welcome to country: legal meanings and ...welcome to country: legal meanings and cultural...

WELCOME TO COUNTRY:LEGAL MEANINGS AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS

A le s s a n d ro Pelizzon* and J a d e K en n e d y+

I Introduction

The act of acknowledging Country prior to public events has become commonplace in Australia. Indigenous language groups and tribal boundaries are named and an apparent recognition of traditional owners is voiced. Too often, however, the legal and political implications of the act of acknowledging Country are ignored. Furthermore, such an acknowledgment is rarely explored and deconstructed in order to understand its traditional cultural and normative significance.

This paper is the result of an ongoing dialogue between an Aboriginal man from the Illawarra in New South Wales and a legal anthropologist from the other side of the planet. Throughout their conversation the two authors have explored their reciprocal perspectives on the recognition of Country in an attempt to develop a negotiated understanding. They have identified protocols and paradigms through which the act of acknowledging Country can be reciprocally construed and explained. They have also investigated its political and legal meanings and they have asked questions about its normative implications. Finally, they have attempted to identify a meaningful approach through which the act of acknowledging Country can be performed in a way that is respectful of its appropriate cultural, normative and legal significance.1

II Acknowledging Country

The opening of the 42nd Federal Parliament in February 2008 - the day before the Apology offered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Stolen Generations - with a 'Welcome to Country' speech from a Ngunnawal representative appeared to enshrine the expectation for Australian officials to

acknowledge traditional Aboriginal ownership of Country at the commencement of public events. Indeed, it is uncommon today to attend events where introductory words relating to an acknowledgment of Country are omitted. On the other hand, in a statement released to the ABC, then Liberal Senator Julian McGauran called for the Indigenous Welcome to Country statement to be dropped from the opening of Parliament each day. Senator McGauran's argument rests on the assertion that a Welcome to Country is not a prayer and thus should not be performed prior to the Lord's Prayer in Parliament in order to preserve the religious and spiritual meaning of the latter.2 Senator McGauran's words are sadly echoed by Keith Windschuttle, who states that '[t]his ceremony is not part of any Aboriginal culture. It is an invented tradition, most probably devised by white academics.'3 Such statements are revealing of the simplistic, confused and tokenistic understanding that often accompany Welcome to Country events.

In order to properly understand and contextualise Welcome4 to and acknowledgment of Country5 speeches, a number of questions need to be raised and thoroughly explored.What are the more nuanced legal and political meanings of these speeches? Furthermore, what is the cultural significance of these practices? The two authors of the present paper began to explore these issues as a result of a couple of apparently simple questions they asked each other. What does it effectively mean to welcome a non-Aboriginal person to one's Country and, reciprocally, what does it mean for a nonAboriginal person to acknowledge such Country? As a result of these dialogical questions, the authors indeed believe that rather than dismiss Welcome to Country events as merely tokenistic, these practices create the possibility of a bridge serving a function of cultural inclusion, by establishing a new dialogue about a renegotiated sense of belonging.

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W E L C O M E TO C O U N T R Y :LEGAL M E A N I N G S A N D C U L T U R A L I M P L I C A T I O N S

As articulated in a series of Guidelines developed for the University of Wollongong by one of the authors of the present paper, a Welcome to Country ceremony can only be performed by a traditional custodian of the Country in question, whereby a traditional Elder 'welcomes' people not of that Country onto her or his ancestral Country. The act of acknowledging Country, on the other hand, is performed by those who are not the custodians of that Country but who wish to publicly acknowledge the traditional custodians of the Country upon which the act is performed.6 Throughout the course of the paper, we will use the terms 'Welcome to Country' and 'acknowledgment of Country' where we want to refer to either act specifically, whereas we will use the term 'recognition of Country' to refer to the event of engaging with the concept of Country - be it by Welcoming to and, or, acknowledging it - in general.

Furthermore, we will use the term Aboriginal (person or people) rather than Indigenous in order to refer to the traditional peoples of mainland Australia. As Barbara Nicholson aptly points out,7 the term Indigenous is currently used in the international arena to refer to precolonial traditional peoples, but its use in Australia is often a source of confusion because of its reference to biological taxonomies. Instead, she proposes using Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (and their relative adjectives) to refer to the traditional peoples of Australia, unless local nomenclature is more appropriate.8

In order to answer the questions posed above, the authors of this paper began by investigating the origin of the practice of recognising Country. It is certain that the convention of acknowledging the traditional people, owners and, or, custodians of the land upon which a public event is held began before the 2008 Apology. However, neither documentary data nor any single individual has been able to indicate unequivocally the precise origin of the practice. Emma Kowal reports three different hypotheses.9 According to anthropologist Grant McCall, the practice was adapted from the Maori powhiri, a traditional Welcome Ceremony that includes singing, speeches, a gift to the host from the visitor and the practice of hongi (pressing of noses). Katherine Lambert-Pennington, on the other hand, dates the origin of the practice to the 1980s and attributes its spread in the 1990s mainly to the work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. Finally, Ernie Dingo recently revealed that he was asked by visiting dancers from Pacific Islands to perform a Welcome in Perth as early as 1976.

However, the general oral consensus among academics and activists - whom the authors have questioned in this regard - appears to trace the origin of the practice to the mid 1980s, with a possible connection to the spread of the Land Rights movements at the time.10

Whatever the precise origin of the practice, it appears that a series of words directed to acknowledge the 'traditional owners'11 of the land upon which an event takes place - and the related and reciprocal Welcome to that land by the same traditional owners - are now common practice throughout Australia. Notwithstanding the commonality of a practice that spans across three decades, however, it appears that it is not possible to speak of a single 'Welcome to Country' practice other than in general terms. Ceremonies vary and differ quite radically from each other, there exists no central policy in relation to the content and protocols to be adopted and there seems to be almost no historical, cultural and contextual agreed upon understanding of its meaning. Furthermore, very little attention has been given to it by academic research.

