The world is at a historical juncture where the legacies of colonialism are unfurling. Rosy stories of empires are being uprooted as the soil beneath nation-states birthed from invasion is tilled to make way for fresh planting. The landscape’s original layer is uncovered from debris as we gather seeds, vessels of memory, to scatter in the next season. From the ground up, the seeds of resistance start to replenish the landscape. The question is: Which seeds get to grow?

In October 2023, the brutality of settler colonialism was on display across the world. Frontier violence erupted from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In a liberal democratic realm, Australians voted ‘No’ in a referendum on whether or not to alter the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia. This proposal for constitutional change aimed to go some way in addressing Indigenous peoples’ disadvantage as it involved enshrining an advisory body known as the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice’ in the Constitution. A committee that would provide advice to the government of the day on matters relating to Indigenous peoples’ lives. At first glance, this was a simple question about Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-representation. Yet it had the effect of unearthing Australia’s crisis of national identity.

For many non-Indigenous peoples, the Voice referendum set off a spark to learn about their history and think through the responsibility their inheritance prescribes. Yet, for descendants of migrants, like members of the Greek diaspora to which I belong who arrived after the Frontier Wars, this process of identity development was not so straightforward. Australians of non-Anglo background are settlers, but they are a distinct grouping of settlers who oscillate between feeling at home and feeling like outsiders in the nation. How does this precarious sense of national belonging impact on how they relate to Indigenous struggles?

Growing up in Australia learning about the history of multicultural migration as separate to the history of colonisation, I struggled to connect my family’s history with Indigenous experiences. Australian identity consisted of three disjointed parts, as opposed to a cohesive collective narrative that brought my diasporic heritage into dialogue with Indigenous and British histories. But over time, I started to bridge this fragmentation in national consciousness by turning inwards to my diaspora’s own collective memory. Through my community-engaged doctoral research project—that explores how Greek Australians instrumentalise the past when navigating tensions between their symbolic inclusion in the nation and Indigenous peoples’ problematisations of the nation—I swiftly learned that there was an array of political narratives within Greek Australia that I had not come across in my relatively conservative Greek community social bubble. Stories that contested official narratives of migrant struggle and success that had been placed on the peripheries of our diaspora’s collective consciousness. Stories that inspired intercultural connection and solidarity.

These narratives filled gaps in my historical awareness by connecting the Mediterranean to the Pacific, placing Indigenous struggles in the context of my cultural framework. But my evolving historical awareness was bittersweet as I quickly learned that these counter-narratives were also imperfect despite generating alternative political possibilities. Recognising the limits of these alternative framings, I have become actively invested in exploring on an intellectual and grassroots level how historical storytelling functions as a political practice that frames contemporary political action. My critical investment in the politics of memory is a reflection of what has been happening across the world.

For the last two years, we have seen collective memory become a fertile political battleground where history is utilised as inspiration for resistance and as a tool to justify unspeakable violence. At a time where the legacies of colonialism are being challenged on a global scale, I wish to use this essay as an opportunity to trace a constellation of historical narratives that Greek Australians mobilised in the lead up to the Voice referendum, while gesturing to the ethical and political implications of such narratives for ongoing anticolonial movements.

In the lead up to the referendum, symbolic struggles over the meanings of the past intensified in the public realm as ethnic minorities were utilised as political pawns in the national debate. Two divergent narratives were produced through public discourse about the meaning of ethnic pasts in the present. For supporters of the Voice, minority groups were positioned as “natural allies” of Indigenous peoples, as they had shared histories of displacement from past homelands, as well as lived experiences of racialised exclusion in Australian society. For antagonists of the Voice, migrants and their descendants were characterised as “model minorities” who had worked hard to earn their successful place in the nation. The narrative of solidarity implied that minorities could empathise with Indigenous peoples’ plight, whereas the narrative of intergroup competition implied that Indigenous peoples were unfairly seeking government “handouts” while ethnic minorities were being treated as “second-class citizens”. Such opposing historical narratives frame how Greek Australians conceptualise their position in the nation and make sense of their roles in Indigenous struggles.

Yiorgos Anagnostou’s (2009) analysis of “usable ethnic pasts” in Greek America is a generative framework to think with here. Illuminating the significance of the past in constructing ethnicities today, Anagnostou highlights the dual function of the past as a mechanism for state officials to repress ethnic groups in the multicultural mosaic; and, alternatively, as a weapon for minorities to combat racism and bring about solidarity with oppressed peoples. If memory is constructed rather than given, we might ask then: How do Greek Australians conjure up histories of Greece and of Greek migration to politicise their identities in the present? How do Greek Australians use the past to position themselves in solidarity with Indigenous movements? Which versions of the past do Greek Australians leverage to assimilate into the nation-state? Turning to social commentary in the Greek diaspora media landscape offers a useful starting point to engage with these questions.

