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Why not a welcome to country that’s for all of us — not some?
A Wurundjeri elder performs Welcome to Country during the 2023 Australian Netball Awards.
On the night of the voice referendum Australia’s most impressive Indigenous leader, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, called for a positive approach for Indigenous people and for the policies affecting them.
“It is time for a new era in Indigenous policy and the Indigenous narrative,” she said. “We need to step away from grievance. Attempting to bring about change through grievance has evidently got us nowhere.”
This year should not end without foreshadowing how this new era might begin. In the past month, small but important changes have signalled the start of rebellion against the perceived symbols of a divisive, separatist agenda.
Two South Australian councils, the City of Playford and the Northern Areas Council have voted to scrap acknowledgments of country from their correspondence or from the start of their meetings. The Shire of Harvey and the City of Bunbury in WA also reportedly are reconsidering their future use of acknowledgments of country.
| THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU06:36 Welcome to Country being used to ‘divide us’ |
Sky News host James Macpherson says the Welcome to County makes a small group of non-Indigenous feel like they are “good people”. Mr Macpherson said for a small group of Indigenous people, it allows them to “feel special”. “But for the majority of Australians, we don’t have a More
Since 1976, when Ernie Dingo and Richard Whalley performed what they claimed to be the first public performance of the modern welcome to country, this symbolic greeting by Indigenous people and its first cousin, the acknowledgment of country by non-Indigenous persons, have become near ubiquitous. Originally, and for many years, most Australians have regarded them as harmless goodwill gestures with no particular significance. Recognition of Indigenous people as the first inhabitants of this land and improving their life experiences are not controversial issues. Hence the initial instinct has been to go along happily with these apparently banal, feel-good rituals.
In recent times, the increasingly frequent repetition of these ceremonies, their length and occasionally incoherent political ramblings have caused grumbling, particularly when they kept us from the football. It is bemusing to be welcomed to our own country, especially when one reads reports that Indigenous groups charge government agencies between $5000 and $7500 for a welcome to country and up to $10,500 for the opening of parliament. Nonetheless, most of us went along with the palaver as innocent expressions of respect and goodwill, and were prepared to stifle any concerns.
READ MORE: In recent times, the increasingly frequent repetition of these ceremonies | That then made us read the books by prominent academics such as George Williams | PM’s Welcome to Country revamp | Enough of being welcomed to our own country | Jacinta, welcome to country and Rudd’s portrait |
The referendum campaign has changed all this. Careful scrutiny of the background to the Uluru Statement from the Heart and its attachments, rigorous analysis of the separatist underpinnings of the legal movement spearheading calls for voice, treaty and truth, as well as unguarded commentary by the most outspoken Indigenous activists have shattered the benign ignorance of many Australians.
As long as the view that Australia was somehow constitutionally illegitimate and Australian sovereignty was dubious was confined to a group of radical legal scholars buried in the most postmodern corners of our universities, nobody paid much attention to claims for treaties and reparations. When the ABC claimed that Sydney was actually Gadigal land, we all thought this was just the usual emotional, irrational sloganising campaign journalists and we paid it no mind.
The referendum campaign, however, made clear this is a mainstream belief among key elements of Indigenous leadership. This wasn’t just Thomas Mayo or Midnight Oil telling us to pay the rent; we were being reminded that the Uluru statement said the voice was a first step to treaty and truth telling.That then made us read the books by prominent academics such as George Williams, telling us any treaty would involve recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and some type of self-government as well as the payment of substantial reparations.
If we were in any doubt as to what was at stake, the public statement made immediately post referendum by a group describing themselves as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, community members and organisations that supported Yes, was like administering a powerful dose of smelling salts to the slumbering.
“We do not for one moment accept this country is not ours,” the statement read. “It is the legitimacy of the non-Indigenous occupation in this country that requires recognition, not the other way around. Our sovereignty has never been ceded.”
After this light-bulb moment, the slogan “always was, always will be, Aboriginal land” was suddenly infused with meaning. We had to start asking ourselves what it meant to say Sydney really was Gadigal land and Melbourne was Naarm, the land of the Kulin nation. These kinds of questions were no longer academic or irrelevant. The answers determine our fundamental constitutional legitimacy, ownership of land and issues of reparations.
Are we all Australians who share one unified political entity and whose land rights are determined by the Real Property Acts and other Australian land legislation as interpreted ultimately by the High Court – as Price would want? Or, as Mayo and co would have it, is this a continent shared by Australia with one (or possibly more) First Nations sovereign entities?
The language and appropriateness of welcome to country and acknowledgment of country thus become significantly more important and need to be parsed word by word. The answers tell us whether we are a Jacinta Price country or a Thomas Mayo country. An acknowledgment of country that starts by recognising “the traditional owners” or “traditional custodians” of the land on which people meet or work is a clear assertion of rights over land and founds an argument that these rights need to be paid for when it comes to treaty discussions.
Acknowledging that Indigenous people were the original inhabitants would be perfectly fine but raises another question: why do we acknowledge only the original inhabitants and their contributions to Australia and ignore all those who came to Australia subsequently?
In these days of inclusion, how can we justify the implicit insult to the waves of subsequent migrants inherent in excluding them from acknowledgment? These concerns explain not only why some councils are doing away with acknowledgments of country but also why some parts of corporate Australia are saying if we have to have something that looks or sounds like an acknowledgment it should recognise all the component parts of Australia, not just some parts.
Welcomes to country vary quite a bit but should be similarly parsed for intent and meaning. Claims of “our land” or “our country” are freighted with meaning and can be offensive to those who reject claims of separate sovereignty and ownership. Again, we should look for inclusive, not exclusionary, language. Telling ordinary Australians sitting in the stands of the MCG waiting for their footy match to start that this part of central Melbourne is Aboriginal land but the local owners will graciously allow visitors, and even welcome them, is not calculated to foster reconciliation.
With a new year, it’s time we forged a new, genuinely more inclusive path. If we have to have these kinds of greetings, why not one that treats us all on an equal footing? How about something like “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are one and free”?
COLUMNIST
Janet Albrechtsen is an opinion columnist with The Australian. She has worked as a solicitor in commercial law, and attained a Doctorate of Juridical Studies from the University of Sydney. She has written for numer… Read more