Politics

Someone Dumped Pink Paint On A Statue Of Captain Cook To Protest Australia Day

It's a better look than this country's history of violent colonialism.

by Sam Langford  25 January 2018
captain cook

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A rubbish bin and a statue of Captain Cook have been covered in a fetching layer of millennial-pink paint, in what appears to be a protest against tomorrow’s Australia Day celebrations.

An unknown individual or group paint-bombed the statue in St. Kilda some time overnight, and also spray-painted the Aboriginal flag and the words “no pride” on the statue’s base. A nearby statue of Burke and Wills was also covered in green paint and the word “stolen”.

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The defacing of the statues comes after decades of Indigenous Australians requesting that the nation stop venerating colonial figures who caused great harm to this country’s first peoples. The narrative that Captain Cook “discovered” Australia, for instance, totally erases the fact that people already lived in this country well before he got on a boat, and paved the way for other white people to (often violently) barge in and take over the place.

Burke and Wills, meanwhile, are famous for being the first white people to cross the interior of Australia, a narrative that neglects to mention that they died in the wilderness after shooting at the generous group of Yandruwandha people who were assisting them.

While the pink paint is a relatively harmless way of calling attention to the problems with these statues and the narrative they celebrate, several boomer publications have been quick to manufacture outrage about it. The Daily Mail wrote that “Melbourne residents vented their fury” about the vandalism, but were only able to quote three (3) anonymous blokes saying fairly mild things like “not winning anybody over by pointlessly vandalising a monument”, and “pathetic”.

The Herald Sun, meanwhile, which has previously run articles with headlines like “attacking Australia Day rejects our history”, got that history quite wrong in their first attempt at the article by claiming that Captain Cook established the first colonial settlement in Australia at Sydney Cove on January 26 in 1788. Actually, Cook was stabbed to death by native Hawaiians nine years earlier, in 1779, after attempting to kidnap and ransom their king.

The Herald Sun has since deleted its error without including a correction, but it lives on in screenshots.

Anyway, in conclusion, the paint is being cleaned off as we speak; the abuses this country commits against Indigenous people are ongoing. If you’re finding yourself getting more worked up about the paint, here’s a suggestion: log off.