Change the Date: Challenging Colonization and Nationalism

“CHANGE THE DATE” CHALLENGING COLONIZATION AND NATIONALISM 1
“Change the Date” Challenging Colonization and Nationalism
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“CHANGE THE DATE” CHALLENGING COLONIZATION AND NATIONALISM 2
Introduction
“Change the date” is a debate for or against the Australian January 26th day (News, 2017,
p. 14). In every 26th day of January, it is a day that all Australians celebrate the pride of being
Australian’s. It is a day marked with great public celebrations and remembrance of history. On
the contrary, this is the same day that Governor Arthur Phillip raised the Great Britain Flag at
Sydney Cove, marking the begin of British sovereignty on the land . The day is marked by
family and community events which symbolize the countries diverse society as well as the
nation’s landscape (Calma, 2018, p. Online). These activities symbolize the country’s history.
Awards and ceremonies are also conducted to welcome new members to the Australian
community. Many of the Australians view this day as a day to celebrate the achievements,
culture and the lifestyle of the country. Public events always denominate this day. On the
contrary, Indigenous Australians are not happy with this day (Dean, 2018, p. Online). They view
it as a day of mourning. This is because, the day marked destruction of their cultural practices by
the colonizers. There has been a debate revolving around calling for shifting of this day to
another day that has less significance to the Australian community (Walter, 2018, p. Online). In
this paper, I will critically analyze the reasons as to why it is of importance to change the change
the Australian date.
Literature Review
Colonization is the process through which a foreign individual invades and controls an
area that has hosted indigenous people (Bongiorno, 2018, p. Online). When prisons in America
became full, a crew was sent to Australia to build prisons there. This marked the start of control
of the Aborigines. They were forced out of their land, beaten and killed (Jalata, 2013, p. 2). The

“CHANGE THE DATE” CHALLENGING COLONIZATION AND NATIONALISM 3
problem was that the indigenous could not sustain such injuries and diseases due to their weak
immune system. This resulted in the death of quite a number of them. Those who survived the
harsh treatments were taken as slaves. Women were forced to do anything from gathering food to
general cleaning. Consequently, many of the women were also turned into sex slaves. This made
the number of the Aborigines to decline drastically until almost none was left.
There was massive decline in the Aborigines culture (Gunew, 1999, p. 15). They were
not able to tell their stories as they used to due to massive lack of enough time to do so as well as
lack of numbers to tell such stories to (Macnamara & Crawford, 2013, p. 6). Their history was
also lost. At the time of colonization, Aborigines had quite many different languages whereby
almost half of them got extinct due to killings from the colonizers. All this is having happened
due to the coming of the colonizers, Australians, find it very difficult to celebrate their national
day on a date that marked the beginning of the colonization. One cannot dare celebrate a day
which their ancestors were evacuated, butchered and their children were stolen (Pearson &
O'Neill, 2009, p. 9).
Australians believe that changing the date will be their first step to a long journey
towards the countries struggle of becoming a republic (Coleman, 2018, p. 5). There is a great
hope that cutting the colonial dependency ties between Australia and Britain for the state to stand
on its own needs reconciliation between the first Australian population and the settlers. Failure to
work out on the peacemaking between the indigenous Australians who have been occupants of
the land for more than six decades and those who arrived a decade ago shows that the country is
not prepared to become a republic. This is entirely true because a nation that lacks unity between
its indigenous occupants and the modern occupants does not deserve to be a republic. This
cannot be achieved when people opt to celebrate a national day at the same date when colonizers

“CHANGE THE DATE” CHALLENGING COLONIZATION AND NATIONALISM 4
set off their journey in the country. When a state becomes a republic, it gains a sense of national
prestige. Everybody has to be happy about the full-grown of their country. Australia is likely to
achieve this if and only if it changes its national day to a day when everybody will always be
happy to celebrate the day.
A country’s day is a day when people of diversified cultures and groups in a country
come together for celebrations of the day. The same case should be to Australia. The day should
be a day to be marked by massive celebrations. 26th January is not a day that every Australian
can be happy to celebrate. This is because surely there is nothing so great about that day
especially to the indigenous people of the country. To them, this day marks the day of mourning
and remembering their forefathers who die in the hands of the colonizers.
26th of January can be a sensible day to the Australians if they ever aspire to see their land
a colonial outpost for Britain's (Ziersch, et al., 2011, p. 233). But if the country wants to be
referred to as a country with varied cultures, as well as making the Indigenous Australians as a
part of modern Australia, then there is need for the nation to restructure and see the sense of
changing its national day to a more inclusive day that will be fair to everybody in the country
without it reminding anyone of any lousy memory. The reason behind that is that everybody
deserves to be happy when the country is celebrating its national day.
The day 26th of January shall surely remain in the memory of many Australians as a day
invasion, mourning or survival. It will always be a day when the first colonizers arrived in the
land. It will always be a day of seeking justice for as long as justice still exists. The best way to
aspire for any single day that Australians shall ever come together to celebrate the day shall