past and present oppression of Indigenous peoples—the past is conceptualised as having little relevance to present‐day Indigenous inequalities. Findings generated appear transferable to understanding social tensions that arise in colonised states globally, particularly relating to Indigenous inequalities and colonist privilege. Exploring Australia Day acts as a conduit for understanding how social psychological barriers occur to deny historical and present social injustices and positively constructs oppression within colonist states.

Validation of an Abbreviated Scale of the CENVI Questionnaire to Evaluate the Perception of School Violence and Coexistence Management of Chilean Students: Differences between Pandemic and Post-Pandemic

“…Invasion and colonization is an experience shared by all the world's indigenous peoples, the effects of which, for those who survived, have endured to the present day [83,84]. In Chile, the Mapuche people have resisted and struggled with different nuances at different times [30], without mitigating the consequences of two hundred years of usurpation, discrimination and domination perpetrated by the Chilean state [34].…”

Curriculum as invader: Normalising white place in the Australian curriculum

“…1 The choice of language centred on "invasion" here is intentional. While it is common for invasion to be positioned as a distal event and detached from national identity (Lipscombe et al, 2020), it is nonetheless the case that the lands of "Australia" are invaded and that identity in this place is inextricably enmeshed with a history of ongoing invasion. 2 At the time of writing, the currently in force version of the curriculum -version 8.4 -is set to be replaced with the recently released version 9.0.…”

Colonial mechanisms for repudiating indigenous sovereignties in Australia: A Foucauldian-genealogical exploration of Australia day

“…Like other traditions, national days are commemorative devices that reinforce national identity (McCrone & McPherson, 2009b). Australia Day operates as a commemorative linchpin to construct Australian history and identity in ways that disproportionately favours dominant settler narratives (Kleist, 2009;Lipscombe et al, 2019). This is indicative of the colonial project by which colonialism "turns its attention to the past of the colonised people and distorts it, disfigures it, and destroys it" (Fanon, 2004, p. 149), whereby "settlers' power, their privilege, their history is vested in their legacy as colonisers" (Smith, 2012, p. 7).…”

“…Simultaneously, settlers predominantly overlooked how historic injustices endowed settlers with privileges, which they personally benefit from in the present (Farrugia et al, 2018). Similarly, Lipscombe et al (2019) found that people demonstrated a tendency to discount Indigenous perspectives and the historical oppression of Indigenous peoples, which was indicative of a fragile Australian identity and construction of history, that depends upon exiling its constituent Indigenous proponents to places of invisibility.…”