Gide, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Well, well, well, land acknowledgements,

or as we call them here in Australia, the welcome to country, or an acknowledgement of country,

if it's being performed by someone who is not themselves indigenous. These have been roiling Australian

culture and media for the past week.

Because last Friday was Anzac Day, which is one of the, I suppose, holiest days on the Australian calendar.

It's a public holiday.

And it's a sort of a combination between Remembrance Day and a National Day.

Technically, it commemorates the Gallipoli campaign in World War I, where Australian soldiers

for the first time were sent in vast numbers to support Britain's effort.

It was in Turkey, long story short, we got the shit kicked out of us, and it was the first

time that Australia really forged a national consciousness,

a common national imperative after having become a country in only 1901, just a decade or so

beforehand. And this has subsequently become a way of not just honouring all Australian

servicemen and women, but really honouring the country itself, because our national

day, our official sort of Fourth of July equivalent, happens to fall on the date when Europeans,

the British Empire, first landed on the soil of Australia and declared it to be terra nullius

and uninhabited land, despite the fact that there were hundreds of civilizations here

who'd been living here for tens of thousands of years.

So it's a little bit impolite, a little bit impolitic,

to celebrate on January 26th,

which is the anniversary of that inauspicious day.

So Anzac Day has kind of become a de facto national day. And it starts every year with a dawn

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