Bicentennial Celebration[s] of Nation[s], Revisited
The Sydney Opera House lit up in Greek colours on Greek Independence Day. Image: ©Effy Alexakis, photowrite
Βy: Andonis Piperoglou
In 1988, Australia marked the bicentenary of two hundred years of European settlement. The Australian bicentenary sparked a public contestation over how to frame the nation’s history. Opposing historical interpretations were grappled with. A fashionable embrace of multiculturalism challenged Australia’s British colonial heritage. A catchy jingle titled ‘Celebration of a Nation’ sat awkwardly alongside a costly re-enactment of the First Fleet of British convict ships sailing into Sydney harbour. Indigenous counter-narratives powerfully declared that the nation was violently invaded rather than peacefully settled.
Today, references to the Australian bicentenary as a celebratory national moment conjure irksome debates about how the nation should contend with the harsh reality of its British settler colonial heritage: a heritage that included an attempt, via assimilationist policies and restrictive border regimes, to create a white racial polity. In unison with the objectives of Decolonize Hellas, I would like to suggest that the aftermath of the Australian bicentennial can inform us about the cultural politics at play when Greeks Australians choose to selectively celebrate the Greek bicentennial.
This year Greek Australians are celebrating the Greek bicentennial via an assortment of panels, seminars, lectures, exhibitions, performances, publications, and public dialogues. As a historian, I have been invited to partake in a panel organised by the annual cultural event, the Greek Festival of Sydney. Titled ‘1821 and the Greek Diaspora in Australia’, the panel will bring together young professional Greek-Australians to discuss what significance 1821 holds for them. Extending my research on ‘Greek Settler Colonialism in Australia’, I have had to reinterpret how Greek migrants became, and continue to become, settled colonizers on the lands of Indigenous peoples. Pondering the relevance of 1821 has propelled me to be attentive to the differences between imperialism and colonialism. I have had to consider the differences between Greeks fending off Ottoman imperialism and the ongoing struggles Indigenous people face in their attempts to reclaim their lands from settler colonial dominance.
For some Greek Australians, the Greek bicentennial offers an opportunity to (re)familiarise themselves with the history of Modern Greece; for others, the bicentennial seems to act as a singular opportunity to celebrate Greekness in Australia. The revolutionary ‘spirit’ of 1821 is recalled in numerous ways. Liberty from Ottoman rule is regarded as seminal. Stories of so-called heroes and heroines are retold. Noteworthy battles are recounted. The role of philhellenism is debated. Pride in strength and unity are essentialised as Greek characteristics.
Alongside this rhetoric are overtones that centre the ongoing relevance of Greek classical heritage. Greece as the birthplace of democracy is hauntingly heralded by politicians. In a message from Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Greek Independence Day, it was noted that “for millennia, Greece has given so much to the world –– in philosophy and democracy, science and architecture, art, sport and culture. A record of achievement that has enriched the world.” He added that Australia is “blessed by the presence of a vast Greek diaspora.” Standing “side-by-side in war” ties of “blood and family” apparently bind the two nations together. Such words generically present Australia as indebted to Greece.
This year Greek-Australian associations have creatively lobbied to have the bicentenary marked across Australian landscapes. The decision of the New South Wales government to project the Greek flag onto Sydney’s iconic Opera House on March 25th was rendered as an ultimate sign of respect. The decision generated considerable interest, attracting large numbers of Greek Australians to the harbour foreshore to take photos and marvel. Illuminating the iconic landmark in blue and white light acted as a symbolic illustration of how Australia is celebrating with Greece.
In the suburb of Marrickville in Sydney, a new precinct was christened. A section of the suburb’s main thoroughfare was remanned ‘Little Greece’. According to local Mayor Darcy Byrne, the renaming is as a gesture of appreciation “to the Greek migrants who helped establish the Inner West as the birthplace of Australian multiculturalism.” The many Vietnamese migrants who have also made the suburb their home have not been granted the same place-naming recognition. There will be no corresponding Little Vietnam. Celebrating Greek migrants has contemporary political salience in Australia. In a settler colonial society where racializing dynamics remain prevalent, the ubiquity of romanticist ideas about ancient Greece aids how Greeks self-represent themselves as a model minority.
In the built environment, the preservation of neoclassical colonial buildings and shrines commemorating fallen Australian soldiers (who fought at Gallipoli/Καλλίπολη as British subjects) reveals the durability of Greek civilisational heritage. From the earliest moments of colonial intrusion, the relevance of classicism to British empire-building seemed to be limitless. Today this relevance persists. Despite the pervasiveness of degrading slurs like ‘dago’ and ‘wog’ that situated Greek migrants as racial degenerates of their classical forebears, celebrating Greeks in Australia has eerily prolonged the civilizational ethos of settler colonialism. An ethos that sustains the fantasy of Greece as the location of western culture and Indigenous worlds as inferior.
But, as the Indigenous activists who protested the premise of the Australian bicentenary can remind us, celebrating is not the same as reflecting. To rejoice with Greece in its two hundred years of independence from Ottoman rule is not the same as pausing and thinking through what Greece and Greek people have brought to Australia.
Beyond souvlaki, Zorba and the many post-war migrant bodies that built a more pluralist Australia, the persistent drive to equate Greeks as not just savvy migrants, but as people who embody the continuation of Greek civilizational heritage comes with serious pitfalls. This drive negates the troubled history of Modern Greece, rife with subsequent independence movements, a bloody civil war, colonial intrusions, the oppression of minorities and refugee crises. It ignores how Greece was imagined by the west. It invalidates how Greece was seen, and continues to be seen, as a territory that teeters on the edge of imagined boundaries that separate Europe from Asia. A territory in which the occidental fantasy of civility overlaps with barbarism. It does not identify how Greeks were routinely racialized in the Anglophone world. Stories of pain, prejudice, and protest do not seem to warrant the same public attention.
The identifiable similarity between Greek oppression under Ottoman imperial rule and the ongoing repression of Indigenous peoples and cultures by settler colonial systems of power is overlooked. How Greeks “come to stay” in Australia is disassociated form their complicitly in upholding what Aileen Moreton-Robinson refers to as the exclusionist “possessive logic” in which Australian patriarchal sovereignty operates. Situating Greeks as archetypal migrants and ancient Greece as a substantive cultural influence on Australian nation-building contributes to the erasure of vast Indigenous heritages and landscapes. It snubs the powerful protest phrase that was popularised in the lead-up to Australian bicentennial: ‘white Australia has a black history’.
Although the Australian bicentenary included nationalist flag waving ceremonies and uncomfortable nods to Australia’s British origins, it also significantly altered how Australians perceived themselves in relation to their presence on Indigenous lands. Despite the controversies that it sparked; the vocal opposition to the Australian bicentenary began a process towards truth-telling. It launched platforms in which orthodoxies were contested. It initiated forums in which traditions were transformed. Above all, it authorized the rewriting of history.
As the founding of Modern Greece is celebrated in settler colonial Australia, it is important to consider how diasporic nationalism chooses to present the history of the homeland. It is equally important to ponder the potentiality of history-making when diaspora and boundary-crossings are reassessed, and Indigenous sovereignties are recognised.
Dr. Andonis Piperoglou is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith University. He is a cultural historian who explores the interrelationship between migration, race, and settler colonialism. He is a co-founder of the Australian Migration History Network and serves on the Executive of the International Australian Studies Association.
Cite as: Piperoglou, Andonis. 2021. “Bicentennial Celebration[s] of Nation[s], Revisited.” Decolonize Hellas blog, 31 March https://decolonizehellas.org/bicentennial-celebrations-of-nations-revisited/
References
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