From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday, April 29th. For decades, modern day welcome to country ceremonies have been an established ritual in Australia, performed by indigenous elders far and wide. Then came Anzac Day, when people were stunned to see Bunurong elder, Mark Brown, booed and
jeered at while performing the ceremony in Melbourne. That night, a planned Welcome to Country ceremony was ditched at a high profile sporting event. Today, federal politics reporter Natassia Chrysanthos on how and why the ritual has become weaponised. And Kamilaroi elder uncle Lyn Waters on what all Australians should be asking themselves now. So, Tess, first off, I just have to say thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, because you're joining us from Anthony Albanese's
bus on the campaign trail. So if for listeners, if you hear any background noise, that's because you're getting things right from the trail. But first off, I guess what happened on Anzac Day last Friday morning.
So Anzac Day, um, ceremonies these days, the big ones you'll find often start with a Welcome to country, which is a ceremony by an indigenous person, typically an elder from a particular ancestral land, um, you know, dating back centuries.
Good morning. I am uncle Mark Brown, and I'm an elder and senior cultural heritage officer of the Bunurong people.
They'll give a short speech that welcomes the audience to that ancestral land.
I'm a gunditjmara man on my mother's side. And I'm a man of my father's side.
So we saw that happen in Melbourne and in Perth. And then these welcomes in the morning were interrupted by, in Melbourne, several hecklers, one of whom was later confirmed to be a known neo-Nazi.
I'm here to welcome everybody to my father's country. Beautiful boomerang country. But before we do that, we pay our acknowledgments and we pay our respects. We pay our respects to all of my ancestors.
Who yelled out a range of things, including, you know, we don't need to be welcomed. And we're escorted out. And then a similar thing happened at a smaller scale in Perth a few hours later as well.
And so tell us what was happening, though, because these hecklers, they weren't just fringe actors, right. What was going on?
Yeah. So it was a coordinated in Melbourne. It was a kind of coordinated event that was led by Jacob Hassan, who's, you know, a Annoying kind of far right extremists, white supremacists.
And the first Victorian convicted of performing a Nazi salute heckled the governor and then the RSL itself at any mention of being welcomed to country.
They want to humiliate us over and over again. That's what they do.
Tapping into this real cultural war that has emerged around Welcome to Country. Um, and you see it play out a lot in the conservative media from time to time. So you'll see it, you know, dominate discussion on Sky news. You see it raised from time to time by conservative or right wing senators in the Australian Parliament raising this
criticism or complaint. I suppose that we don't need to be welcomed to our own country and people on on that side of politics or those particular political beliefs, er a range of complaints, one being that being that they're overdone, being that they're Tokenistic, etc.. Um. And then I think what we saw on Friday was this debate being hijacked
by the far right. And that is a that is a common tactic in those circles, particularly in Australia, is to, um, kind of latch on to these culture war debates and position themselves as the anti-woke, if you will. Um, but but what it really is, is a kind of outward expression of what is a much more right wing ideology. And in some cases, like we say, they're not neo-Nazis.
And we have to mention that, you know, what happened on Anzac Day, it wasn't actually confined to that one event, because we've also seen reports about NRL team, the Melbourne Storm cancelling a Welcome to Country at the very last minute at its Anzac Day match. Right.
Yeah. Melbourne Storm um, has kind of been toying with what it thinks is the appropriate way to do. Welcome to country ceremonies. There's been that conversation happening within the Melbourne Storm for the last couple of months. Um, and so then what you saw on Anzac Day, all of this was happening. It was in the news. And then, um, I think there was some confusion around the precise order of events, but the outcome was that a planned welcome to country at that game that evening did not go ahead.
And Taz, you also mentioned just before you know that we are hearing this refrain. We don't need to be welcomed to our own country. We're hearing this, you know, in debates in mainstream politics, on Sky news and whatnot, it has become more common. So can you walk us through, I guess, a bit more what the main point of contention there is?
