Indigenous Australians want Australia Day to be held on a different date

Australia Day is being held annually on Jan. 26, but a recent poll has indicated that most Indigenous Australians feel that it should be held on a different date. This day marks the 229th year since the First Fleet took place and 15 percent of Australian population think Australia Day celebrates invasion.

Fifty four percent of Indigenous Australians who participated in McNair yellowSquares national poll believe that the date of Australia Day should be changed. Locals who belong to the Indigenous group see it as a painful reminder of death, disease and cultures now lost forever.

The poll asked 1,156 people on how they feel about Australia Day. It has learned that the majority (68 percent) feel positive about the annual celebration, 19 percent indifferent, 7 percent have mixed feelings, while 6 percent feel negative about it.

Twenty three percent among Aboriginal Australians and participants from the Torres Strait Islands felt good about the event. But 31 percent felt negative about it and 30 percent have mixed feelings about the holiday.

When Indigenous Australians were asked to associate three words with Australia Day, the top three most used words were invasion, survival and murder. On the other hand, those who do not belong to the Indigenous group poled barbecue, celebration and holiday. McNair yellowSquares national poll was conducted exclusively for Guardian Australia.

Australia Day marks the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove in 1788, in which tens of thousands of indigenous people were killed during the colonisation of the land down under. "We see it as Invasion Day," Warren Mundine, chairman of the Australian Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, told CNN.

Mundine has recalled that Jan.26 is the day that the British came to invade. The invasion has led to massacres, loss of land and devastation of Aboriginal societies. "We see that as a bad date and we'd like to see another day selected,” he said.