Australia Day

[jlewenda]

So, today is Australia Day, a day that makes me ashamed to be Australian, really.
On this day in 1788, the First Fleet arrived in Sydney, and soon after that, began the slaughter of innocent Aboriginals.

Since doing an Aboriginal Studies course last semester at uni, I've learnt a great deal about the mistreatment of Aboriginals when the whites

Comments

[need_tea]

That's horrid! I would be all HELLZ NO if I lived there. I know we have a school and other places named after the people who STARTED the American imperialism into Hawai'i. Geh. Why do you want to name streets and things after them?! They did horrible things in history to us!

[aekubo]

That sounds horrible. The worst part is that it`s been done all around the world.

The Americans landed on North America and killed tons of Native Americans.

The Japanese invaded Korea and China.

I`d be pissed, too, if we had Korean Invasion Day in Japan :/

To be honest, I didn`t know much about the Aboriginals in Australia until a couple of years ago, and I still think that there is a lot to be learned. The first time I learned about the treatment they went through was when I watched The Rabbit Proof Fence.

[journeynorth]

Same thing in Canada, and we too never focused on Native Americans in history classes, or if we did, it was somehow spun in a positive light, which made me really uncomfortable. :/ Admittedly, we focused more on French history, and they were much more at peace with the natives than the English.

But yeah, the Native Americans were basically all killed off or married off to whites, and now there are none of them with pure blood, so to speak. As someone who is part Native American--though it is, like many, very far back--it makes me sad that we gloss over and ignore Native American history. Or cast it in a positive light, which is arguably worse.

[animewave]

Yeah, though its a little more worrying that even though Aboriginal history is part of the curriculum, kids don't really take in what really happened - they're too busy memorizing facts/dates to pass the school certificate...

[maggie_writes]

That's awful! America has a similar history with the murder of thousands of Native Americans, but we do learn about it in school. Although, I wonder how much is glossed over.