“The man known as the “Black Napoleon” executed the pilot, subjecting him to the same punishment that had been inflicted on others. He then killed two soldiers who were present, treating them as accomplices to the murder. These events are remembered as triggering the first war in this region.” – Uncle Dale Ruska, Invasion Day Magan-djin 2026.
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Brett Greinke: As we said earlier, invasion day is every day. It wasn’t just that first fleet arriving in 1788, colonization is a system, not an event. It looked like terra nullius, not that we weren’t here as indigenous people, but that we lacked the intelligence and the capacity to be considered human, that we were the missing piece between ape and man, which allowed the frameworks of Frontier wars and massacres to dispose us of our lands, which enacted the Aboriginal protection acts to segregate us on emissions reserves and sentence stations, which allowed for our children to be taken away in the process of eugenics, which inspired the apartheid in South Africa.
And I know many people will say, well, that’s in the past. What does that have to do with now? Well, that system exists today. It looks like over policing our families, taking our young ones away, resourcing resi care facilities in the child safety system, that ultimately, when they fail and when they’re young, people excluded from an education, they end up locked in a cage as young as 10 years old. We know what violence looked like in this colony. So today, you will hear from many people on the front lines who have been fighting this fight for decades. And what I challenge you is that, outside of today, for the other 364 days of invasion day, what will you take from this?
What action will you take from the words, from the lessons that you hear? How will you mobilize? How will you come together? So up next, I’d like to acknowledge, and I’d like to welcome to the stage a man who’s led that fight, Uncle Dale Ruska.
Dale Ruska: Good morning. Here we are again on this day. What is this day? (Crowd: Invasion Day) What is this day? (Crowd: Invasion Day) What is this day? (Crowd: Invasion Day).
Australia refuses to listen. We gather here year in year out, for the same reason for the country that I come from, I’m part of the Yuggerabul, also Nunuggul, Gabby. Gabby. I come from the islands on the bay just off this capital city. I’m a part of the Aboriginal struggle.
My life has been a part of the Aboriginal struggle inherited of my ancestors from before me this year and the year before. It’s important for all of us gurus that come from this area. It commemorates a bicentenary for us on the island that bicentenary began a year ago, and it didn’t begin from free settlers. It followed on from what happened in 1788, but before I mention it, we’ve learned a lot in our recent times about a history that’s been deliberately concealed.
We know that when Captain Cook comes sailing up our coastlines in 1770 he observed across his entire trip, our ancestors, fires burning and the smoke that was being sent up. Them, those fires. And I often wonder whether our ancestors, in seeing that ship, the Endeavour, identified it as being a bad spirit that had come into a foreign place, our place. And I wonder if the smoke that they lit and the fires that they lit was to ward off the evil that they seen that was possibly coming.
Following Cook’s travels and his observations of many, many fires and smokes, he then, upon his arrival to the northern tip of the east coast of Queensland, decided to claim this country on behalf of the British Empire, on the grounds of it being terra nullius, he founded this country on a lie. What day is it today? What day is it today? (Crowd: Invasion Day).
Not long after Cook, just over 35 years the first of the Empire arrived on our place on chatangari or manjra bar, and they were the men of the British Empire’s military, led by Oxley. Those men, upon their arrival in the first decade, committed many crimes of injustice against our ancestors. It started from them murdering our old chief and putting his head in a bottle and keeping it in a pilot’s hut at Amity point, our old pulli and pulli and our old ceremonial ground.
In response to that murder, one of our great men, ulipi, who was also known as the Black Napoleon, executed the pilot and done the same thing to him, and he killed two of the soldiers that were present in that murder as accomplices to that murder that resulted in the first war in this region, beginning the Battle of Big Creek, or the battle of anugoray on our tribal lands, on chattangaree or strabroke Island.
In response to that war, another commander of the British military decided to go to Moreton Island and massacre as many of the tribe as possible. Following that massacre, he was complimented by his high commands in the military for the good work that he had done. Soon as he got back to Strabo Island, they declared martial law on our ancestors to shoot every black on site. Our ancestors didn’t run. They didn’t hide. They stood, stood strong in resistance, and they fought the second of the frontier, or the undeclared wars on chattanoogari. That was the Battle of Point Lookout.
