2 monuments symbolizing Australia’s colonial past damaged by protesters ahead of polarizing holiday

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Two monuments symbolizing Australia’s colonial past have been damaged by protesters ahead of an increasingly polarizing national holiday that marks the anniversary of British settlement. A statue in Melbourne of British naval officer James Cook, who in 1770 charted Sydney’s coast, was sawn off at the ankles early Thursday, while a Queen Victoria monument was doused in red paint. Australia Day on Jan. 26 commemorates the anniversary of British settlement in 1788. But argument rages in the country over how history should remember the fleet of British ships carrying convicts arriving in present-day Sydney. For many Indigenous activists, Australia Day is known as “Invasion Day” as it marked the beginning of a sustained period of discrimination and dispossession of Indigenous peoples.