Invasion Day will come to rival Anzac Day in years to come | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Thu, 26/01/2017 - 11:34am

Two things are certain about Australia Day: the debate around it will continue, and it will eventually mark as a commemoration for military resistance

One of the more wondrous things about moving cities is exploring the new terrain. The possibilities seem endless as I walk the well-established trails and paths around the water, run my hands over bulging rock formations that form the foundations of colonial buildings, and catch the ferry up-river along ancient trade routes and fishing grounds.

When I look around, I try to imagine what was, as equally as I register what is, today. There’s no end to trying to work out where and how the past intersects with the present in a city as magnificent, as blessed by natural beauty, as Sydney.

When the British invaded Indigenous country in the late eighteenth century, which they claimed – illegally – and renamed ‘Australia’, they were enacting an expansionist tradition of human and ecological genocide which had begun with European powers invading the Americas 300 years earlier. This attempt at total conquest resulted in the deaths of many millions of Indigenous people and the destruction of physical, spiritual and cultural environments.