 

Seeds of the Past that Germinate Solidarity with Indigenous Recognition

The date of Australia’s Indigenous Voice referendum was set for 14 October 2023, just two weeks before Greece’s national Oxi Day on 28 October, which Greeks across the world would celebrate with nationalistic ceremonies, parades, and community events commemorating Greek resistance to Italian aggression in World War II. Riding the momentum of this temporal overlap, Greek Cypriot Australian director Kay Pavlou drew on this connection when delivering a speech at a public forum for the Greek community in which she suggested to a diasporic audience that “as Greeks we know we can change history with one word – OXI (meaning no) when the Greeks said no to the fascists in World War II”. With this collective memory in mind, Pavlou professed that on “14 October 2023 it is our chance” as Greek Australians “to say yes and change history”. Framing the referendum as an opportunity to boldly declare resistance to oppression, Pavlou was not the only person who drew parallels between Greek histories of resistance and First Nations peoples’ struggles for self-determination.

Greek Australian media outlet Νέος Κόσμος pronounced support for the Indigenous Voice by publishing an editorial calling on the diaspora to vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum, they boldly declared that: “As Hellenes we too understand the trauma of oppression, genocide, and colonisation, having been colonised for 400 years, invaded by Nazis in World War II, and experienced bloody civil wars”. Due to this historical inheritance, the commentators claimed that “we can relate to the struggles of First Nations”. When making claims to such historical commonalities, descendants of refugees from Asia Minor, for example, instrumentalised the past to suggest that their “family, like many Greeks, fully understand the concept of dispossession, banishment and genocide”. Meanwhile, Cypriot Australians attested that they “can empathise with Indigenous Australians” as their “own parent’s village in Cyprus remains occupied by the Turks” or that they “understand the pain and suffering that British occupation brought to Australia’s indigenous [sic] peoples because our forefathers in Cyprus also felt it”. Such historical commonalities imparted a sense of responsibility not to “echo the history and hate of our persecutors, our invaders, our genocidal oppressors”. Despite being well-meaning, these efforts to translate Australian Indigenous experiences into Greek contexts occasionally created false historical equivalences between Greeks and Indigenous peoples.

Harking back to historic territories that have been constructed as ‘lost’ national homelands, some Greek Australians tried to find common ground with Indigenous peoples’ connections to land by affirming their own “natural bond with their homeland”. As members of the “Greek Diaspora”, the Neos Kosmos editorial team claimed that “we understand the power of a τόπος, topos or Country and we still feel a deep connection to our indigenous ancestral lands in Asia Minor (Turkey) and Greece, even after 10,000 years. We know firsthand the sense of belonging and identity that comes from having a topos, or Country”, which imparts a “duty as Hellenes, as members of the Diaspora, to enshrine a First Nations Voice to Parliament”. Framing Asia Minor, for example, as Greek Australia’s “indigenous ancestral lands” implied a territorial claim to ‘Indigeneity’ where Greeks ‘belong’ to certain territories by a sort of “natural” birthright; a claim that can easily facilitate a slide towards the ethno-nationalist irredentist claims associated with the Μεγάλη Ιδέα. Despite engaging politically with Indigeneity, there are problems in using the concept as the foundation to build Greek–Indigenous solidarities if the term is applied to Greeks uncritically. Indigenous peoples in Australia are currently living under a settler colonial occupation, whereas Greeks are not. In fact, Greek Australians form part of Australia’s occupying force. Although the Greek claim to ‘Indigeneity’ tries to build coalitions around a common sense of ancestral belonging, it verges on appropriating First Nations peoples’ experiences by collapsing differences between our histories. In some instances, however, this exercise in tracing roots endowed an appreciation for what it means to be diasporic on lands with Indigenous peoples who are oppressed. As one Greek Australian reflected: Greek Australians “have two homes. The ones that house us and the ones we identify as our ancestral home. […] The land that has given us this incredible second chance belongs to a 40,000-year-old culture. We respect their deep ancestral history and we want to thank them for it”.

Traversing the Mediterranean to the Pacific, the diaspora’s historical experiences of racialised exclusion dominated other public narratives of support, with Greek Australians reflecting on “racism”, “prejudice”, and “barriers” they experienced as migrants to First Nations Countries across Australia. “We, like many non-Anglo migrants, have firsthand experience of racism and bigotry”, an editorial noted and, unlike Australians of Anglo background, as another person shared, First Nations peoples “did not call us wogs when we came here” and they “did not tell us to go back” to where we came from. Here, a common identity is postulated between Greek migrants and Indigenous peoples as victims of racism, which inspires a moral obligation to “not forget the historical injustices inflicted upon our Indigenous co-citizens”. This spatiotemporal shift from histories of Greece to histories of Greek migration reorientates the discussion of anticolonialism back onto the lands where it came from. A different collective memory is formed from which a different conception of responsibility emerges – one that is place-based and anchored by the shared experience of living under an oppressive regime. Such narratives of solidarity echo the sentiment of Indigenous peoples like Gangulu activist Lilla Watson who remarked: “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together”. Such usages of the past, however, took a different turn when Greek Australians strategically drew on their heritage to oppose the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

 