Yeah. So I think the context really because welcome to country and I think this is probably a good point to um, clarify. Welcome to Country is a ceremony that is performed, like I said, by an indigenous person on their tribal land that welcomes people to that particular land. It started happening in the 70s in Australia in kind of contemporary events, but it taps into this ancient custom
that existed Pre-colonization and Indigenous Australia. This is different to what is also increasingly common practice, which is an acknowledgement of country. Now, an acknowledgement of country is typically given by a non-Indigenous person. Um, and this is kind of what you see more at the beginning of meetings or events, sometimes in the workplace. So there are two different things that have become conflated in this debate. People say, you know,
the welcomes are overdone. They don't need to be done before every meeting at work. You're probably not talking about a welcome in that context. You're talking about an acknowledgement. Um, so they are different practices performed with different intentions.
And tell us, though, what critics of Welcome to Country are saying, because obviously we've got a lot of prominent people speaking out against them, probably most notably Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who, you know, spoke about it, uh, during the leader's debate just on Sunday night.
For the start of every meeting at work or the start of a football game. I think a lot of Australians think it's overdone, and it cheapens the significance of what it was meant to do. It's divide. It divides the country. Not dissimilar to what the Prime Minister did with I've got to go, got to go to the Prime Minister.
Yeah. So I think what you have in that rhetoric, including from Dutton, was that conflation of those two things. So he said, you know, welcome to countries. They're overdone. You know, he says, I see the point to hold them, for example, at the opening of Parliament every year, but at the beginning of every meeting, at the beginning of every sports game. They're overdone and they lose meaning. They become rote. Um, and he also called them divisive. So what?
We think it's a range of different arguments there, because on the one hand, you know, and Indigenous Australians themselves would make an argument sometimes that, yes, if an acknowledgment of country is performed all the time at the beginning of everything and there's not a lot of meaning behind it,
it can become rote. That is, though, different to somebody at a major event, you know, standing up there and trying to welcome people to their ancestral lands and convey some of that history that we were talking about before. I think it is all looped into this kind of zeitgeist anti-woke backlash that we've seen really accelerate with the re-election of Donald Trump and since The Voice referendum as well.
And so what is going to happen if the coalition does form government? Like, do they have a solid plan to ban or restrict welcome to country ceremonies?
So insofar as the federal government is concerned, are federal government departments at different events pay for welcome to country ceremonies? You know, you see it a lot in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for example, where there are visiting dignitaries and they'll put on and pay for a welcome to country and smoking ceremony as part of that diplomatic connection, and also showing visitors what is a kind
of a central part of Australian culture. So you could have and this is what the coalition federal coalition has said. You could have them say, instruct government departments, no, we don't want to spend money on that anymore. Right. And then you might have federal government departments wind back how they're doing them. That costs. Under FOI from the coalition. It was revealed about half $1 million over two years. So that is one lever that a federal government could pull.
As for sports games and things like that, you could have a government exert pressure on major codes, um, to try and influence behaviour, but it's not a legal issue, you know? Then we come to people who give acknowledgements of countries in their day to day practice when they're giving a speech at a meeting. The federal government really can't do anything about that at all. You know, they're performed for free. Discretionally. It's it's more a conversation than anything else.
Taz, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast this morning.
Thank you for having me.
After the break, Uncle Len Waters on what welcome to country ceremonies really mean. Uncle Len Waters, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Can you just begin by telling us first who you are and what your role is in performing? Welcome to country ceremonies.
Yeah, well, my name Sam Len Waters. I'm a cameraman and, um, originate from our mission station. And, yeah, as an elder, you get invited to, um, do all sorts of work on the country, whether it be government, sort of, um, organizations, um, or whether it be community organizations, basically whatever people, um, really require, you know, it could be a funeral or it could even be, um, you know, a special message like the one just went, um, it was an Anzac Day mass.
And can you just explain to us what a welcome to country is?
