On 26th January 1788, Captain Phillip planted the British flag at Sydney Cove. Today Australia Day signifies the illegal occupation of Australia to First Nations peoples. Colonists declared the country uninhabited or Terra Nullius to avoid compliance with British law. Since then a combination of methods to brutally subjugate, slaughter, enslave, oppress, breed out and destroy sacred land, culture and law have not stopped. Aborigines fought relentlessly since the Frontier Wars, activists have made steady progress on every front to uplift their communities and claw back sovereignty. To date they still experience attempted genocide through systemic oppression, legislated inequity, desecration of their land and culture. They are survivors, they could not be stopped. For hundreds of thousands of Australians, today is Warriors Day, celebrating the survival of First Nations Australians, the longest surviving continuous culture, religion and way of life on the planet.
We Hindus understand both settler and administrative colonialism. Both nations were terrorised by Abrahamic Supremacism and genocide. Australian and Indian Hindu indigenous religions have both been systematically targeted for decimation. We understand how the British destroyed our traditional knowledge systems to advance the western colonial model. We understand that our history too, wrote out the truth, and included Abrahamic supremacist revisions that would keep us subjugated until our culture was forgotten. Ongoing neocolonialism keeps indigenous peoples and their knowledge suppressed, replacing it with western ideological frameworks that aim to erase us.
Hindus are proud to stand in solidarity with Australian First Nations people and will be taking a strong interest in their decolonisation movement.
Brisbane #InvasionDay2020 was a march to #AbolishAustraliaDay
