Australia Day In Australia

Before I came to Australia, I did some backgrounds preparation and familiarized myself with its landscape, accent, animals and etc. So when I arrived in Sydney in January, everything is anticipated, except Australians’ mighty passion on celebrating the Australia Day. Despite my shallow understanding of Australia’s history, I am entirely affected by the atmosphere. I can still remember the busy city swelled with parades and many people had their face painted or wore flag capes. All the barbeques, fireworks, and people’s excitements make the event like a giant carnival. And interestingly, similar things happened again in the following Anzac day.

National holidays can always represent patriotism and national identity. I am impressed with Australians’

People began to doubt whether Australia Day should be celebrated on 26th of January because it is such a divisive day. To Indigenous Australians, it is a day of mourning; it means the establishment of the British convict colony; and it is the day that they lost their sovereignty. Based on these facts, the pride of Non-Indigenous Australians is somewhat short of confidence. Obviously, the treatment of indigenous people is not something worth celebrating. Carter suggests that it is difficult to define ‘Australia’ because it relates to the questions of power and identity, which inevitably touches on the aboriginal issue. Different views towards these issues lead to a great confusion. And some historians suggest that Australia can be both a young and an old country, depending on whether to include the pre-colonial aboriginal history or

I believe this illustrates the Australians’ strong desire of being a good country as well as a good global citizen. But the truth is not really satisfying. Australia scored an F for its performance on refugees and asylum seekers in 2013 by UNNA and faced with international opprobrium. Besides to its poor performance on the global stage, the racism and inequality still exist inside the country. Jennifer Rutherford argues that it is because of the anxiety of being accused of racism that Anglo-Australian replaced the White Australia story by the multicultural story. From my own perspective, I cannot find a story that really ties the Chinese people to Australian national identity. Although there are a large amount of Chinese people living in Australia, they have never really reached the ‘inner’ part of Australia. Even though Australia has the wishes to be open and inclusive, the unchanging ‘white dominant’ fact still won’t free Australians from