First Nations Rally on Gadigal Asserts Aboriginal Sovereignty This 26th of January

Thousands upon thousands of First Nations peoples and their allies filled the city street that runs along unceded Gadigal land, known as Sydney’s Broadway on Sunday.

On reaching their final destination, Isabel Coe Memorial Park, otherwise known as Camperdown’s Victoria Park, at around noon on 26 January, those at the front of the Sovereignty Day 2025 march could see fellow participants stretching out behind them, back up Broadway, as far as the eye could see.

Two hours prior, Wiradjuri and Badu Island woman Lynda-June Coe had opened the 2025 Sovereignty Day rally in Sydney’s Belmore Park, stressing that those gathered were on “unceded Gadigal Country”, which is the “sight of first contact” and “the sight of invasion”.

Coe added that it “best be known” that the sovereignty of the Aboriginal people of NSW is “still intact”, and “languages are reviving”, “cultures are revitalising” and the children of today are stronger than at any other point over the last 237 years of occupation.

“All I have to say is shame”

Wiradjuri and Gomeroi woman Kyana Hickey, who was MCing the event, told those gathered that she was standing where she’d been standing with her family for the past 25 years to mark Sovereignty Day.

“I stand here today… using my voice not just for me but for our once beautiful land continuously poisoned and exploited by Adani and all the greedy whitefellas, for our young men and their families that never got to see justice after being murdered in a gaol cell, for the thousands of men, women and children in the Middle East who don’t have the ability to speak,” Kyana said.

The granddaughter of renowned Isabel Coe and Billy Craigie, as well as Virginia Hickey, added that she was further speaking out on behalf of “all the people asking the same damn thing of the Australian government”, which involves the query: “What is wrong with you all?”

Hickey questioned why Australia has been looking away as Israel has been killing Palestinian children in Gaza, and she suggested the reason may be that this is the same treatment that was meted out to First Nations people here.

“The genocide that is so deeply rooted within our country makes that all okay?” the Wiradjuri and Gomeroi woman asked, and then countered, “To that I say, ‘Hell no’.”

First Peoples are consistently criminalised and segregated, according to Hickey, in order to facilitate more mining and extractive projects. She added that for 237 years colonisers have stripped sovereign peoples of “our culture, our colour, our connection, our education and our rights to be humans”.

“How many more generations have to stand here before you listen to us?” Hickey further questioned the colony. “Because once again, folks, sovereignty was never ceded.”

“A shameful day to celebrate”

“This day has only been around for 30 years: 1994, the same year that I was born,” said Wiradjuri man Liam Coe, who spoke of the state’s practice of designating 26 January as Australia Day. “Yet, we act like it is the most important thing in this fucking country. It is ridiculous – that we forget our history, our Country, we forget about all the things that are important to us as Aboriginal people.”

“But if we want to move on, what is the importance of this day? If we keep coming here every 26th and saying, ‘Stop killing us. Stop taking our land. Stop telling us that you don’t value our history, our story and us as a fucking people.”

Liam is the son of Paul Coe, who was involved in establishing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, amongst many political acts.

Speaking on Sunday, Liam made clear that the country cannot “move forward”, while white Australia considers its “white pride” and “white nationalism” “more important than our skin, more important than our blood, more important than all of the people that we keep putting in the fucking ground”.

Sunday, the 26th of January 2025, marked 237 years since the ships of the British Empire pulled up in what is today known as Sydney Harbour, to unleash an invasion, a smallpox plague and a takeover of the entire continent, under the pretext that there wasn’t enough room in the UK prison system for all its prisoners, so it was sending them halfway around the world to detain them here.

“A shameful day to celebrate. A shameful day to be a part of,” Coe continued. “So, I am proud to stand here to see all these Black faces, all these black, red and yellow shirts. Stand up. But not just today, every day. Don’t wear this on January 26th and think you have done your job.”

“The war on Blackfellas”

“The war on Blackfellas continues. The war on Blackfellas never stopped. The war on our children never stopped,” declared Wiradjuri man Ethan Lyons, as he took to the stage in Belmore Park on Sunday morning. “We are seeing our children ripped away more than they were during the Stolen Generations, these years – now.”

“We are seeing our sacred Country burn. And we are seeing it stolen for the profit of big greedy corporations,” continued Lyons, a member of The Blak Caucus. “These are the same corporations that want to feed us this tokenistic Australia Day unity bullshit. The reality is there is no one in this country that is going to help us. There is no one in this country that is going to save us.”

The Albanese government held an October 2023 referendum on whether to establish an Indigenous advisory body to parliament. Current opposition leader Peter Dutton led more than half the nation to vote against what was referred to as the “Voice”, based on his claims that such a body would be all too powerful.

Since the failure of the Voice referendum, the federal Labor government has stepped away from Indigenous affairs, while potential next prime minister Peter Dutton has been waging a dog whistling campaign against long-term community moves towards ditching the 26th of January as a day to celebrate.

“This country loves to sell us the idea of unity. They love to sell us the idea of discourse. They love to say that this day is some ‘debate’,” Lyons further made certain. “This nation was founded on genocide, point-blank period.”

“They say it is about unity. It is not about division,” the Wiradjuri man reiterated. “How can we celebrate this day, when our brothers go on the street and they get shot by police, and our children get stolen from their mothers. What is unifying about any of that?”