RISE does not endorse any movement that claims to be pro-refugee but celebrates ?Australia day?. To link our community to such events and white-wash this history is not just insensitive to the indigenous communities of Australia but also to most of us from refugee/asylum seeker communities who are ourselves victims of colonisation, occupation and imperialism and many of us who are also victims of genocide.
The boat people who come to seek asylum do not come to occupy or colonise and therefore, it is disingenuous to link them to the boat people who arrived in 1788.
RISE: Refugees, survivors & Ex-detainees, acknowledges that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the original owners and custodians of the land that we live and work on.