Survival Day demands decolonisation

Written by: (Contributed) on 26 January 2025

(Above:  Survival Day march, Brisbane) 

Today on the 26th January 2025, in Butchulla country as well as across all of Australia, Survival day celebrations and ceremonies were held by Indigenous Australians and their allies. 

The particular one I attended had a sunrise memorial service paying tribute to the survival of the First Peoples against Colonialism and continued occupation. 

There were reflections on previous struggles like the Waterloo Creek Massacre and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. 

There was also music and dance richly steeped in culture and tradition. 

The ceremony was not only a solemn reflection on the past suffering and resistance to colonialism by the Indigenous, but an energetic show of resistance to the ongoing settler-colonial oppression and subjugation of Indigenous Australians. 

As the genocidal nationalism of Australia day, its date and the settler-colonial, genocidal nature of Australia are entered into more and more people’s consciousness, the struggle for First Peoples self-determination and resistance against settler-colonialism will grow and is growing. 

At a time when the settler-colonial occupation and Genocide of the Palestinians has become more mechanised and devastating and is also rising in the people’s consciousness, the link can clearly be drawn and seen between Palestinian self-determination and Indigenous Australian Self-Determination. 

Australia can only be truly independent and on the road to socialism when Australian settler-colonialism against its Indigenous population is smashed. 

Without decolonisation Australia can never be Socialist. 

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