Welcome to Country: a token debate
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The Mad Monk once again inflamed debate this week, after labeling Indigenous “welcome to country” ceremonies as “tokenism”. Wilson Tuckey then took things one step further (or perhaps too far) by calling them a “farce” and helpfully adding that the dancers who perform them are often “grossly overweight”. The comments may have done nothing to change Abbott’s image as a rusted-on conservative — or Australia’s international image as a pack of racists, with the story pulling headlines around the world — but they’ve sure got the punters talking. King of the soundbite, Paul Keating, weighed in on Tuesday, calling Abbott a “little John Howard”, whilst the topic proved highly divisive on this week’s Q&A, with left-wing columnist Catherine Deveny butting heads with Liberal MP Peter Dutton in a heated war of words, especially after host Tony Jones revealed that Dutton had wagged the Stolen Generation apology:
Here’s what the rest of the commentariat is saying: The Australian Editorial: Welcome to controversy
Gary Johns: Welcome to endless poverty
ABC Jonathan Green: Is honesty always the best policy?
Herald Sun Andrew Bolt: I am, you are, we are seeing racism in land welcomes
Jill Singer: Danger in a redneck approach
Daily Telegraph Piers Akerman: Sorry to say this but hypocrisy unwelcome
Elsewhere… The Punch, Chris Deal: Why stop at binning welcome to country and prayers
Mamamia, Mia Freedman: Aboriginal Australia & Welcome To Country. Symbolism or tokenism?
Larvatus Prodeo, Kim: Acknowledgement of country ‘culture wars’
Overland blog, Stephanie Convery: Lip service
Still Life With Cat, Kerryn Goldsworthy: It’s only words
Fat Lot of Good, Bri King: Australian politician finds fat Aboriginal dancers offensive
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5 Comments
Let us open proceedings with a prayer … ‘Blessed are the mean of spirit for they shall increase their showings in the polls.’
Interesting how most of those protesting at these ceremonies are dyed-in-the-wool monarchists and fanatics for the Book of Commom Prayer.
It’s basically lost any true meaning, it is a meaningless platitude up there with “I am pleased to note the attendance of (fill in the blank dignitary)”.
It’s almost part of speech templates, devoid of any true meaning.
Better to either go the full route and negotiate a Welcome to Country with the traditional landholders, whover they may be, or drop the ‘Acknowledgement of Country’.
If you are going to pay tribute to the traditional custodians, it should either be done right, or not done at all, rather than turning it into a worthless lip service gesture.
I’ve never really liked the ‘acknowledgement’, although I think a full blown welcome to country ceremony, involving genuinely local indigenous people, is a different story.
My take on it is that it’s just comfortable rhetoric that papers over the reality. When someone acknowledges that the land they are standing on ‘belongs’ to the people, what does that really mean? Those people haven’t given permission for the building your in to be built on the land, haven’t given permission for the ceremony your having to be held, in fact they weren’t even asked for permission, and wouldn’t be listened to if they objected anyway. In some (but certainly not all) cases, the people don’t even exist anymore in terms of a group with a specific identity and culture.
I’ve always found the wording of the acknowledgements to be pretty uncomfortable. It’s clearly not the land of the people that we are standing on, because long ago it was taken from them. You can’t have it both ways, either it’s their land and therefore it should be given back (clearly not going to happen) or it’s not there land anymore.
If the acknowledgement read something like “we are standing on land that once belonged to the people, until they were driven off it 200 years ago” then it might have some truth to it, but clearly that doesn’t play nice. Much easier to comfortably state that the land belongs to some ethereal group, even though you haven’t the slightest intention of consulting with anyone representing that group about anything to do with what is done on that land.
I’m not suggesting that we should hand all land back to indigenous people, frankly the people it was stolen from are long dead, many through unnatural causes. It’s an ugly fact of any colonial country like Australia, and one that we do need to always remember, but at the same time constructively move forward, including achieving reconciliation and then moving to a genuine post-reconciliation era. To me, the acknowledgement is simply repeating a lie that doesn’t help this process.
Far from being racist and offensive towards non-indigenous (as the likes of Bolt are claiming) I reckon it’s offensive to the indigenous; we keep telling you it’s your land, despite the fact that the way we act clearly demonstrates that isn’t true. What we have to do is acknowledge that it aint your land anymore, because our ancestors stole it, but we are going to do what we can to not repeat mistakes of the past and move forward together.
I can’t believe Mr Tuckey had the gall to criticise OTHER people for being fat.
so the lord’s prayer has more meaning than the welcome to country cermony, why is this? I note nobody in right wing land attacking the relevance of this dated religious BS.