Seeds of the Past that Undermine Indigenous Recognition

On the other side of the political spectrum, histories of minority struggles were mobilised by members of Greek Australia to undermine Indigenous recognition. In these instances, public figures such as local city council member Steve Christou, a child of Greek Cypriot refugees, urged his diverse constituents to oppose the Indigenous Voice on the basis that “Australia is a proud multicultural country full of many ethnicities living together in peace and harmony”. For Christou, the proposal for Indigenous constitutional recognition signalled to Greeks and other minority groups that “they no longer have a Voice in the country they helped build”, which, he claimed, “is offensive racist and divisive”. Those who made claims such as that made by Christou took seriously the conservative ‘No’ campaign’s falsehood that the Indigenous Voice would create a tiered form of Australian citizenship, claiming that it undermines the national contribution of migrants by discrediting the role that they played in the success of multiculturalism. Here we see the impact of the Australian state’s narrative on the shape of ethnic discourse. In line with the myth of Australia as a “nation built on immigration”, Christou relays a narrative of the country as a melting pot that amicably came into being, while selectively ignoring the long history of migrant activism that led to the emergence of the multicultural movement in the twentieth century. Championing individual merit, the upward social mobility of minorities is framed as an indication that they have achieved equality with mainstream society and are model examples of how it is possible for anyone to overcome disadvantage through hard work. If Greeks and Italians, for example, experienced hardship and were able to become successful national contributors, proponents of this narrative begged the question: “Why could Indigenous peoples not follow the same template?” In contrast to the previous examples in which memories of struggle are invoked to build intergroup alliances, the narrative of migrant contribution is utilised here to pit ethnic minority interests in opposition to Indigenous peoples and inhibit coalition building. But this was not the only narrative that diasporic figures deployed that misappropriated collective memory.

Shifting to the far-Right of the political spectrum, we return to histories stemming from Greece with infamous Neo-Nazi and admin of the Facebook page “Greeks VOTE No to the Aboriginal Voice” Stefanos Eracleous. Pictured on the streets of neighbourhoods with a large Greek-speaking populace, Eracleous was dressed in an Evzones costume while proudly holding a sign that reads “VOTE NO FOR AUS”. Inspired by the ideology of Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas, Eracleous was seen waving Greece’s flag at protests against the Indigenous Voice in the lead up to the referendum while chanting “OXI” as an ode to Greece’s national Oxi Day. Platformed in a Greek Australian media outlet a few days before the referendum (in an article that has since been removed from the media outlet’s website), Eracleous lamented that the Voice “goes against my interests as a white person in Australia, its exclusive only to Aboriginals. If we live in a democracy, we should operate as a democracy. I shouldn’t be treated any differently to Aboriginals”. Considered in the context of his association with whiteness, Eracleous’ admiration of the former Greek dictator can be viewed as strategically deploying ethnic nationalism to advance a white supremacist ideology in Australia that is rooted in the disavowal of Indigenous rights. His use of symbolism that is reminiscent of the Greek War of Independence, in tandem with his claim to whiteness, represents a powerful claim to Australian national belonging that simultaneously affirms his Greekness and Australianness. Such a glorified use of this past stands in stark contrast to its former usage as inspiration for anticolonial resistance, which reaffirms how collective memory is a site of political struggle.

 

Learning to Honour Country

What can we abstract from this assemblage of historical narratives? Together, these representations raise important questions about the ethical ways of pursuing the politics of memory. We have memories of the Ottoman and British empires in the diasporic psyche intersecting with Indigenous experiences of dispossession to remind a Greek Australian audience of related histories of disempowerment. At the same time, symbolism from the Greek dictatorship and War of Independence is misappropriated by fascists to bolster white supremacy and paradoxically claim a sense of belonging to Australia. Bridging the distance between past homelands and present life on Indigenous lands, we see lived experiences of marginalisation are deployed to ground our responsibilities in a common place and forge a common identity of victimhood. Yet these same histories risk being co-opted by conservatives who tell stories of minorities overcoming racism with hard work, and contributing to the success of multiculturalism, to promote racial resentment.

The stories we tell shape our identities. The seeds of memory we plant shape our futures. There is variation in how the past is represented and the same pasts may be endowed with different meanings that generate a plurality of possibilities. Although the usages of such memories are often well meaning, an anticolonial approach to diaspora asks us to exercise caution in the pasts we choose to activate and to be careful when turning them into collective memories.

A friend once told me that diasporic cultures are like seeds. We scatter them and we take great care in watering but, first, we need to acknowledge and respect their soil. The practice of remembering in the context of Indigenous political movements is a form of accountability. The practice of remembering in the context of diasporas is a matter of continuity. If we are committed to nurturing a future in which we are together-in-difference, the question becomes a matter of which seeds we collect and store for sowing in seasons to come, which seeds we germinate from dormancy, and which seeds we discard in recognition that they no longer serve us. In building our seed bank, how might we honour the soil that we are on? How might we (re)collect seeds of the past that generate transformative political possibilities? We, as the vessels of history, have the power to shape our diaspora’s direction.

 

Works cited

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2009. Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America. Ohio University Press.