What are we “celebrating” on the 26th of January?

It’s not the date that Australia was discovered, that was over 65,000 years ago and never noted down.

It isn’t the date that the Europeans set foot here, that was on the 26th of February 1606.

It can’t be the date that Captain Cook arrived, because that was on April 29th 1770.

It also can’t be the day that Australia came together and formed a united country because that was on the 1st of January 1901.

January 26th is the date that Captain Arthur Philip raised the British flag and established this land for the imprisonment of convicts without permission from First Nations people. People who never agreed to give up their land for the British and did not cede sovereignty.

FUSA will not be celebrating the 26th of January as we walk alongside First Nations people in solidarity. FUSA will be commemorating and mourning the pain and suffering that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people endured on and surrounding Invasion Day.

Always was, Always Will be, Aboriginal Land.