This open letter has been written by Cox Inall Ridgeway, a majority Aboriginal owned social change agency and dentsu company, based in Sydney. CIR works across First Nations PR, research and reviews and community engagement. They also work with organisations and brands on developing and implementing Reconciliation Action Plans and diversity and inclusion initiatives, as they relate to Indigenous Affairs.
Dear Colleagues,
With respect and honesty, we make our position on January 26 open and clear.
We do not recognise January 26 as a day of celebration. In our communities it is a date that evokes mixed responses, with some acknowledging our Survival and many reflecting and mourning.
Whatever way you look at it, it is not a moment that is inclusive of all Australians, where we have the space to truly embrace the heart of who we are as a nation.
We take this position, not just because of what the date represents or its symbolism. The impacts of invasion are continuing in very real ways.
They reverberate through our experiences as Aboriginal people in modern Australia. They are ingrained in the fact that Indigenous women are around twenty-one times more likely to be imprisoned, or that Indigenous children are almost ten times more likely to be removed from their families, or the fact that we are likely to die almost ten years earlier than non-Indigenous Australians. For many the devastation began on January 26 and for many, it never stopped.
We raise these facts not to incite feelings of shame or guilt, but to help us all to face the truths of our collective experience. We want all Australians to feel proud of the threads that both bind and define us. We are a part of your story, as you are a part of ours.
We just need to find the right time to tell it.
There will never be a perfect date to do that, but together we must find a better one than January 26.
We cannot celebrate on a date that actively brings hurt, harm and trauma to the people who have been the custodians of this vast and beautiful landscape for over 60,000 years. We know it hurts because we feel it.
Over the years, many of us have acknowledged the date in our own ways, often privately and with sadness. But now we feel we need to voice our position. We have come to understand that silence too, can perpetuate pain.
On this day, on this issue and on the many that will come after it, we encourage you to lead with us.
We ask you to consider the story of who you are, as an industry leader, an agency or a brand and how you can use your voice to sing with ours. We ask you to learn why it is recognised as a day of invasion, survival, of mourning and finally, we challenge you to be unafraid and to be bold.
It could simply be in referring to January 26 as a date, rather than as Australia Day. It could be in sharing your position openly with clients and colleagues. It could be through investing in learning for your teams about why the date needs to change. Or it could be in allowing your staff to take a day off to engage in Reconciliation or NAIDOC Weeks, instead of January 26. It doesn’t have to be loud to be meaningful.
At the core of our Reconciliation Action Plans, our Diversity and Inclusion agendas and our advisory boards, is a commitment to partnership, to growth and to being humbly guided by those with roots in the lived experience of issues. January 26 is one of the first big opportunities of the year, to show that we are listening.
There is a plethora of articles, polls and op eds that we could share. We could remind you that there were over 270 state sanctioned massacres in this country, that January 26 has only been a national public holiday since the 1990’s or that a Day of Mourning was declared by Aboriginal people as far back as the 1930’s. We could build an academic argument, but we are asking for a human and compassionate response.
A date of celebration should not be bedded in how we have hurt each other, but rather, in how we can heal together.
Earlier this month, the national NAIDOC Week theme was announced, and we couldn’t think of a better invitation for you to walk with us, into a more inclusive Australia.
Get Up. Stand Up. Show Up.
Cox Inall Ridgeway
Image supplied by Clothing The Gaps
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