This is the first drawing I’ve done in a very long time. I’m pleased it turned out so well because I was afraid I might have gotten rusty. I hope you like it <3
It depicts Sherbet and Curio as Australian animals, a bilby and a numbat (Google those animals, they’re really cute!), and Petal is represented by the flock of rainbow lorikeets in the top right. The colours are those of the Aboriginal flag (google it, it’s a very pretty flag imo but I’m biased hehe).
As you may be seeing in your social media feeds, 26 January is “Australia Day”. It is kind of Australia’s equivalent of the 4th of July and Columbus Day merged into one thing. It commemorates the day Europeans arrived in Australia.
You probably know I live in Australia, but what you might not know is that I’m Bundjalung (the Aboriginal nation just south of Brisbane and the Queensland/New South Wales border). I have Bundjalung ancestry on my mum’s side.
Australia Day is a painful day for most Aboriginal people. Our history is similar to that of Native Americans, we were raped, massacred, abducted from our parents, driven off the land we had a deep spiritual connection to, and our language, religion and holidays were violently stamped out. We were legally considered nonhuman until the 1950s, and the massacres and abductions continued well into the early 20th century. So for us, the arrival of Europeans is not something to celebrate.
Instead of “Australia Day”, most of us call it “Survival Day”. A day when we assert that we still exist, despite all the efforts that were made, and are made, to erase us.
I know that’s all very heavy, but I wanted the picture to be sweet and uplifting. I didn’t want to focus on the bad stuff that has happened to Aboriginal peoples, but instead on the beauty of our spiritual connection to the land, which still exists even after we’ve been displaced.
Keywords
male
1,193,098,
female
1,083,935,
beach
27,221,
sea
6,328,
ocean
6,222,
rainbow
5,531,
sunset
5,185,
flag
1,765,
waves
491,
bilby
209,
numbat
129,
aboriginal
74,
rainbow lorikeet
1
Details
Published:
4 weeks ago
25 Jan 2025 22:28 CET
Initial: c1195b71cc3ff4350823d5ae0a3d63ea
Full Size: ad65196bca6d0d4e6691b73a424f2e74
Large: f323123386e2845802e0289da1324028
Small: 1d31304365816df219997e9a41c880a1
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