A lot of Aboriginal people talk about the healing (emotional and otherwise) of being 'on country' and a couple of weeks ago, I went to Central Australia for exactly that purpose. Being out on my Arrernte homelands, I am able to get out of the daily hustle and bustle I experience living in one of Australia's big cities. Out there, I am part of something bigger — a feeling of belonging that is difficult to explain to those who don't have such ties to land.

When I'm in the desert, I'm in a place where my ancestors walked and thrived for centuries under some of the toughest conditions in the world. Where they carved and painted our stories into stone, and navigated these vast landscapes via song or stars. Where they found enough food and water to stay nourished and strong. Where they swam in and camped by pristine waterholes. In the middle of nowhere, the red dirt of the ground reflects the red tinge in my otherwise dark hair. Knowing where you've come from is a powerful feeling.

Beyond that though, it's a special experience to drive through the cattle station on which your grandfather was born, or through the one your great grandmother was born on. Ancient places which acquired new names as settlers brought cattle in and used traditional custodians as free labour.

These are names and words which many Arrernte people are fighting to retain and pass down to their children so they're not lost. Despite colonisation, Arrernte remains one of the more complete Aboriginal languages, yet as successive governments try to stop bilingual educational programs in NT schools, or as misspellings of words persist all around Alice Springs (Mparntwe), it remains under threat. Without the hard work of committed people, who knows what will remain in a generation or two?

Being on country is not all healing. On these ancient landscapes the impacts of colonisation become clear to see. Invasive buffel grass dominates the landscape, taking over from native spinifex every time a fire goes through. Animal species that are reliant on these native grasses become threatened. Wild horses, camels and marked cattle stomp through the ancient dry waterways damaging the beds and the plant life which marks the edges.

There's a saying in Mparntwe which goes 'If you've seen the Todd River (Lhere Mparntwe) flow three times, you're a local.' Despite my not living there, I have seen it flow three times and indeed, stood in those rare running waters as a child. It's a majestic sight as water runs around the ancient river red gums. Yet the running water is marred somewhat by the loose sediments and debris — the river tainted after generations of environmental degradation. Local government is working to protect the Todd, but it will take a long time to fix what has been degraded by generations of neglect.

It's these reflections, among others, that I will be drawing on as I march in this year's Invasion Day protest. So many people claim to be 'proud Australians' yet they have never gone to see rich landscapes such as this and then bear witness to the damage that has been done to them. They don't value the ancient ceremony and birthing trees in Western Victoria, nor the Awabakal butterfly caves in NSW. They're not concerned that Torres Strait Islander communities are currently being impacted by rising sea levels due to global warming.

"Australians all stand to benefit from living in a country where the lands are cared for and fruitful, where true history is taught and learnt from, and where the diversity of more than 200 groups of sovereign owners is celebrated."

We're additionally told that jobs and making money via fracking operations is more important than protecting the Great Artesian Basin — a waterway millions of years old which has nourished people for thousands of generations. These same arguments are used to justify the current threats to traditional lands and the Great Barrier Reef caused by the Adani Mine proposal.

Racist people have commented to me that if we were 'real Aborigines', we'd all go back to living off the land. Yet for so many of us, this option is impossible. The waterways are dry and polluted, the food sources are scarce and the damage is near irreparable. There is no day where this struggle to educate others living here does not continue. Until we reach a point of truth-telling and reparations in this country, an alternate date simply won't exist.

To quote academic and veteran activist Gary Foley, 'Native Title is not Land Rights.' Our ability as traditional owners to veto projects which will negatively impact our lands is non-existent in most cases.

In addition to this, we're still being forced off our lands by governments; for mining projects, via exorbitant child removal rates, and via the worst incarceration rates in the world. People are still dying in custody. Community members are still trying to reconstruct languages and therefore knowledges which have been long taken from us. Every step of the way, we are still fighting to protect and maintain our families, our communities, our lands, our languages and our rights as peoples.

Political parties who now view taking a stance on the growing protests on 26 January as a way of increasing their votes at the upcoming federal election like to pretend that the reason we march on this date as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is that we wish to 'change the date' of Australia Day. Yet when you look around the lands and you look at the fights Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are engaged in to protect that which was cared for by our ancestors for so long, you realise that every day is a fight against colonisation, the legacy left by invasion and the ongoing impacts upon our peoples.

So this Invasion Day, instead of calling on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to conform to simplistic solutions such as changing the date of a public holiday geared around reinforcing jingoism and nationalism, walk alongside us and commit to doing better. Australians all stand to benefit from living in a country where the lands are cared for and fruitful, where true history is taught and learnt from, and where the diversity of more than 200 groups of sovereign owners is respected and indeed celebrated. March for that future.

Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman living in Melbourne, the National Indigenous Organiser of the NTEU, and a freelance opinion writer and social commentator. She blogs at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist.

Main image: Sydney Invasion Day rally in 2018 (Cole Bennetts/Getty Images)