Welcome to Country: more than a symbol

Some years ago I was sitting listening to a Welcome to Country speech by a Koori elder at Melbourne University.

A small boy sitting next to me asked his Mum what the speech was about and she said it was simply recognizing that there were other people living here before white people came. It was a sign of respect.

The Welcome to Country speech only takes a few minutes but the recent decision by the Baillieu Government to downgrade its part in public affairs traduces the respect that the Koori people deserve.

Premier Baillieu and the Victorian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Jeanette Powell’s decision was revealed just a day before the start of the AFL's Indigenous Round. Up there for timing.

While critics of the Welcome to Country speech say it’s symbolism or ‘a waste of time’ (commentator Andrew Bolt), these acknowledgements are an important part of the reconciliation movement - something which Powell says she is a part of.

A statement from Powell’s office reads:

Acknowledgement of Country is not mandated, never has been, and nor should it be. The Coalition Government believes that such acknowledgements may be diminished if they become tokenistic.

For an Acknowledgement of Country to be 'tokenistic', the individual making the speech must not believe in what he or she is saying. We would say they are paying ‘lip service’.

Whether a symbol’s meaning is conveyed - whether it’s a dance, a painting or a flag - depends on the importance a witness places upon it.

What we have here is a dog whistle. It harks back to the Howard style of government of setting group against group, of dividing the politics up on the basis of cultural assumptions.

Understand this - symbols are the stuff of politics. If you get rid of the symbol, you change the politics.

There is a map available on a Victorian Government website which shows 68 recorded Aboriginal murder and massacre sites which all occurred between 1836 and 1853.

http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/indigenous-stories-about-war-and-invasion/4994/massacre-map/

Maps are symbols too.

If Powell does not know why an Acknowledgement of Country is important, then she ought to have a look at that map. It’s not a map to invoke guilt or hand wringing, It’s a map that reminds us just how far we have come from those murderous days.

Noel Pearson said in The Australian last year, “It is legitimate to criticise specific instances of Aboriginal policies or Aboriginal behaviour, but it is highly problematic to make sweeping criticisms of the extent of Aboriginal Australians’ wins in any broad area, even a seemingly peripheral one such as symbolic recognition. If you do that you cross a line.”

Only recently Powell met members of the Victorian Indigenous Youth Advisory Council (VIYAC) and said:

“We need to channel the optimism and enthusiasm of young Aborigines to help develop the next generation of Aboriginal leaders, a process in which VIYAC has an important role.”

I bet she didn’t drop in to the conversation that just one month later she would be dropping the Welcome to Country speech. Powell, just a few months in to her term, has ‘crossed the line’.

This sends a signal that acknowledging Australia’s Indigenous history no longer matters. An Acknowledgement of Country is a statement of respect for elders, past and present - a powerful symbol that affirms their connection to the land.

As former Prime Minister Paul Keating said at the Redfern speech on redressing 200 years of indifference by White Australia:

“It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion.”

The Welcome to Country address is a symbol of respect and understanding. If the Victorian Government isn’t committed to the symbols of reconciliation with the first inhabitants of this nation, how can they deal with equanimity for those who came later?

Some of us came in canoes, some of us came in convict ships, on a ten pound passage or in leaky boats from Asia, but we’re all in the same boat now.