It's a public holiday today. Marking the anniversary of the day that all of the white people who had invaded and then set up stakes voted to make ourselves an independent nation. The people who were here first weren't consulted. They weren't even classed as people by the invaders.
Natives, who now have most of the rights of the invaders, call this Invasion Day and they're right to do so. My lot invaded, took over, ran the native peoples off to the shittiest parts of the land, and then refused to let them have anything to do with running the country for almost two hundred firkin years.
We don't use their culture, language, or history in our educational system. We don't even bother to teach Basic Bush Survival, which kills off hundreds of hikers per year. And then we (the whitefellas) turn around and blame the natives for not wanting to stay in school.
I see more people of African Descent around my neck of the woods than any peoples of Native Descent. And that's directly the result of things that whitefellas did in the past, and are continuing to do now.
Prejudice is rife. It just happens to be invisible.
Some relatives of mine are saying that the native Australians should be grateful it was the English who decided to take over, because the rest of the potential invading forces were worse. I'm sure that if Earth was invaded by a bunch of aliens that nearly wiped us out with their diseases, isolated us into the shittiest places on Earth, and then refused to teach our kids our own history that we'd be real grateful that we weren't invaded by a different lot that would have outright eliminated us or eaten us or whatever.
There's little I can do from where I am but acknowledge this, though. Keep fighting the fight. Acknowledging the first peoples here on our land is not as important as -say- paying the back rental fees. Or making certain that native peoples can access everything they need to be on equal footing with everyone else.
The fact that they don't, they still don't, and they probably won't for years yet is a big glaring flaw in the system that few people see.