When pollsters asked Australians a year ago to list three words associated with Australia Day — the country’s Jan. 26 national day — the most popular responses were barbecue, celebration and holiday. But among Indigenous Australians, the most popular words were invasion, survival and murder. That, in miniature, is why the country finds itself in the throes of an intense debate over the timing of Australia Day.

Jan. 26 is the day in 1788 when the first fleet of ships from Britain entered Sydney Cove. Put simply, the holiday commemorates the British colonization of Australia — and with it the dispossession of the indigenous population, a centuries-long story of subjugation and countless atrocities, like the Gippsland massacres in the 1840s, in which up to 1,000 indigenous people were killed by white settlers over the course of a decade.…  Seguir leyendo »