Welcome to Country
In Aboriginal culture prior to European settlement, each clan's survival was dependent upon its understanding of food, water and other resources within its own country – a discrete area of land to which it had more or less exclusive claim.
"[4] The history of a people with an area ("country") can go back for thousands of years and the relationship with the land is nurtured and sustained by cultural knowledge and by the environment.
[8] The 1973 Aquarius Festival held in Nimbin, New South Wales, by the Australian Union of Students (AUS) has been documented as Australia's first publicly observed Welcome to Country, although it was not called this at the time.
An estimated 200 to 800 Indigenous Australians attended the two-week festival, marking a significant kindling of relationships with Australia's counterculture.
The welcome, extended on behalf of the Noongar people, was intended to mirror the visitors' own traditions, while incorporating elements of Aboriginal culture.
[citation needed] Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney, a member of CAR in those days, has said that there was no formal strategy to bring the Acknowledgement of Country into Australian life, but it just grew organically and became accepted as part of many types of gatherings.
[14] Welcomes and acknowledgements have since been incorporated into openings of meetings and other events across Australia, by all levels of government, universities, community groups, arts other organisations.
Including recognition of Indigenous peoples in events, meetings and national symbols is seen as one part of repairing the damage caused by exclusion from settler society.
[20] Both Welcomes and Acknowledgements recognise the continuing connection of Aboriginal traditional owners to their country, and offer appropriate respect as part of the process of reconciliation and healing.
[22][23][24] Since New Year's Eve 2022, the concept has been expanded to encompass the entirety of the 9 p.m. "Family Fireworks" show, whose soundtrack is curated by an Aboriginal artist or musicians.
[34] Some jurisdictions, such as New South Wales, make a welcome (or, failing that, acknowledgement) mandatory[dubious – discuss] at all government-run events.
[36] Welcomes to Country have attracted criticism from conservative politicians, historians and commentators, some of whom suggest that such ceremonies are a form of tokenism and do not reflect traditional Aboriginal culture.
[43] In 2023, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Australia ruled that acknowledgements of country were inappropriate at church services, on the basis that, among other things, their wording "almost invariably carries overtones of an Indigenous spirituality inconsistent with Christian belief" and that "final ownership of land" is vested in the Creator rather than people.
[44] The Australian band Midnight Oil released a single in August 2020 entitled "Gadigal Land", whose lyrics include a play on the traditional Welcome to Country as a critical review of Aboriginal history.
Starting with the line "Welcome to Gadigal land", it goes on to mention other things brought by foreign settlers, like poison and grog (alcohol), and smallpox (whose origins in Australia remain a topic of debate).