Kristina Everett very effectively describes the general patterns of contemporary Welcome to Country ceremonies:

These days welcome to country ceremonies always take the form of speeches. They often include other representations of Aboriginality. These might include didgeridoo playing and dancing whilst dressed in lap-laps with skin painted in ochre. Other times, the person or people presenting the speech may dress in Aboriginal colours of black, yellow and red. There are no fixed rules, however, and sometimes there are no signifiers of Aboriginality other than the verbal claim of the speaker. Usually a person who claims or who is designated an elder presents the speech. An elder is a person who either self attributes or is attributed seniority and authority as a member of the Aboriginal community represented. ... The speech can be as simple as 'Welcome to the land of the ... people', to more elaborate claims to ancestral connections to country. . It is common for Aboriginal peoples who have not lost all knowledge of 'traditional' languages and how to speak them to conduct welcome to country ceremonies in these languages, often followed by an Aboriginal English translation. . Whatever the format of the speech, however, it always involves a claim to prior ownership of, and continuing authority over, the land on which the ceremony is convened.12

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At the same time, there appears to be no cohesive central policy about what is expected from a Welcome to Country ceremony at an institutional level. Policies are created by individual institutions and are not coordinated.

The wide range of expectations surrounding Welcome to Country practices and the variety of the practices themselves paint a very diversified and thus uncertain picture. As a consequence of this uncertainty, two main issues arise. Firstly, the practice of recognising Country appears to be a contemporary political event, but one that is rooted in references to traditional concepts and to a worldview13 that extends, symbolically unchanged, to times preceding the arrival of British colonisers in 1788. Consequently, a dynamic- and not always reconciled - tension emerges between a contemporary practice of recognising Country and pre-colonial, traditional cultural implications of such recognition. It is thus necessary to contextualise the traditional cultural concepts in which the practice is rooted, in particular by investigating the ontological and epistemological meanings of the very concept of 'Country'. Secondly, even within the contemporary practice (or, more correctly, practices) of recognising Country, the political and legal implications of the act of recognising Country itself - and the meaning of these implications both for Australia as a nation and regarding the repeated claims to sovereignty, self-determination and cultural rights by Aboriginal activists - are not fully considered. The following sections will investigate separately each of these issues.

III Welcome to Country as a Contem porary Event

A Legal and Political Im plications

As discussed in the previous section, it is apparent that the practice of recognising Aboriginal Country is a contemporary event that originated toward the end of the 20th century, gaining momentum together with Aboriginal political and legal activism occurring at the same time. Therefore, a number of relevant political and legal implications are connected to each and every individual event in which Country is recognised. However, these implications are rarely - if ever- considered during the performance of these events, thus creating an almost schizophrenic sense of tokenistic practices as a result.

The Country to which the audience is welcomed is often symbolically accessed through the public space in which the Welcome event takes place. It is highly uncommon that

such an event occurs in a private space. As Everett discusses, the spaces in which Welcome to Country ceremonies take place are generally physical spaces already commonly inhabited and ordinarily used by non-Aboriginal people, such as institutional buildings, universities, theatres etc. 'The welcoming that occurs is done by those whose claims to prior ownership of that place have already been denied to those who already inhabit that place and do not recognise the claims of others.'14 Contained in the act of being Welcomed to Aboriginal Country thus rests an acquiescence of a 'difference from', and 'otherness' from the people whose Country the audience is welcomed to.

However, as one of the two authors of this present paper, Jade Kennedy, often remarks when asked to perform Welcome to Country speeches in the Illawarra, 'I welcome you all to my Country and yet I have no Country to welcome you to'. Elizabeth Dempster echoes this sentiment by quoting the words of Lynette Crocker who says '[w]e welcome you to our country region, but we still don't have any land.'15 Questions about the political and legal meanings contained in claims to 'traditional ownership' and, or, 'custodianship' of one's Country can thus hardly be ignored. Some sort of claim in reference to one's Country is indeed inevitably contained in the act of welcoming someone not of that Country to one's Country. Nonetheless, these meanings are rarely explored during the performance of a Welcome to Country ceremony.

This silence notwithstanding, it is hard to ignore the questions that follow as a result of a Welcome to Country ceremony. Whose land do the audience stand upon after being welcomed to it? Who is the ultimate 'owner' of that land? What constitutes a 'traditional' owner - as opposed to any other owner - and what does such ownership entail? Is it possible to have multiple and conflicting ownership over the same portion of land? What does this mean for Aboriginal claims to sovereignty of that land? Similarly to the hoisting of the Aboriginal flag on top of government - and private - buildings, any act of recognition of Country contains the seeds of yet unresolved political issues. It is also useful to remember that the hoisting of the Aboriginal flag at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 197216 was an explicit political act and, consequently, to consider that a similar meaning is potentially contained in all recognition of Country ceremonies.

Moreover, Welcome to Country ceremonies and speeches are performed by the descendants of the people whose

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land has been dispossessed as a result of the colonial event; consequently, it is hard to imagine how this fact could simply be ignored in the performance of any Welcome to Country ceremony, particularly in light of repeated claims to selfdetermination, sovereignty and land rights by Aboriginal activists throughout the entire colonial period and specifically since the 1980s.17 Even though the officials and the political institutions that invite and authorise the Welcome to Country ceremony might not themselves acknowledge Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ownership (or sovereignty) of the acknowledged Country, the mere acquiescence to the ceremonies, their symbols and their wording represents a form of acknowledgment of an individual and institutional 'otherness' from the traditional owners - and their underlying claims to ownership, however defined - of said Country. As Kowal writes, '[n]on-[I]ndigenous Australians who seek to recognise [I]ndigenous Australia by being welcomed or by acknowledging country are likely to hold some ambivalence about their mode of belonging to the land they inhabit.'18

Therefore, a number of conflicting political claims - the exact legal nature of which is irrelevant here - are potentially enshrined in the very symbolism of the act of recognising Aboriginal Country. The mere act of recognising said Country inevitably challenges any conflicting hegemonic claim over that Country expressed by colonial institutions; that is, to the same geographical space, the same land, upon which Australia claims to exert hegemonic control. Dempster writes that, through the performance of a Welcome to Country, 'the incompleteness and failure of the colonising project of replacement is made explicit.'19 Undeniably, the symbolic power of any recognition of Country appears to resonate strongly with repeated claims to an Aboriginal political identity distinct from and other than, the Australian one. Although an in-depth exploration of such claims is beyond the scope of this paper, it appears undeniable that the performance of symbolic acts such as the recognition of Country and the raising of the Aboriginal flag open the terrain for discussions and debates on selfdetermination and Aboriginal sovereignty. What that means remains, at present, open to further analysis.