Well, the welcome to country is basically something that's not new. It's been going on for, um, you know, centuries. And, um, basically when other tribes used to trek a long way, um, you know, by foot. Um, could even be hundreds of miles. And, um, they would arrive at the tribal lands of the people that invited them. And, um, basically, once they got there, they would gather and, um, wait to be welcomed onto
their tribal lands. And, um, yeah, the main emphasis of it, I suppose, is to renew old relationships and, um, to make new relationships, but, um, importantly, to, um, mend relationships that might have conflict because, um, if there was conflict there, you weren't, um, invited on to country, weren't welcomed on country. That's the way it sort of goes back for, um, millennia,
I suppose. But, um, um, it's only recently new, I suppose, in Australia because, um, it's only been the last period of time that people have been interested in Aboriginal culture and customs and that sort of stuff. So it's one thing that, um, over the ages, I suppose we weren't allowed to practice. Um, you know, a lot of our customs and, uh, ceremonial stuff. Um, yeah. And, um, even language.
So it's a case of, um, it means. Well, when, um, you know, non-Aboriginal people are inviting you along to, um, um, you know, to do, uh, a work on a country to sort of signify that their event is, um, being held on, um, you know, traditional lands of one tribe or another.
And what actually went through your mind when you heard about uncle Mark Brown being booed during his welcome on Anzac Day?
I thought, um, yeah, it was very sort of, um, odd. I mean, you know, sort of it's a bit like somebody getting up and, um, heckling, um, somebody during the Lord's Prayer or, you know, even sort of, um, the national anthem or, um, or other things that people hold dear to themselves. People more and more are becoming, uh, more disrespectful of, um, of people in general, you know, and we're just sort of people that, um, yeah, have lost blocks. Compression. In a lot of ways.
It does make me want to ask you, I guess, what the impact of a debate like this and, you know, all of this rhetoric questioning the existence of a welcome to country, what sort of impact does it have on indigenous people like yourself?
Yeah. No, I just sort of think, you know, for myself, with the case of, um, you know, um, we've come so far, you know, we've lost so much and, um, you know, to, um, you know, to deny, you know, Australian people on these toilet practices, you know, um, I just think it takes us backwards. And it was over the weekend. I've seen many Dawn services or, um, sporting matches and that sort of stuff where people are saying
the New Zealand anthem. Yeah. And, um, basically whether they be indigenous to New Zealand or not, there is, um, a certain section of that that is um, done in, um, uh, in their language. And I think, you know, well, how cool is that? You know, it's something to, um, really behold. If we're to grow as a nation, you know, we've got to sort of grow together and have these respectful things put into play. And we start pulling these things down now and taking us backwards. What does that say
about us as a, as a country? You know, um, we've got a whole strong in a lot of things. And, you know, by trying to bury or, um, disregard, um, Aboriginal issues. Well, you know, we're not growing, you know, we're not, um, we're not taking any steps forward.
And I guess just to wrap up, I mean, what would you like white Australians to perhaps remember when they're thinking about and they're debating this issue?
Well, I think two is the plight of Aboriginal, um, history itself. You know, it's not a, a pretty history and that sort of stuff. But, um, you know, and as much as we want to say, well, yeah, let's forget about the past, you Yeah, but you know, we've got to hold the past there because, um, that's the way we learn and that's the way people carry on these legacies. It's one of these things where, um, you know, get rid of it. And then what do we get
rid of? To get rid of. I welcome the country to me is sort of, um, I just don't I would sort of start to lose faith, I think, in, um, in humanity itself.
Yeah.
You know, because I just sort of think. Yeah. What type of people are we? Yeah. And, um, sure. You know, we've got to be better than what we have been in the past, but we're only going to get better in the future if we allow ourselves to be better in the future. And that means, you know, um, the notion of, um, inclusiveness.
I really appreciate you taking the time to, to speak to me about this. So thank you so much, Uncle Len, for your time.
Well, thank you and good morning.
And to you. Take care. Bye. Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit The Age
or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up to date, sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.