Invasion day vandalism

Let no one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within
- Oodgeroo Noonuccal 1970

As settlers on stolen land,
we pledge our resistance to the
Australian state and its agents,
whose despotic practices we abhor,
whose police and prisons we despise,
whose laws we shall subvert and disobey.

On the night of January 26th, while drunken nationalists celebrated the 226th anniversary of a British military invasion, some unaustralians vandalised the facade of the Ryde electoral office of Victor Dominello, the state minster for Aboriginal affairs and for citizenship.

On the same day in 1938 Aboriginal activists demonstrated for citizenship rights in their stolen lands, rights which were not granted until 1967. Yet citizenship has done little protect aboriginal people from poverty, prisons and police persecution. It has not recovered their stolen lands, and neither will the new Abbott approved call to recognised indigenous people in the constitution, another empty gesture like Rudd’s cheap apology.

When politicians talk of reconciliation, they seek to silence those who call for land rights and autonomy, to put an end to koori resistance with some hollow words and ceremonies, while leaving the sovereignty of the state untouched.

From the White Australia Policy to Operation Sovereign Borders, citizenship itself is mechanism of state oppression, where politicians and bureaucrats grant select privileges to some while excluding and criminalising those deemed unworthy or ‘illegal’. In recent years a government promoted pathology called 'citizenship affirmation' has spread throughout parts of the country. The 'affirmations' are nationalistic ceremonies, carried out on the 26th each year, where people gather to recite a pledge of loyalty to the state.

We do not recognise the authority of this state and its laws, built on the large scale genocide of the first nations. This conquest was resisted at every step; from the early attacks by fighters such as Pemulwuy to the later rebellion of Jandamara and the Bunuba people, from the riots in Redfern one decade past, to the recent explosions in Aurukun and Doomadgee.

Despite constant resistance, the colonial project of Australia continues to spread. In recent years the Australian state has turned the small island of Nauru into another prison colony, like Christmas island and Van Diemen’s Lands before it. Through its economic hegemony the Australian state has convinced most Naruan’s to identify the detention centre as their livelihood, turning them into screws to police Australia’s imprisoned migrants. Yet the passion for freedom is stronger then any prison regime, and the flames of revolt have continued to burst forth.

We seek to fan the flames of discontent and behind the barricades of rebellion; we seek affinity with all who struggle against colonial law and order.

Against citizenship and state sovereignty
Neither monarchy nor republic
Down with Australia