It may be countered, however, that Welcome to Country ceremonies may not necessarily acquiesce to the political claims discussed above. The act of recognising Country may be perceived and, or, construed not as a performative act in an Austinian sense,20 but rather as mere performance. A performative utterance is defined not only as a statement

but also as a special type of a speech act, one where 'the utterance is the performing of an action', where 'to say something is to do something', such as the exchange of marriage vows. The performance of acknowledging Country as a mere performance thus becomes depoliticised, is stripped of any political and legal meaning and amounts only to a form of cultural acknowledgment. As Everett states, '[the] legal claim is not understood to be the same as the cultural recognition which is instigated by welcome to country ceremonies.'21

If that is the case, Kowal's words have a more sinister ring, when she suggests that '[t]hese acts also mean Australia suffers from a permanent need to transcend the role of perpetrator and smooth over the unheeded calls for [I] ndigenous sovereignty to create a cohesive, caring national narrative.'22 The National Tertiary Education Union ('NTEU') policy, one example among many, indicates that the purpose of the Welcome to Country ceremony is to demonstrate the recognition and acknowledgment of 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's unique position in Australian history and their deep-seated connection to land, traditional culture and heritage.'23 However, the political obscurity of the NTEU statement, in light of the arguments articulated above, is immediately evident. In this particular example, the precise nature of 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's connection to land' cannot be evinced by the statement alone, either in political or in legal terms.

Kowal expresses very effectively the effect of the attempt to depoliticise Welcome to Country ceremonies:

What is enjoyable about WTCs is not just the quality of the oration or dance, or the pure pleasure of proximity to the exotic. The neutered statement of [I]ndigenous ownership that a WTC represents means non-[I]ndigenous people can enjoy [I]ndigenous culture and presence without feeling threatened by [I]ndigenous sovereignty. This might explain why WTCs are most common in urban Australia, where native title claims are both most unsettling ... and most unlikely to succeed.24

The utterance of the words in every single event may not necessarily be construed by the person uttering them as an affirmation of one's Aboriginal identity as being politically and legally distinct and independent from a pan-Australian one. However, in the affirmation of cultural independence and continuity predating the colonial event that is at

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the core of any Welcome to Country there appears to be an inescapable suggestion of a much more complex and contested significance than one of pure cultural recognition. Moreover, this was certainly the case on a vast number of occasions, both in the Illawarra and among many Aboriginal activists elsewhere with whom the authors have discussed the present issue. The performers often do not perceive the Welcome to be a mere performance but rather an active engagement with a sense of belonging to one's Country that predates the colonial event and that other Australians - as well as other Aboriginals not of that Country - do not, and cannot, share. As Kowal writes, 'from the point of view of traditional owners, a WTC can be a kind of land claim.'25

This inescapable co-existence of political and, or, symbolic land claims and depoliticised statements leads to a schizophrenic colouring of the event, whereby its complex political - and legal - meanings are not negotiated in full awareness of their significance. The consequences of this schizophrenic approach are at times paradoxical, as exemplified by the case of the Darug Welcome to Country ceremonies investigated by Everett.26 Everett explains that Darug identity and language have been influenced and strongly shaped by the political and institutional processes of the last 30 years, leading to the establishment of two main organisations, the Darug Tribal Aboriginal Corporation and the Darug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation. Darug descendants, particularly through the agency of these two organisations, were not successful in their land claims, being denied by the Australian state and at the same time being refuted by other competing Aboriginal groups.27 Nonetheless, this has not prevented Darug people 'from being invited by local councils, schools and state and federal government bodies to make welcome to country speeches.'28

The research on Darug Welcome to Country ceremonies leads the author to speak of a process of 'ethnogenesis'.29 That is, the importance that the participants to those ceremonies place upon the need to 'speak up', to claim ownership of the processes of cultural representation and participate in the process of defining and shaping cultural identity, similarly to the entire movement of land rights, native title and Indigenous sovereignty as a whole.30

Together with this sense of political schizophrenia, a sense of tokenism often pervades recognition of Country ceremonies, transforming them into ritualistic performances that appear to appease a sense of duty without necessarily accepting

the performative implications that such ceremonies may entail. As Dempster states, 'given the pervasiveness of the practice ... such ceremonies are at times conducted in a perfunctory or mechanical fashion.'31 Victor Hart describes this tokenistic approach as 'epistemological violence':

The violence comes from knowing that welcome to country is an iteration of terra nullius mythology where blackfellas can appear at the beginning of the event (i.e. the beginning of history) and then conveniently disappear while whitefellas do their serious 'business.'32

This sense of tokenism inevitably masks and confounds the political as well as the cultural nuances of the claims - however articulated - to one's Country. This sense of tokenism, and the sense of political correctness that inevitably follows, also sometimes generates a general sense of frustration with the practice of recognising Country. Kowal discusses how opposition leader Tony Abbott attacked the practice of Welcome to Country, arguing that a Welcome is a tokenistic indulgence, a 'genuflection to political correctness that only serves to diminish the white guilt felt by Labor parliamentarians. The debate that followed', the author continues, 'illustrated how the welcome ritual is a vessel for issues of recognition and belonging that swarm just beneath the surface of the nation.'33

