Australian PM rebuffs Aborigine call for new national holiday

This is a very easy problem to solve. All the Aborigines have to do is to refuse to  participate in the celebrations organised by their white counterparts on this day. Rather they should turn the national holiday into a day of mourning and commemoration for their people. That way each group can commemorate or celebrate the same day as they see fit. Unfortunately, contemporary Australia is suffering from the same legacy that white racists have left in other parts of the world. Hort

http://news. yahoo.com/ s/afp/20090126/ wl_asia_afp/ australianativea boriginehonour; _ylt=AnF5EqAdOk_ bTa3A55ueH_ AfYhAF

Australian PM rebuffs Aborigine call for new national holiday

by Amy Coopes

Mon Jan 26, 2009

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's prime minister Monday rejected calls from an indigenous rights activist, awarded the country's top honour, for the national holiday to be moved out of respect for his people.

Mick Dodson, on Sunday named the 2009 Australian of the Year, said he almost decided not to accept the award because he felt the national day -- celebrated annually on January 26 to mark the arrival of white settlers in 1788 -- was seen by many Aborigines as "the day on which our world came crashing down."

But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who last year made a historic apology to indigenous Australians for the injustices committed by white settlers, refused to entertain the notion. "To our indigenous leaders and those who call for a change to our national day let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no," said Rudd, speaking at an Australia Day function. "There have always been controversies about national days, but this is not the point. The central point is then what we resolve to fashion as a nation... and whether the nation we fashion through our resolve, our energies and our efforts is a nation which includes all, not just some." "That is why I support this, our national day."

Dodson, 58, a member of the Yawuru people in Western Australia and a professor at the Australian National University, has spent his career campaigning for improvement in the lives of indigenous people. He said the apology, delivered by Rudd's centre-left government last February after it toppled a conservative, anti-apologist administration, was a hugely significant moment for aboriginal Australians, and to silence debate about Australia Day would be "another act of exclusion."

But Rudd said it was time to focus on closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians in health, education and employment, "things that matter in people's daily and practical lives." "We are a free country and it is natural and right from time to time, that there will be conversations about such important symbols for our nation," said Rudd. "It is equally right as a free country that those of us charged with political leadership provide a straightforward response."

The apology represented a watershed in Australia's often fraught history of race relations, with television networks airing it live and thousands of people crowding around huge screens in major cities to witness the event.

Many Aboriginal leaders backed Dodson's call for debate on the national holiday, with high-profile activist Warren Mundine labelling Australia Day a "festering sore" for his people."I think it's a conversation we have to have," said Mundine, former president of the Labor Party.

Dodson, the first Aborigine to be named Australian of the Year since athlete Cathy Freeman in 1998, said he wasn't fazed by the prime minister's remarks, and welcomed them as part of the public debate.

Aborigines are believed to have numbered up to a million at the time of white settlement, but only around 470,000 remain. They are Australia's most impoverished minority, with a lifespan 17 years shorter than the national average, and disproportionately high rates of imprisonment, heart disease and infant mortality