Aboriginal genocide

Invasion Day rallies on January 26

Join your nearest Invasion Day protest happening this January 26.

A deceitful historical narrative, at best, dismisses the systematic dispossession and genocide of First Nations peoples as being in the distant past. It isn't and it needs to be stopped, argues Peter Boyle.

Chris Owen has produced an exhaustive history of colonial Western Australia pastoralists and the police who served their interests in the Kimberley region. It shows that, at best, they considered Aboriginal people as convenient slave labour and at worst pests who were to be exterminated.

Moreland City Council took a big step forward on September 13 when it voted to drop all references to January 26 as Australia Day out of respect for Aboriginal people. But it stopped short of cancelling its official Australia Day citizenship ceremony.