Following that, more soldiers were sent. They were sent. We’re still trying to find this piece of history, but it relates to an area called Kanai PR, the place of the blood stained sands where the military murdered all of our warriors who was defending, through their resistance, their legal trespass and invasion onto our tribal place. Then they arrived over here. They arrived over here, and they started expanding the colony. And that was followed by all of the historical crimes of genocide that had been facilitated legally against our ancestors. 1000s and 1000s of our mob were murdered through acts of legalized genocide accepted right up until now as just been a normal part of the Australian colonial history, where we look at ourselves now, and we look firstly around the world, and what’s happening around the world, we see:
This crazy, mad American president that’s out of control, that thinks that his control is invested in his power, in his wealth and in his white privilege.
He thinks he can go and evade other countries, countries like Venezuela, like Greenland, Cuba, and it goes on and on. We look at what’s happening in the international crisises occurring around the world, the war and the attempted invasion of Russia against Ukraine, what’s happening in Palestine as a result of Israel. Fail. We see the continuous repeat acts of colonial state and national led violence against First Nations people, where they allow for acts of genocide to be condoned, to be condoned.
What day is it today? What day is it today? With all that madness going on at an international level, we see our own prime minister of this country becoming an ally, having discussions with this mad, mad leader, and he agreed true as a result of the trade embargoes, to allow access to our country for all of our rare minerals. Our island is full of rare minerals, and we’ve already dealt with mining, and we don’t want to deal with it again. Back in our own country here, over the last 12 months, we’ve seen a lot happen over on our place, on chattanoory, we had our flag flying.
We had a few other flags flying in solidarity with ours. We flew the Palestinian flag, we flew the kanaki flag. And the government, the government, was so set on removing our flag posts, we defended them several times, and they eventually stuck in in the middle of the night to steal our flag posts and our flags off our tribal estate today, our mob on chattangari minjariba rose up and they reinstated our Aboriginal flag and flag post in our little main street of goopy. When we look at the other things that have occurred here in this country over the last 12 months, and this is all following the defeat of the referendum for a voice.
And you would have heard my views about that before, but for us also in Queensland, following the last state elections, the commitment and the following up of the repeal of the pathways to treaty and truth telling and healing bill, first commitment of the newly elected state Premier, the second commitment that he made and implemented immediately was adult crime. Adult time for adult crime. We know in this country, also that things like the closing of the gap has failed. Our disadvantage and our disparity is rapidly increasing. The prisons and the correction services institution is full of First Nations, people, shame Australia. Shame.
We know that in 1991, there was a Royal Commission into the Aboriginal deaths in custody that I established at least 336 recommendations.
None of those recommendations have been implemented. None. At least 600 of our people have continued to die in custody, causing much harm and suffering to hundreds of families or 1000s of families, I should say, and hundreds of communities. We are still suffering as a people as a result of Australia’s failure to recognize the importance of the need to address our First Nations issues and all of the disadvantages and suffering that were caused as a result of colonialism. We’ve seen some horrible things happen in this country. One of the most recent was the Bondi massacre.
This country makes out when those types of horrific things occur. That is the first of its type in our place. All respect and sympathy to the victims of those type of murderous acts, condolences to their families. But it’s not the first. It’s happened hundreds of times before. It happened throughout the entire era of the undeclared war, the war against our ancestors. What day is it today? (Crowd: Invasion Day)
What day is it today? Crowd: Invasion Day!
When we have all these people come to our country, they come here as Australians. They come from a diverse background of cultures, from places when they come to this place, and they become Australian. They automatically inherit historical complicity. They become a part of the historical crimes of injustice that continue to be allowed to legally occur against us now and our children, who are all stuck in the correctional institutions systemic racism and institutional discrimination is so embedded as a norm in this country, it arrived with those men that come in their first vessels to establish, through their authority and through their disciplines of war. In our place. The first of the invaders. Those men were men like Brisbane, Oxley, Gravatt, and Cotton. Their names are embedded as a reminder into our landscape all around us, everywhere, a reminder of our ancestors’ sufferings.
Those men, and you might see it, I think it’s here somewhere, they wore a logo as a part of the British coat of arms that said, hon soit qui mal y pense, meaning shame on whoever thinks evil of it, or shame whoever thinks evil of what we do. That was the conscious moral principles that arrived on our place 230 years ago. Since then, those principles have been maintained on this assumption that whiteness is superior to blackness.
