The Melbourne Storm has moved to limit the number of games it opens with a welcome to country next season. The decision has received both applause and condemnation, such has become the polarising nature of the traditional ceremony.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with performing a welcome (or acknowledgment) to country before NRL games. Nor do I particularly mind if anyone hosting an event feels inclined to commence proceedings with one either.
Whether any occasion is significant enough or not to do one is a subjective assessment which ultimately should be made by whoever is hosting the event.
What’s interesting is that this fairly simple recognition of Indigenous heritage has become as controversial as it now is.
Politicians, activists and the smug self-righteous have to share the blame for that. They can’t simply put the backlash down to mainstream intolerance, because that’s dead wrong.
Firstly, the divided opinion isn’t about race. We watch the All Blacks perform their Hakka prior to matches and love it. Australians have embraced other Pacific nations doing similar ceremonies as the international game has grown.
The problem with welcomes and acknowledgments to country is the sometimes preachy nature of how they are delivered.
Also, when every single speaker at an event does one – which is entirely unnecessary, by the way – they lose their significance and start to grate.
The Melbourne Storm has moved to limit the number of games it opens with a welcome to country next season. (Pictured: a welcome to country before a football game in Perth in 2022)
And, of course, in the context of the failed Voice to Parliament referendum, they have been unnecessarily politicised, too.
Activist and academic Marcia Langton threatened not to do them anyone, encouraging others to follow her lead, if the referendum didn’t pass into law.
By making that threat she undercut the goodwill of recognising our first inhabitants and their traditions this way.
The comprehensive rejection of the voice (60 per cent of Australians voted against it and it failed in every single state) was evidence the Labor government didn’t adequately make its case for the constitutional change.
Yet it went ahead with the vote knowing it would fail, creating growing divisions about previously undisputed aspects of reconciliation.
The browbeating and threats attached to demands citizens vote for it became counterproductive. The suggestion that anyone who didn’t support it was somehow a racist or less sympathetic to our Indigenous past wasn’t only offensive to many, it has inevitably led to backsliding in other areas of Indigenous rights and recognition.
The growing intolerance for welcomes and acknowledgments to country is one consequence of that.
Who has been to an event where every speaker, one after another, who rises to their feet to speak commences with an acknowledgment to country?
Brendan Kerin, a cultural educator with Sydney’s Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, gave a blunt Welcome to Country at the AFL which he said was not for white people
Welcome to countries are now commonplace at football games. Fans are broadly supportive of them but concerns are sometimes raised if they come across as too ‘preachy’. (Pictured: Melbourne Storm players at AAMI Park on September 27)
It happens all the time and is completely unnecessary. More to the point, it goes against the entire purpose of acknowledgement. The welcome is about reflecting the Indigenous greeting newcomers would get when entering the territory of particular tribes. The acknowledgment is about respecting that tradition.
There are more than 250 Indigenous tribes across the continent. It is a tradition going back thousands of years, and, if done properly, is a wonderful cultural practice most Aussies would happily embrace.
But when it descends into virtue-signalling – a chance for every self-proclaimed supporter of Indigenous rights to show how woke they are – it loses its significance and creates a backlash against what started out as a unifying way to build greater awareness of Aboriginal culture.
Endless acknowledgments to country to start every speech at events is an embarrassing misunderstanding of the greeting by those who do it. Which is ironic, really.
I was at an event recently when no less than five speakers in a row began their talks one after another by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we were meeting on.
Their attempts to show how in touch they all were with the custom actually just revealed how little they each know about it.
It should happen once and that’s it!
You don’t repeatedly say ‘hello’ to people during conversation. The Maori Hakka isn’t performed throughout a match. And you don’t do acknowledgments to country over and over when one has already been done at the start of an event.
I was at an event recently when no less than five speakers in a row began their talks one after another by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we were meeting on, writes Peter van Onselen
The other disuniting aspect of the traditional welcome is the growing desire by some activists when delivering one to turn it into a lecture, or chastising, of those listening to it. About the disgrace of white settlement, for example, or the need for next steps on the pathway to reconciliation, such as a treaty for example.
You can agree with these notions as part of the ‘journey’ towards reconciliation or not, but to envelope such preaching into what is supposed to be a well-meaning and uplifting cultural welcome is both poor form and misguided.
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as the saying goes. Pouring scorn on those attending an event (which, let’s face it, when we’re talking about a footy game, they are there for sport, not a ceremony) doesn’t win over hearts and minds.
What it does do is lead to a situation like we have now, where one of our NRL teams is choosing to limit the occasions when it starts games with a welcome to country.
That wouldn’t be happening if the original purpose of the ceremony was being adhered to.
The Storm presumably believes it has made a decision that reflects the sentiments of the majority of the club’s supporters. Now, I don’t know whether that is the case – sometimes decisions made can be misguided or plain wrong – but that is almost certainly the club’s thinking. Melbourne Storm officials wouldn’t be making this move if they thought most of their supporters would be up in arms about it.
We’ll have to wait to see if other clubs follow in the Storm’s footsteps.
