The Acknowledge of Country Logical Absurdity! By James Reed
There has been much written in objection to the "Welcome to Country" rituals, that are common now for government events: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/03/why-i-will-not-acknowledge-country/;https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/welcome-to-country-the-racism-of-arrivalism/. There has been recent controversy when a senior barrister and member of the Victorian Bar Council labelled Acknowledgment to Country, "bullsh*t virtue signalling." This was slammed by the "lobby" as "racist," for what else have they in their conceptual toolbox?
What I want to briefly suggest here is different from the previous debates about culture and "racism." Let us ask what is being done in a Welcome to Country ceremony. This can only be delivered by "Traditional Owners/Custodians of the land on which the event takes place." https://www.indigenous.gov.au/contact-us/welcome_acknowledgement-country. But why would this be necessary at all? It may be nice to do, but what is the true meaning? Surely it is a form of permission asking, that the Whites who request it for the event really are invaders and trespassers and have no right to be in the country, like someone off the street walking into your home. Only on this philosophy, if you are non-indigenous, you really have no moral claim to anything. So, following this through, why should a mere ceremony wash away the guilt of colonialism? Surely nothing can; Whites are eternally cursed by the racism of colonialism. But that is illogical.
And that seems to me to reduce the whole thing to absurdity. You can't coherently welcome someone to their own home, and even if indigenous folk were on the land mass first, they did not as a people build this modern country that is welcomed; it was the joint effort of all Australians, and by liberal property theory, it is thus their property, and their home. No welcome is necessary!
Comments