Despite parades and entertainment on Australia Day, dark clouds will hover over the heads of our country`s First People.

Replacing Empire Day as a day of national pride in 1911, 10 years after Federation, Australia Day never achieved its objective of unifying " One people - one destiny - one flag" because the main emphasis remained on re-enacting the arrival of the British fleet into Sydney Harbour on January 26, 1788, which Aboriginal people view as Invasion Day.

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It was always a victor`s presentation of history, with the exploits of heroic Aboriginal resistance leaders, like Pemulway and Yagan, suppressed and Indigenous people sidelined as a "dying race".

In 1938, as sesquicentenary celebrations for the "first landing" were held, Aboriginal leaders declared January 26 a Day of Mourning and Protest and held a public meeting in Sydney, appealing for equality and full citizenship.

More than three decades later, the Aboriginal tent Embassy sprang into life opposite Parliament House in Canberra on the evening of Australia Day 1972, flying its own flag as Aborigines protested at being treated as outcasts in their own country.

When "Advance Australia Fair" replaced "God Save the Queen" as the national anthem in 1984, the Aboriginal community reminded Australia that White Australia has a black history. Then, before the bicentenary celebrations in 1988, the new National Australia Day Committee, struggling, to foster one identity to unite all people of this continent with the theme, "One Land, One People", falsely called Australia Day "a day of contact - not conquest".

From 1992 onwards, Aborigines have countered Australia Day celebrations by holding Survival Day Concerts every year, at first at La Perouse directly opposite the spot in Botany Bay where Cook and Banks first landed in 1770, and later at Sydney's Waverley Park, near where Captain Phillip's First Fleet built permanent buildings on Cadigal Country 18 years later. The concerts are spreading throughout the nation.

In the third century since white men in wigs invaded Australia, the divisiveness of the date remains, and the Australian flag still features an imperial symbol, the Union Jack, to which black Australians are meant to pay homage.

With those patriotic boosters, the Australia Day Council, trying to artificially inject universal national pride once a year, unfinished business remains for Indigenous people, which they - understandably - want addressed.

Only after our nation accepts the truth of its part-black history, corrects the inequities still daily visited on Aborigines, and eliminates the lingering symbols and symbolism of invasion, can white and black Australians en masse join hands on Australia Day.

Keith McEwan. 19 Jan 10

PHOTO: Taken by a photographer from Man: the magazine for men, this image shows a section of the Day of Mourning meeting which took place in the Australian Hall at 150 Elizabeth Street on 26 January 1938. John Patten is standing on the right. (Man, March 1938. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.)