I get a little indignant at being "welcomed" by local indigenous people at every school speech night. I've lived in this part of the country for 20 years and find it just a tad patronising to be honest.
So here is the origin of this ancient custom, according to The Australian
ENTERTAINER Ernie Dingo and prominent Perth Aboriginal performer and writer Richard Walley have emerged as the modern-day creators of the controversial “welcome to country” ceremony, after visiting troupes of Pacific dancers forced their hand during a visit to Western Australia in the mid-1970s…
Dingo said it had been a custom for Aboriginal people to “get the sweat from under their arms and rub down the side of your shoulders so any spirits around can smell the perspiration or the odour of the local, and say, he’s right, leave him alone”.
That custom moved into mainstream culture in 1976 when the Middar Aboriginal Theatre, whose founders included Dingo and Dr Walley, was performing at a tourism event in Perth. They said visiting dancers from New Zealand and the Cook Islands refused to perform unless they were officially welcomed, as they believed it would be culturally wrong…
Dr Walley, also a musician… (said): “… So I did. I did a welcome.”
Dr Walley believes it was the first time anything similar had been done. The practice was then adopted in the Northern Territory after the Australian Tourism Commission asked one of Dr Walley’s dancing partners to perform the welcome in Alice Springs in the mid-1980s.
That's a very interesting way to be welcomed!
ReplyDeleteIt's a very divisive "tradition". I've lived in Narrabri for 20 years yet at every Government function I have to be welcomed to my own land! It doesn't make any sense to me. Sure people can acknowledge the prior ownership of aboriginal people, but don't welcome me to a place that I have lived in and contributed to people's lives for a big portion of my life.People joke that in a country town you're only a local if you're born there, but this really says you are only a local if you were born aboriginal- too bad for the original settlers, or other people who lived their whole life here. Now they are the outsiders.
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