The “Australia Day” celebrations on January 26 serve as a callous reminder to the Aboriginal community that they have no place in a country that traces its founding to a massive and ongoing land theft and the attempted genocide of the country’s first inhabitants.

Determined to commemorate this date for what it truly represents, an Invasion Day, approximately 200 people rallied outside State Parliament in Brisbane. A dozen speakers from the Indigenous community and their supporters condemned the racist Northern Territory Intervention, the continuance of police brutality and deaths in custody, and the frame-up of Lex Wotton, jailed for seven years for daring to inspire resistance to the cover-up of the police murder of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004.

Despite the blazing heat of the Queensland sun, the march to Musgrave Park was accompanied by lively chanting and good spirits. For the first time in living memory, however, the police attempted to prevent the march from occurring, even though Invasion Day protests in Brisbane have been an annual tradition for many years.

Defying police harassment, the march wound its way to Musgrave Park to listen to more speakers condemn the Intervention. Gracelyn Smallwood, an Indigenous academic from James Cook University, spoke truly when she said “We don’t want more sorrys, we want reparations and compensation. Mainstreaming, the Apology and reconciliation are just buzzwords that mean genocide, back to the mission, and back to ration books.”

It is high time there was justice for Aboriginal people.