The combination of unresolved and often undeclared issues with an underlying sense of tokenism creates cultural expectations that complicate the picture even further, as the audience almost comes to expect a complex and ritualised cultural performance stripped of any political complexity that nonetheless echoes some expected indicator of a mythical sense of Aboriginality.34

B Cultural Im plications o f Contem porary Practices o f Acknowledging Country

In responding to the first Welcome to Country ever heard in the Australian Parliament on 12 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared: '[L]et this become a permanent part of our ceremonial celebration of the Australian democracy. Incorporating the ceremonial of the dreaming from antiquity into the ceremonial of this great democracy.'35 The political appease discussed in the previous section thus extends and possibly eventuates into the potential appropriation of a range of traditional cultural elements. Lattas argues that such appropriation

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serves the combined purpose of unifying the nation while appropriating Aboriginal primordial links to the land that cannot otherwise be claimed by Australia as a nation.36 Everett indicates that 'this is a benign if not patronising inclusion of Aboriginality in state celebrations and rituals. In other words, it is a way in which an idea of Aboriginal country can be included in state representations without legal or political consequences.'37

Elizabeth Dempster further explores this 'performance of rights' (to Country and land).38 The relevance, she states, rests on the perceived traits of Aboriginality displayed at the ceremony: traditional language (or a version thereof, regardless of its continuity or reconstruction) and expected ceremonial elements (dancing, musical performances, statements of perceived spiritual significance etc). Welcome to Country ceremonies, Dempster argues, are 'instance(s) of a decolonising narrative ... as a moment of theatre.'39 One of the two authors of the present paper, Jade Kennedy, often remarks that while invited (and remunerated) to perform a Welcome to Country, it is frequently the case that he is invited and remunerated simply to perform. Effectively, this results in attempt to transform a complex political statement into mere cultural entertainment.

Such an attempt is made by appropriating various - and often disparate - elements of customs, which are then reintegrated within Welcome to Country ceremonies. A great number of ceremonies incorporate reconstructed verbalisations of ritualised welcomes.40 The modernised use of disparate traditional practices has been well described by McAuley in relation to the Welcome to Country that opened up the 42nd Parliament, where traditional dances performed as part of the ceremony. McAuley notes that no contextualisation of the dances was then offered. 'Treating the dances as entertainment rather than communication', he states, '[this] means that we no longer seek to understand what is being conveyed.'41

The mishmash of traditional cultural elements not only confounds the understanding of the traditional messages contained within each of these separate elements, but also results in a commodification and appropriation of cultural practices, which are thus objectified and deprived of any political meaning. Kowal states that 'the neutered statement of [I]ndigenous ownership that a welcome to Country ceremony represents means non-[I]ndigenous people can enjoy [I]ndigenous culture and presence without feeling

threatened by [I]ndigenous sovereignty'.42 McAuley suggests that the audience to Welcome ceremonies is comprised of 'tacit consumers' rather than 'co-producers of meaning'.43 In fact, when presented with Welcome to Country speeches, a number of international visitors have often remarked to both authors of the present paper a sense of disappointment at the lack of entertainment that they expected to receive from witnessing traditional cultural practices.

This expectation of (entertaining) ceremonial practices is actually revealing of the political nature of Welcome to Country events. Contemporary Welcome to Country ceremonies are performed by Aboriginal representatives of the group claiming ownership over the area to nonAboriginal audiences, whereas they are much more uncommon (if actually ever performed) between Aboriginal people and groups themselves. This raises interesting questions regarding their traditional meaning and implications.

It seems reasonable to assume that as political statements of traditional ownership enshrined in moments of theatre, they would have been either unnecessary or at least significantly different in a traditional context. That being the case, we acknowledge that the contemporary act of recognising Country is significantly diverging from its traditional meaning, being primarily a political act generated as a result of colonial encounters. Welcome to Country ceremonies, once viewed in light of the points discussed above, are not ultimately meant to entertain - even though they might provide cultural entertainment - but rather are intrinsically political acts. They are performative acts, not mere performances. They represent intersections of contemporary political acts of resistance to the ongoing process of colonisation with traditional normative and spiritual meanings. It is certainly true that, as Dempster writes, 'the Welcome ceremony represents an inventive, politically astute adaptation to distinctly modern circumstances of the traditional protocols and practices that governed encounters and facilitated exchange between different peoples'.44 We also suggest that it is more than a simple adaptation, because its inescapable political nature generates a new action altogether, distinct from the traditional protocols and practices to which it refers. Its equally inescapable traditional meanings, however, must be explored before a complete picture of all the implications of recognition of Country events can be recombined.

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III Traditional Meanings

A Traditional Encounters

In Dingo Makes Us Human, Deborah Bird Rose discusses protocols governing introductions to Yarralin Country and explains that strangers are welcomed to enter Country under the understanding that they become reciprocally bound and dependent. 'In acknowledging their status as strangers', she states, 'they assent to these facts; that others are owners [and] that their own knowledge is limited.'45 Traditional protocols including acts of acknowledgment upon entering someone else's Country are well documented both within Aboriginal oral history and within ethnographic literature.46 Such protocols form the traditional basis of contemporary Welcome to Country practices. Caroline Briggs' Welcome to Country as related by Elizabeth Dempster, for example, is described as a modern reiteration of the Tanderrum, a ceremony or ritual of diplomacy and hospitality practised by the tribes of central and western Victoria prior and during the period of colonisation.47

