Welcome to Country… on Mars! A Taxpayer-Funded Vision for Interplanetary Native Title! By James Reed

(Brought to you by the Australian Pseudo-Research Woke Excellence Grant of 2026 – only $528,491 of your tax dollars)

G'day comrades of the cosmos, and welcome – sorry, I mean welcome to country.

As every good Australian now knows, no public event, kindergarten assembly, or Zoom meeting can begin until we first acknowledge that we are gathering on stolen land and pay our respects to Indigenous Elders past, present, and emerging. But what happens when we finally blast off to the Mars, Red Planet? Who welcomes whom when there are no humans yet on Mars to feel guilty?

Fear not! Thanks to a generous half-million-dollar injection of your taxes, Dr Lara Daley from the University of Newcastle is boldly going where no Welcome to Country has gone before: outerspace.

According to the grant summary (written in peer-reviewed academese so pure it could sterilise a surgical theatre), the project will "embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge in Australian space policy" by drawing on Yolngu songlines and Gumbaynggirr creation stories. Because nothing says "evidence-based rocketry" like making sure Elon Musk's Starship performs a smoking ceremony before touchdown.

Picture the scene in 2045:

The first Australian boots (probably made in China) sink into Martian regolith. The hatch opens. Instead of "One small step for man…", Mission Commander Shane Warne VII steps out holding a clapstick and a didgeridoo made from recycled Centrelink forms.

"On behalf of the Australian Space Agency," he intones solemnly into the silent vacuum (somehow), "I acknowledge that this planet Mars is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this planet – the Martians – past, present, and emerging. We recognise their continuing connection to lava tubes, ice caps, and the Valles Marineris, and we acknowledge the wrongs of the 2024 Perseverance rover which drove around without a Welcome to Country sticker."

But how, you ask, can Mars belong to Aboriginal people if no one from Earth has lived there? Easy! Dreamtime, baby.

As the grant excitedly explains, Indigenous "connections between space and life on Earth" mean that songlines almost certainly extend all the way to Phobos and Deimos. Some Elders (who have never seen a telescope) apparently knew about the two potato-shaped moons centuries before NASA. Probably astral travel. Or maybe they just looked up one night and thought, "Yeah, those two blurry dots are definitely my cousins."

So when we finally terraform Mars, expect the following mandatory cultural protocols:

Every spacesuit must feature possum-skin cladding (breathable, of course).

All rovers must stop every 100 metres for a minute's silence to listen to Country (even though Country is currently -60°C and has no atmosphere).

Oxygen extraction plants will be required to share 5% of all O₂ produced with traditional owners back on Earth as part of a cosmic Native Title claim.

The Martian flag will be the Aboriginal flag, because the Southern Cross is actually a Dreamtime constellation and Captain Cook stole that too.

Meanwhile, in another galaxy of taxpayer generosity, a separate $530,000 has been awarded to find out whether robots can be funny.

Early results are promising. When shown the list of ARC grants, the test robot laughed for six straight hours, then applied for permanent residency in a country that doesn't publicly fund studies into whether there can bew native tritle claims on Mars!

But that's only $525,650 – bargain!).

So rest easy, Australia. While the roads crumble, the hospitals overflow, and the power bills soar, at least we're leading the world in the most important frontiers: making sure Martians feel included, and discovering whether a Roomba with a mic can replace comedians.

One day, when your great-grandkids are living in a shipping container eating insect paste because the budget was spent on robot knock-knock jokes and interplanetary smoking ceremonies, just remember:

It was all for culturally respectful and environmentally responsible space exploration.

Now please rise for the Martian Acknowledgement of Country. (Translation: "Sorry for colonising your dust")

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15330291/University-Newcastle-aboriginal-stories-space.html