We Don’t Need to Be Welcomed to Our Own Country

I vividly remember when I first realised what a fatuous pile of virtue-signalling the whole charade of “Welcome to Country”/“Traditional Acknowledgement” really is. Which was about the first time I encountered it. It was over twenty years ago — of course, it was in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, the heart of hipsterdom down under, where even social trends are annoying before it’s cool — at a friend’s wedding. Each of the speeches, to a roomful of solidly white people, was preceded with a WTC/TA.

I could barely refrain from guffawing out loud. Who, I whispered to Mrs Brady, is this nonsense supposed to impress? Well, the answer was all around me, in the smug white faces of the bourgeois hipsters, basking in the warm glow of their own progressiveness. Most of whom had never been closer to Aboriginal culture than listening to “My Island Home” (the slick, bland Christine Anu cover, of course, not the raw, plaintive Warumpi Band original).

But what was then the mildly amusing pretension of inner Melbourne hipsters has become nauseatingly ubiquitous in mainstream Australia today. And, boy, are people getting sick of it.

There’s already been at least one incident of a crowd at a sporting match booing the WTC. When even the most routine plane flight features a Traditional Acknowledgement along with the landing announcement, quietly audible groans are becoming more common.

And, finally, even Aboriginal public figures are saying, “Enough is enough”.

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman, Jacinta Price, has called for an end to welcome to country acknowledgments before every sporting event and public gathering because the practice is “wrong” and dividing the nation.

A brief history of the Welcome to Country: it was made up in the mid-70s. And that’s it, really.

It’s claimed, of course, that it’s an ancient ritual in Aboriginal culture, which is baloney, of course. While some groups appear to have had a ritual form of greeting, it was no more unique or interesting than every other tribal society’s ritual form for figuring out if the other lot were coming with spears and clubs, or food and women to trade. Mostly, though, the extant records of traditional culture indicate that the most common form of welcoming visitors was at the end of a spear.

The modern ceremony was made up out of whole cloth in the mid-70s, as a last-minute bit of cultural improv at an “indigenous” festival. A Maori troupe demanded a formal welcome before performing. Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley quickly banged heads together and thrashed out a bit of ooga-booga bunkum that duly impressed the visiting Maori — and the rest is history. For a price (anywhere between a few hundred to the tens of thousands, depending on how much “Aunty” or “Uncle” reckon they can scam out of the gullible whites holding the purse strings).

It’s clearly well past its use-by date.

Senator Price, a Warlpiri-­Celtic woman who grew up in Alice Springs and the leading campaign spokeswoman against Anthony Albanese’s constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament, said “Australians don’t need to be welcomed to their own country”.

“There is no problem with acknowledging our history, but rolling out these performances before every sporting event or public gathering is definitely divisive,” Senator Price told The Australian.

“It’s not welcoming, it’s telling non-Indigenous Australians ‘this isn’t your country’ and that’s wrong. We are all Australians and we share this great land.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton isn’t quite brave enough to call this nonsense for what it is, yet.

Peter Dutton last week said he thought that welcome to country was a “respectful way to acknowledge the Indigenous heritage of our country” but argued the practice was overdone and often used as an exercise in virtue signalling.

“I do get the point that when you go to a function and there’s an MC who I think appropriately can do recognition, you then get the next five or 10 speakers who each do their own acknowledgment to country, and frankly, I think it detracts from the significance of the statement that’s being made,” he told 2GB. “I think there are a lot of corporates that just do it because they think it’s what people want to hear.”

Many of Dutton’s colleagues appear to have a far better ear for what many Australians want to hear — or not have to hear, as the case may be.

The attack comes after former prime minister Tony Abbott last week conceded he was “getting a little bit sick” of welcome to country, arguing the nation “belongs to all of us, not just to some of us” […]

A number of Coalition MPs on Sunday supported the substance of Senator Price’s comments, with Nationals Leader David Littleproud saying that welcome to country had “just gone over the top.”

“I think unfortunately what’s happened – it’s not just sporting events – you can go to a meeting and everyone makes an acknowledgment,” Mr Littleproud said. “I think it’s gone overboard. It’s gone too far. Is it necessary? I think it’s a reasonable question to ask.”

Perhaps the most astute observation goes to Alex Antic, who’s been knocking it out of the park lately, on everything from Covid authoritarianism to creeping censorship.

South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic said the idea a “welcome” should be “constantly extended for Australians to be in their own country is tiresome and divisive”.

“Endless acknowledgments of country performed by white middle class professionals before meetings do little more than brick in their credentials in front of an imaginary court of wokeness approval,” he said.

“These clashes against Western values only subside when courage culture triumphs over cancel culture and the use of these gestures ceases.”

The Australian

Leftist culture vultures will lose their minds, of course. But, then, what’s new?

Just ignore them. You only encourage them, otherwise.

And stop “welcoming” me to my own damn country.