In Encounters in Place, Mulvaney describes different and geographically specific protocols regulating either the behaviour of a single individual about to enter into someone else's territory or when groups or travelling parties perform the same action.48 The practice of waiting at the boundaries of someone else's Country until approached by the owners of such Country is well portrayed in the 1981 documentary Women o f the Sun.49 The documentary portrays a practice by which the prospective visitors wait until approached by the owners of the Country they are about to enter, for as long as it is deemed necessary by such owners and with the understanding that entrance to said Country might be refused. Only if and when the owners of said Country determine it appropriate, exchanges and negotiations regarding reciprocal responsibilities and expectations are entered into. Dempster notes that 'the Welcome comes with certain obligations, principal among them to do no harm. In welcoming the other, the stranger, [the person performing the Welcome] honours an important responsibility and obligation in relation to country.'50

In describing a contemporary (and geographically specific) Aboriginal understanding of this practice, one of the authors of the present paper, Jade Kennedy, suggests that in the traditional act of negotiating one's possible introduction to Country, reciprocal relations are established, the owners'

totems are described, plants and animals not to be hunted or gathered are described and areas of restricted access are identified. By mimicking and repeating said indications the prospective visitor acknowledges his or her understanding of the instructions given and normative implications are dialogically and contextually negotiated. As a result of this negotiation the prospective visitor is welcomed to Country while at the same time he or she acknowledges the implications of entering said Country.51 Barbara Nicholson reminds us that the traditional act of Welcoming to Country is at the same time an act of physical acknowledgment as well as of spiritual recognition, an acknowledgment of relatedness, reciprocal duties and responsibilities, and specific authority.52

It is clear that whilst Welcome to Country practices as performed at public events today are certainly contemporary acts, they are also rooted in a vast range of traditional protocols and ontological perspectives. Consequently, it is important to always identify the fundamental implications of traditional practices of recognising and negotiating access to Country that contemporary Welcome to Country practices refer to, if the confusion mentioned in the previous section is to be avoided. Practices such as smoking ceremonies provide a good example of such confusion, lack of understanding and common mishmash of contemporary Welcome to Country events. A smoking ceremony is a cleansing ritual intended to cleanse people and, or, places. Although it might happen at the same time that prospective visitors are accepted into someone's Country, the two practices are not necessarily related.53

Finally, the boundaries at which prospective visitors accept to wait are well known among the participants of the protocols described thus far, either because they are shared among neighbouring groups or because of knowledge learned from the owners of the Country travelled upon. However, the nature of such boundaries is quite distinct from the perceived notion of boundaries as construed in Western legal discourse, and thus among the broader audience of contemporary Welcome to Country events. It is often the case, for example, that boundaries are strictly connected to environmental indicators and shift in accordance with environmental shifts. For example, Rose states that '[d]istinct plant communities serve as particularly salient markers of differentiation.'54 Her words are aptly echoed by the link to the waratah plant contained in the creation story of Tungku and Ngardi offered by Roy Dootch Kennedy about the South Coast of New South Wales.55

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Consequently, the distinct ontological and epistemological perceptions of what constitute the boundaries of one's Country within different audiences invite us to reflect further on the ontological implications of the very concept of Country.

B Country

Gay McAuley, in his analysis of the nexus between place and performance, describes Country as the 'grounded performativity of Aboriginal remembering in which the land itself is the repository of history, story and knowledge.'56 Blaze Kwaymullina, in the introduction to a seminar recently offered at the University of Wollongong writes that '[f]or Aboriginal peoples knowledge is grounded in space - which in English we call Country. Country is the Land, Earth, Sky, Universe and all the relationships of the world moving and interacting with one another.'57 Deborah Bird Rose explains that 'the organising matrix of identity, knowledge and action is country.'58 Loretta Kelly reminds us in her lectures that 'being human' is determined by relatedness to Country, not to intrinsic and essentialist definitions of 'humanity'. Consequently, land is the foundation of one's individual identity as 'human'.59

It is already apparent that the Aboriginal concept of Country is rather distinct from the political sense of belonging (or being subject) to an abstract geopolitical entity identified by arbitrary, man-made boundaries, which forms the basis of the Western concept of nationhood.60 Whereas a non-Aboriginal audience to a contemporary recognition of Country event might identify such Country (generally referred to within utterances such as 'I would like to acknowledge the [tribe name] people') with the abstract idea of a geopolitical entity defined by a more or less arbitrarily (and historically) defined territory, an Aboriginal understanding of Country would emphasise the web of relations contained within a broader spatial domain and epistemologically construed in a narrative form. Furthermore, such a distinct understanding encapsulates a sense of identity determined by the web of relationships between all components of an ecosystem (or even multiple ecosystems). Dempster notes that Briggs' Welcome to Country reminds us 'that Country is a relationship, a living system, not an object anterior to human society' and thus invokes 'an expansive, inclusive conception of country when she says, "You are welcome to everything from the roots to the tips of the tallest trees"'.61

Although a comprehensive analysis of Aboriginal concepts of Country is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to remember that Aboriginal ontologies defining what constitutes Country are intrinsically unavoidable and must be taken into account when participating in a contemporary recognition of Country event. Furthermore, the way Aboriginal people understand, or 'learn', about Country, as Deborah Bird Rose reminds us, is also epistemologically distinct and strongly experiential. As her own experience with the Yarralin people indicates, 'learning' and 'knowing' about Country does not occur necessarily in a verbal form only, but rather it is a complex epistemological process of empirical, experiential and verbal indications, designed to 'take notice of country, to see it as a living system.'62

This distinct understanding of Country as a web of interconnected relations is construed in a narrative form within specific stories. Stories about Country are embedded in 'Dreaming' stories, the word that in Rose's description about Yarralin usage refers to

the creative beings who were born of earth and who walked first, creating geographical features, different species, and the Laws of existence; the creative acts of these beings; the period in which these things happen; many of the relationships between humans and other species.63

The concept of the Dreaming is also a concept the exploration of which transcends the boundaries of the present paper.64 Nonetheless, the metaphysics of the Dreaming shape and determine Aboriginal concepts of Country and must be considered as always present within the act of Welcoming someone to one's Country. Indeed, the reference to mythical Ancestors contained in a number of Welcome to Country events is revealing of metaphysical implications that are rarely - if ever - further explored or contextualised.65

