We will not accept Australia Day on 26 January without resistance

I woke this morning to another media storm caused by our prime minister, another media storm about First Nations Australians on Sunrise. Despite the uproar Scott Morrison’s comments were bound to cause, despite the fact that he is holding office by his fingernails, he decided to weigh in on Invasion Day, demonstrating his complete lack of understanding of Indigenous issues.

He spoke about not needing to get rid of Australia Day to celebrate Indigenous cultures and our contribution to Australia, and in that he proved he does not have the slightest clue about the topic. When I was with 60,000 or so other people on the streets of Melbourne last 26 January we were not complaining about a lack of celebration of our Indigenousness, we were protesting the celebration of the date when our lands were invaded and our cultures destroyed.

We don’t want a celebration of how we “contributed” to Australia, which is what Morrison called for, we want white people to stop celebrating the day they invaded us. If you think about it, we really did contribute to the wealth of the country because it was land stolen from First Nations people upon which the entire wealth of Australia was and is built.

He also said we didn’t “need to tear down one group to hear from another.” Sadly this has defined and characterised Australia for the last 230 years. The building of a nation has occurred by the invasion, destruction and suffering of another. Wealthy white people are wealthy because all the land their wealth is built on was stolen from First Nations people.

26 January will always be a day of mourning to Indigenous people, it will continue to be a day of protest until the inequalities that hound my people to early death are corrected. Creating another “Indigenous Day” will not change that.

Why is Australia Day held on 26 January?

26 January 1788 was the day the first fleet pulled into Sydney Cove and planted a British flag in the soil. They arrived in Botany Bay about a week earlier.

It was first celebrated as a public holiday in 1818, on the 30th anniversary of that landing. The day was known variously as “foundation day,” “anniversary day” or “first landing” until 1946, when commonwealth and state governments agreed they should all celebrate the anniversary of British colonisation on the same day, and that day should be called “Australia Day”.

The public holiday was not consistently held on 26 January until 1994, but was generally used to create a long weekend within that week.

It has been recognised as a day of protest by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people since at least 1938, when a national day of mourning was held during the sesquicentenary celebrations in Sydney.

People forget we already have a theoretical “Indigenous Day” – that was the meaning of Naidoc, National Aboriginal and Islander Day Organising Committee. Yes, Naidoc week is named after the committee pulled together to establish an Aboriginal and Islander day we still don’t have.

This is yet another salvo from a prime minister who is either the most ignorant person to have ever led this country or genuinely thinks cruelty and disdain towards First Nations people will gain him enough votes to stay in power. This latest dig follows on from his appointment of Tony Abbot, possibly the worst person for the job imaginable, as special envoy on Indigenous affairs. If he had the slightest clue on Indigenous issues, Morrison would have asked us who we wanted for the job.

Scott Morrison, the horse has bolted. 26 January has been a day of protest and mourning since being declared so by William Cooper in 1938. Australia Day has only been celebrated on 26 January since it was changed in 1994. Before that it was the closest Monday to that date to ensure a long weekend. This should tell you how seriously Australians have always taken their national day – they moved it every year because they loved a long weekend more.

Most white Australians I speak to when I travel don’t even know what they are celebrating when they celebrate that day. Many of them think it’s the anniversary of Cook “discovering” Australia. Others, recent immigrants and some people around the world, assume it’s like Waitangi Day in New Zealand, the day that a treaty was signed with First Nations people, or the day of Federation like Canada Day. They are shocked to discover we still don’t have a treaty.

If you want to give Indigenous Australians our own day, give us 26 January, a day that is already important to us. Celebrate Australia Day on any other day – I don’t care which day. Maybe choose the day the British parliament allowed Australia to become a country, 1 January, or the day the last of the states voted to join the federation (it was Western Australia if you care) on 31 July.

26 January will never be an acceptable date to celebrate Australia day.

We, Aboriginal people, cannot and will not forget that date. Nor can we allow you to celebrate it without resistance.

• Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar writer