The smell of smouldering gum leaves swirls through the air as Wiradjuri man Neenan Simpson blows it towards the thousands that have gathered in Sydney’s Belmore park.
“This day we mourn everything that has happened and what is still happening,” he said, with the smoking mound now sitting at his feet, moving with the wind.
“We’re still surviving.”
Across Australia, thousands of people marched on Sunday to mark Invasion/Survival Day to celebrate Indigenous resistance and to protest against the ongoing harms of colonisation. Though still present, calls to “change the date” were less of a theme this year than in years past.
“I feel like we’re mobilising a lot more and not getting caught up in these distractions. At the end of the day we’ve got bigger issues than a date,” said Leah House, community leader and descendant of one of the original tent embassy pioneers.
“Our people are dying in this system, in these institutions. Changing the date is not going to change that.”
George Coe, another descendant of the original tent embassy group, added: “Our message is sovereignty, independence.”
“Our families have been coming here for generations, we don’t want our kids to have to come here and keep having the same conversations.”
The mood at the rallies was, at times, sombre as many speakers detailed decades-long fights for justice, and touched on Indigenous incarceration rates, child removals, and land rights.
“41 years is a long time for no justice,” Monica Kelly told a crowd of about 10,000 in Sydney.
She is the sister of Lewis “Buddy” Kelly – an Aboriginal teenager who died in 1983. Kelly remains highly critical of the police investigation into his death.
“The end of last year, we lobbied at the coroner’s office [to reopen the case],” she told the crowd. “I’ve only got an email from them with no updates.”
In Queensland, where crowds braved a heatwave and UV warning, many cited decisions by the state’s new Liberal National party government as their reason for attending Sunday’s rally.
“I think a lot of people are rightly angry that the Path to Treaty and Truth Telling has been repealed by the new LNP Queensland government,” rally organiser Sam Watson said.
Watson said its crime bill – which he said would disproportionately affect Indigenous children – was another touch stone for many.
“And I think that a lot of people are rightly worrying about the possibility of that party getting in nationally, and what that means for Aboriginal people.”
What the upcoming federal election – expected in May – could mean for Indigenous rights if it sees a switch in government weighed on the speakers. Little was said about the failed voice to parliament referendum.
Indigenous elder Uncle Bill Lemson raised a huge yell of “shame” when his speech turned to the federal opposition leader.
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“Peter Dutton won’t even stand in front of our flag,” he said.
In Sydney, a speaker called out Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – the opposition’s minister for Indigenous Affairs – saying “you are not our spokesperson”.
Another in Sydney noted that the crowd didn’t feel as large as it has in year’s past, and said that showed the need to educate people – particularly in the lead up to the election.
Amid this talk of the future came calls for treaty. In Victoria, the crowd – which was estimated to be 25,000 people – erupted in applause when Indi Clarke, a member of Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly declared 2025 would be “the year of treaty”.
Dr Todd Fernando – a NSW treaty commissioner told the Sydney crowd: “It’s a shame that we are the last Commonwealth country to not have a treaty with its First Peoples”.
As the march snaked its through capital city streets to chants of “Always was always will be Aboriginal land”, Indigenous flags fluttered above the thousands of people.
So too did the Māori Tino Rangatiratanga flag, and the Palestinian flags.
Protesters carried hand-painted signs, including calls for an end to deaths in custody while some wore keffiyehs – a traditional scarf linked to the struggle for a Palestinian state.
Prof Gary Foley, a 75-year-old veteran Indigenous rights activist and historian, told the crowd in Melbourne that he had been speaking at similar rallies on Invasion Day since he was 18.
Foley urged people to educate themselves about the history of Indigenous resistance, and said the failed voice referendum showed the greatest obstacle to a better future was “Anglo-Australian racism born out of fear and ignorance” of history.
“You all face a far grimmer world than the one I faced when I was young. You’re going to have to live through four years of Donald Trump and what that means for here,” he said.
“You are the ones who will take the struggle forward.