Rose indicates that different

[d]reamings determined the differences that matter and the conditions of existence for all living things. One such condition is the boundaries which transform the original undifferentiated mother earth into specific localities, defined by Dreaming presence, language cultural practices, plant communities, ceremonies, and by the fact that there are people who belong there and take care ... Dreaming strings country and people, demarcating human and geographicalentity.66

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The passage highlights the intrinsic inseparability of the metaphysics of the Dreaming, the Aboriginal concept of Country and the division of Country among different people. Boundaries and Dreaming stories are inseparable and inextricably intertwined. Furthermore, as Rose also suggests, Aboriginal boundaries are better expressed as strings of stories over diverse stretches of land that create sets of cultural identities that intersect and criss-cross each other.

The entitlement to these Dreaming stories, or in other words their 'ownership',67 is thus one of the most essential features to consider when approaching the concept of 'ownership' of Country from an Aboriginal perspective. It is the 'ownership' of the stories within which both the knowledge and the normativity of Country are enshrined that determines 'ownership' of the spatial territory to which such stories refer. Entitlement, access and 'ownership' of such stories are dependent on kinship relations,68 and in particular on the auctoritas6 of the Elders. The highly complex kinship system explored by a vast number of ethnographic studies is also beyond the scope of the present paper,70 but the acknowledgment of 'Elders past, present and future' common to most Welcome to Country events is revealing of the fundamental fabric of Aboriginal metaphysical worldviews held together by the kinship system. This is constantly reaffirmed in an empirical and experiential interaction with Country as a community of human and non-human interdependent entities. Rose beautifully summarises the complexities of the concept of Country by stating that 'kinship is all about the matrix of country, Dreaming, flesh, and people.'71

Finally, 'ownership' of Country is also strictly interrelated to responsibility. Rose clearly writes that 'people who own country are responsible for it.'72 This final point takes us back to the beginning of the paper, reconnecting the conceptualisation of Country with the (often ignored) political implications of Welcoming someone to Aboriginal Country and the reciprocal acknowledgment of that Country. It follows that Welcoming to and acknowledging Country is better understood as a process, one where relations are established, stories are shared and discussed, and ownership, responsibility and reciprocity are determined in a dialogical and discursive manner. The contemporary emphasis on establishing precise geographical boundaries appears almost secondary in light of this complex process. Rose describes Country as 'the nexus of individuals, social

groups, Dreamings, nourishing relationships, birth and death. Conversely, an individual is a nexus of countries.'73

We assume that during modern recognition of Country events the greater majority of the audience is often oblivious to the underlying ontology and metaphysics of Country, to the web of relatedness and reciprocal responsibilities that the concept entails and to the kinship system that ties it all together. It is indeed true that most of the events become nothing more than tokenistic moments of superficial cultural engagement. However, we believe that rather than dismiss such events as merely tokenistic, there exists a space within which all the elements mentioned until now can be recombined to establish a new dialogue about a renegotiated sense of belonging.

IV Consequences

Wiley tells us that in their reports about their first encounters with Aboriginal people, Europeans construed silence and avoidance as fear or indifference.74 Europeans were incapable of recognising that what they perceived as indifference was actually careful observation on the part of the traditional owners of the land they were setting foot upon. Observation, and expectation of appropriate behaviour on the part of the visitors, which, according to Aboriginal protocols, were expected to wait until properly welcomed. Mulvaney sadly remarks that this 'combination of ethnocentric contempt for an "inferior" race, fear of "savage" violence and a total lack of understanding of the social basis of Aboriginal law, resulted in many encounters proving fatal.'75 The fateful outcome of this cognitive chasm was described by Stanner as a 'history of indifference.'76

It is thus very important to avoid a continuation of this lack of understanding, particularly within a crucial social platform such as the one offered by recognition of Country events. Echoing Everett's words, Indigenous agency, once acknowledged in performance, should not be directed by the nation to serve its own ends. 'What does it mean', she asks, 'when Australian institutions include Indigenous representations of identity and ownership in official ceremonies which are also claims to national identity and ownership? Are local councils, state and federal governments, and private enterprise finally acknowledging what native title hearings, especially in urban contexts, usually deny: that specific Aboriginal Australians are the prior owners of the land on which all now live?'.77

66 Vol 16 No 2, 2 0 1 2


Welcome to Country events are windows from which Aboriginal spiritual perspectives can be gleaned.78 Within these events, traditional ontological and epistemological perspectives are introduced. The web of interrelatedness that constitutes Country is acknowledged by reference to strings of Dreaming stories conveyed through the social fabric of the kinship system. Totemic ancestors are made present by acknowledging Country as the moment in time and space embracing all participants - Aboriginal and nonAboriginal as well as human and non-human alike79 - to the event.80 But contemporary Welcome to Country events are also more than that. The broader implications of engaging with the traditional protocols underlying contemporary Welcome to Country ceremonies are not simply spiritual but also inevitably political and, or, legal.

Undoubtedly, recognition of Country events may result in paradoxical outcomes whereby 'traditional ownership' is acknowledged and yet both traditional protocols and the boundaries of the permissible are ignored. Implications of what such acknowledged 'ownership' means cannot be meaningfully ignored. Certainly, unless a Welcome to Country can be refused, the events inevitably carry the potential for schizophrenic perspectives as the ones discussed in this paper. As one of the authors of the present paper, Jade Kennedy, asks, 'can I not welcome you all to my Country when you invite me to do a Welcome? If I cannot refuse, then, is it really a Welcome, or rather a forced acquiescence to your presence? How can I welcome you all to my Country and then watch you dismiss all that my Welcome implies as soon as I finish?' Nonetheless, even within the potential paradoxes of the events, the seeds of dialogical possibilities of conciliation81 can be found.