It was our black ancestors that survived on this country, interrupted for no less than 65,000 years. 65,000 years, our first law and our first nation sovereignty survived. What day is it today? What day is it? Today? We see all these failures continue to happen on our place. We seen, as a response to Bondi, all of the media disputes and arguments over what should happen. Last night, the Australian Prime Minister come out and said, We need more love and less hate.
We need more action in this place. What action are they going to commit to for us to reduce our disadvantage in our ancient place, Australia fails in its negligence to address First Nations issues because of how embedded racism is, racism is and privileges in their moral state of being. They think that our country now is theirs entirely, when a lot of us and our ancestors have never, ever ever ceded our first nation sovereignty. When we look at these commitments they make to the rest of the Australians who come to this place following the first fleet’s arrival of 1788, the first of the invaders, the first of the trespasses. We have a country full of illegal immigrants because they were never, ever received and welcomed by our ancestors. So this whole entire constituency of Australia remains complicit when all these other cultures come to our place, we say that we’re willing to stand in solidarity with the atrocities that are being committed against them in their place. We condemn colonial violence.
We condemn state or nation led violence. We condemn the crimes of genocide that are occurring everywhere around the world, the same as those crimes of genocide historically occurred for our ancestors. We condemn that. So when people come to our country, they got two places in law that they can stand in solidarity with they can either stand in solidarity with all the rest of Australians, or they can stand in solidarity with us, the original First Nations, people of this land, where we see all these failures of negligence that are continuously allowed to occur and when we see the constituency commitments. And one good example was the response to the yes or the voice campaign referendum, the great majority of Australians said no, outright mass majority. Already said, No, they don’t want to have us have a voice. But last time I stood up here, I said the same thing, who can hear my voice? Who can hear my voice? I don’t need my voice incorporated into this illegal, criminal Constitution to allow for myself to be heard the same as there’s been many generations of our people using their voices to cry loud against injustice, Australia. Australia. I look at our old brother, uncle.
I listen to his speech Gary Foley down there in quarry country. And he said, I condemn Australia. Well, I condemn Australia too for not making any commitments to resolve the harm caused and the generational suffering caused for our ancestors and ourselves and our children.
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Where is Australia’s commitment? Why don’t they have a Royal Commission into the causes of death, harm, massacre and murder that’s historically occurred for us. No, it’s not a priority dealing with racism. It isn’t a priority. It’s okay. It’s normal for us to exist. Our struggle has involved generational existence of our ancestors in a racist colonial system, and this country, while it refuses to address all of the harm caused for this country’s original first law and First Nations people, they are continuing to fail, and they are continuing to remain complicit Australia. Australia is an historical crime scene.
It is an historical crime scene, and it is worth the same sort of efforts that the people that suffered Bondi are given. But when we have our inquiry, we as a people, need to stand in solidarity, and we need to ensure that inquiry is independent, and that is first nations led for us on the islands, we’ve had an opportunity to become invested in justice reinvestment and justice reinvestment for us means dealing with the entire system of injustice, and through our own community, led efforts to establish our cultural alternatives for justice in our place, so that we can stop the increasing number of our young people coming into contact with these institutions that cause them much harm and suffering.
For ourselves on the island, sovereign self-determination is a big part of our being. We don’t wait for governments to permit us to do things like our flags. 40 years ago, we didn’t wait for government to allow us to reoccupy our land. We started repossessing, building our homes, and reoccupying our lands from our own sovereign blood, inherent birthright consent.
All First Nations people need to acknowledge that we don’t have to remain as subordinate, subservient to this criminal colony and its criminal justice systems. We need to decolonize from the state of oppression and this mindset that we have as a people because of the extent of the generational sufferings and in our decolonization, the first thing we need to do is decolonize back to a free, sovereign, conscious, moral state of being as the rightful first law owners and the rightful first sovereignty people of this land.
For white Australians, decolonization is more important because they need to decolonize from their fictional state of being. They need to decolonize to allow for their inherent complicity to be addressed so they can truly become legal citizens of this country with our consent, with our consent as the first law people of this place, what day is it today? (Crowd: Invasion Day).
What day is it today? (Crowd: Invasion Day).
Louder. What day is it today? (Crowd: Invasion Day).
Thank you.
Dale Ruska
26 January 2026
Listen to Dale’s speech @ https://on.soundcloud.com/PJSafdl8C1ANg6XgNW