Indeed, there exists also a more positive and less overtly political aspect of contemporary Welcome to Country ceremonies that we have not yet considered. Inasmuch as the events can be construed as an incorporation of Aboriginality within a larger sense of Australian identity, by Welcoming non-Aboriginal audiences to one's Country the Aboriginal person performing the ceremony also invites non-Aboriginal people within the Aboriginal fabric of the cosmos. Clark suggests that the non-Aboriginal is 'Aboriginalised' through the performance of the ceremony.82 The 'other' is culturally situated in relation to Country and therefore incorporated within an Aboriginal system of reciprocity and exchange.83

Therefore, rather than rejecting recognition of Country practices because of their potential tokenism, as then Senator Julian McGauran and some state policies have done, we conclude by suggesting that such practices should be embraced for the possibilities that they offer. Welcome to Country practices can be both an opening to legal pluralism and possible instances of decolonisation. As Dempster states, 'the Welcome ceremony, although often simple in outward form, has the powerful effect of drawing into and holding in relationship two profoundly contrasting conceptual systems and laws governing country, one grounded in sharing and reciprocity, the other enshrining [exclusionary] property rights.'84 Whether a recognition of Country practice eventuates in a mere act of acknowledgment of the numerous implications it contains or it becomes an act of commitment to follow that which is acknowledged, simply by engaging in the practice in full awareness of all its implications the possibility of a negotiated meaning around belonging, identity and social justice is introduced. By engaging in a reciprocal understanding of place and context-specific practices and protocols, all participants to a recognition of Country event engage in a political act of decolonisation within which questions around the meaning of Country can be meaningfully asked, and whereby such meaning is collectively and equitably negotiated, created and constantly re-established.

* Dr Alessandro Pelizzon is an Associate Lecturer at Southern Cross

University.

t Jade Kennedy is a Dharawal-Yuin man from the South Coast of

New South Wales.

1 This paper was presented at the Ceremonies of Law Conference,

Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand,

University of Wollongong, 8 December 2011.

2 'Call to Scrap Parliament's Welcome to Country', ABC (online), 20

November 2010 < http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-24/call-to-

scrap-parliaments-welcome-to-country/2348162>.

3 Keith Windschuttle, 'Sacred Traditions Invented Yesterday' (2012)

56(12) Quadrant 15, 16.

4 The term 'Welcome' is capitalised in order to identify the various

political and ontological implications that will be explored

throughout the paper.

5 The term 'Country' is capitalised in order to refer to a distinct

set of ontological implications, which will be explored in a later

section of the paper.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-24/call-to-scrap-parliaments-welcome-to-country/2348162

6 Jade Kennedy, Theresa Hoynes and Susie Pratt, Guidelines for

the Use o f the Digital Acknowledgment o f Dharawal Country

(University of Wollongong, 2010) 9.

7 Aunty Barbara Nicholson, Stephen Jones and Connal Parsley,

'Law and the Humanity of Representation' (Paper presented at

the Ceremonies of Law Conference, Law and Society Association

of Australia and New Zealand, University of Wollongong, 8

December 2011).

8 In sign of respect for the authors cited throughout the paper,

however, we will maintain the original spelling, capitalisation and

formatting used in the passages quoted.

9 Emma Kowal, 'Welcome to Country?' (2010) 69(2) Meanjin 15,

15-16.

10 See, eg, Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus (eds), The Struggle

for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History (Allen & Unwin,

1999).

11 The terms commonly used vary between traditional owners,

custodians and, or, people, with a more or less articulated

indication of the language groups of the area (or areas) in

question. See further below. Also, the term traditional will often

be used in the context of the present paper to refer to pre-colonial

cultural elements, practices and worldviews.

12 Kristina Everett, 'Welcome to Country ... Not' (2009) 79(1)

Oceania 53, 56, 58.

13 The concept of worldview, however, may better be expressed

by the German word Weltanschauung. This word, commonly

attributed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, and literally translated as

wide world perception, is a more appropriate epistemological

indication of what constitutes a complex and cohesive cultural

worldview.

14 Everett, above n 12, 57.

15 Elizabeth Dempster, 'Welcome to Country: Performing Rights and

the Pedagogy of Place' (2007) 7 About:Performance 87, 87.

16 The Aboriginal flag, designed by Harold Thomas in 1971 and

first flown on National Aborigines' Day in Adelaide in 1971,

was officially recognised as 'the flag of the Aboriginal peoples

of Australia and a flag of significance to the Australian nation

generally' in two proclamations (first in 1995 and then, in

perpetuity, in 2008) under the Flags Act 1953 (Cth). See David

Horton (ed), Encyclopaedia o f Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal

and Torres Strait Islander History, Society and Culture (Aboriginal

Studies Press, 1994).

17 See Attwood and Markus, above n 10.

18 Kowal, above n 9, 16.

19 Dempster, above n 15, 52.

20 See J L Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Clarendon Press,

1962).


22 Kowal, above n 9, 16. See also Lorenzo Veracini, Settler

Colonialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

23 National Tertiary Education Union, NTEU Welcome to Country

Protocols Policy (National Tertiary Education Union, 2009) 2.


25 Ibid.


27 This is an event common to many native title claims. See

Alessandro Pelizzon, Laws o f the Land: Traditional Land Protocols,

Native Titte and Legal Pluralism in the Mawarra (Lambert

Academic Publishing, 2012).


29 Ibid 53.

30 See Bain Attwood, The Making o f the Aborigines (Allen & Unwin,

1989); Aileen Moreton Robinson (ed), Sovereign Subj ects:

Indigenous Sovereignty Matters (Allen & Unwin, 2007).



33 Kowal, above n 9, 15, citing Samantha Maiden, 'Tony Abbott

Re-opens Culture Wars over Nods to Aboriginies', The Australian

(online), 15 March 2010 < http://www.theaustralian.com.

au/politics/tony-abbott-reopens-culture-wars-over-nods-to-

aborigines/story-e6frgczf-1225840660428>.

34 See Attwood, above n 30.

35 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, 'Address to the Indigenous Welcome

to Country' (Speech delivered at the opening of the 42nd

Federal Parliament, 12 February 2008) < http://www.dfat.gov.au/

indigenous/apology-to-stolen-generations/welcome_country.

html> quoted in Kowal, above n 9, 16.

36 Andrew Lattas, 'Aborigines and Contemporary Australian

Nationalism: Primordiality and the Cultural Politics of Otherness'

(1990) 27 Social Analysis 50. It is also useful to be reminded of

Benedict Anderson's argument that nations are far more than

geopolitical entities; they are also discursively constructed

imagined communities. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined

Communities (Verso, 1983).



39 Ibid.

40 See, eg, Everett's description of the reconstructed use of Darug

language for Welcome to Country ceremonial purposes: Everett,

above n 12, 59.

41 Gay McAuley, 'Unsettled Country: Coming to Terms with the Past'

(2009) 9 About Performance 45, 54.


43 McAuley, above n 41, 55.


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http://www.dfat.gov.au/indigenous/apology-to-stolen-generations/welcome_country.html




45 Deborah Bird Rose, Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land

in Australian Aboriginal Culture (Cambridge University Press,

1992).

46 See, eg, Baldwin Spencer and Francis J Gillen, The Arunta: A

Study o f a Stone Age People (Macmillan and Co, 1927).

47 Dempster, above n 15. See also Ian Clark, Sharing History: A

Sense for A ll Australians o f a Shared Ownership o f Their History

(Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 1994).

48 Derek John Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and

Aboriginal Australians, 1606-1985 (University of Queensland

Press, 1989).

49 Women o f the Sun (Directed by Geoffrey Nottage et al,

Generations Films, 1981).


51 This indicates that the contemporary act of acknowledging the

traditional owners of any given area should follow the Welcome

by said owners and never the contrary.

52 Nicholson, above n 7.

53 See Ronald M Berndt and Catherine H Berndt, The World o f the

First Australians (Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988).

54 Rose, Dingo Makes Us Human, above n 45, 52.

55 Pelizzon, above n 27. See also Max Harrison and Peter

McConchie, My People's Dreaming (Finch, 2009).

56 McAuley, above n 41, 54.

57 Blaze Kwaymullina, 'Concepts of Indigenous Holism, Logic

and Evidence?' (Speech delivered at the Forum for Indigenous

Research Excellence and the Institute for Social Transformation

Research, University of Wollongong, 13 September 2012).

58 Rose, above n 45, 28.

59 Loretta Kelly, 'Study Guide' (CUL000401 - Indigenous World

Views Study Materials, Southern Cross University, 2011).

60 See, eg, Philip L White, 'Globalization and the Mythology of the

Nation State' in A G Hopkins (ed), Global History: interactions

Between the Universal and the Local (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

257.


62 Rose, above n 45, 29.

63 Ibid.

64 See, Berndt and Berndt, above n 53; Josephine Flood, The

Original Australians: Story o f the Aboriginal People (Allen &

Unwin, 2006); Max Charlesworth (ed), Religious Business: Essays

on Australian Aboriginal Spirituality (Cambridge University Press,

1998); Mircea Eliade, Australian Religions (Cornell University

Press, 1973).

65 For example, mythical Ancestors are neither human nor non

human and yet they are both at the same time, as the distinction

becomes insignificant in Aboriginal metaphysical terms.

66 Rose, above n 45, 52-3.

67 We are using the term 'ownership' in a very loose and unspecified

sense in this case. We adopt the term because of its etymological

implications, although we are referring to it generically, rather

than being a further defined sense of entitlement.

68 In this sense the 'naming' of one's Country becomes almost

secondary to the establishment of reciprocal relations among the

participants to the event.

69 Ethnographic literature suggests that the role of the Elders is one

of guidance rather than of absolute leadership. Consequently,

we loosely adopt the term auctoritas as used by contemporary

authors such as Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben to refer

to the special position of the Elders within the kinship system.

See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (Penguin, first

published 1961, 1993 ed); Giorgio Agamben, State o f Exception

(University of Chicago Press, 2005).

70 See, eg, Alfred R Radcliffe-Brown, The Social Organization of

Australian Tribes (Macmillan, 1931).

71 Rose, above n 45, 117. In describing the Ngarinman term for

country, ngurra, she explains that it refers to 'a person's own

camp ... ; family area ... ; jamaran (clan) area; geographical

region; language area; ecological zone.'

72 Ibid 106.

73 Ibid 119.

74 Keith Willey, When The Sky Fell Down: The Destruction of the

Tribes o f the Sydney Region, 1788-1850s (HarperCollins, 1979).

75 Mulvaney, above n 48, 7.

76 W E H Stanner, White Man Got No Dreaming (Australian National

University Press, 1979) 190.


78 Loretta Kelly suggests that the term spirituality tends to

put up cognitive hurdles between peoples. She proposes

interconnectedness as a more neutral term to be used instead.

79 This non-anthropocentric perspective is a prime example of what

Thomas Berry identifies as ancestral wisdom in his suggestion of

a renewed global eco-centric sensibility. See Thomas Berry, The

Dream o f the Earth (Sierra Club, 1988).

80 The present moment acknowledged in a Welcome to Country is

akin to the Latin expression hic et nunc, 'here and now'.

81 Uncle Max Harrison often remarks that in order to achieve

re-conciliation, conciliation must have first occurred at some

time in the past and then be disrupted. As that has never been

the case since the time of colonisation in Australia, he suggests

that we should stop speaking of reconciliation and use the term

conciliation instead. See Harrison and McConchie, above n 55.

82 Clark, above n 47.

83 See Berndt and Berndt, above n 53; Flood, above n 64.


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