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The Northern Territory chief minister made a deliberate omission at an event last month commemorating the 1942 bombing of Darwin by Japanese forces. In her opening remarks, Lia Finocchiaro acknowledged veterans and the families of those who survived – but not the Larrakia people, on whose land the event was held.
She later told local radio that such gestures, widely made at public gatherings to show respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, had become “tokenistic” and “divisive”.
“I’m about unifying Territorians,” Finocchiaro said. “When I speak as chief minister, it’s for everyone.”
It is commonplace across Australia to pay respect to the traditional owners of the land on which a public gathering takes place through a welcome to country or an acknowledgment of country.
As a federal election approaches, conservative politicians have taken aim at the ritual, saying people feel like it is being “rammed down their throats”.
A welcome is given by an authorised traditional owner and can include a speech, song, dance or smoking ceremony. An acknowledgment is typically a brief statement recognising traditional owners that anyone can make.
Sometimes events will open with a welcome to country followed by a brief acknowledgment from each speaker. This was the case with all eight dignitaries at the Darwin event, except the chief minister – who said that while welcomes have their place, too much repetition can make the gesture seem insincere.
Finocchiaro’s federal colleague, the newly appointed shadow minister for government efficiency and Warlpiri woman, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, has pledged to redirect spending from welcome to country ceremonies – which cost $550,000 in the past two years – to initiatives that “actually improve” the lives of Indigenous people.
The minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, dismissed the move as “another attempt to use culture war tactics to distract from the Coalition’s lack of a plan for Indigenous Australians”.
The co-chair of Reconciliation Australia, Kirstie Parker, says much of the furore was underpinned by a fundamental misunderstanding of the intention behind the custom.
“This is not a political matter,” she says. “It’s a matter of the heart.”
Parker says a common complaint from critics, “I don’t need to be welcomed to my own country,” underlines this misunderstanding.
Indigenous groups, she says, are not welcoming people to the Australian nation, but rather on to the land within their cultural boundaries which they have cared for, and lived on, for millennia.
The Yuwaalaraay woman fears the tone of political debate in Australia has shifted in the two years since the overwhelming no vote in the referendum to introduce an Indigenous voice to parliament.
The Coalition campaigned on a no vote. In December 2024, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, refused to stand in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags because it was “dividing” the country. In January the party began campaigning against welcome to country ceremonies.
“Post the referendum, there have been attempts by some Australians to cancel all things Aboriginal,” says Parker. “It’s sad, and it’s really disappointing.”
‘Ugly politicking’
Under traditional protocols, Reconciliation Australia says, when one group entered the land of another Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander nation, they would ask permission. The hosting group would welcome the visitors and offer them “safe passage and protection of their spiritual being during the journey”.
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The practice became popular in the arts sector in the 1970s and 80s and has since become the norm at most public gatherings. Event organisers will often pay a fee for an authorised traditional owner to give a Welcome to Country.
Nathan Moran is the head of the Sydney Metro Local Aboriginal Land Council, the city’s largest organisation representing Aboriginal people. It facilitates an average of 30 welcome to country ceremonies a week.
The fee for the service is negotiated depending on the request. It maybe free for small charity-run meetings,$200 for a standard event or up to $800 for longer events outside regular working hours.
The proceeds are evenly split between the person giving the welcome and community programs that provide financial support for funerals, social housing and student scholarships.
Moran is “bemused” that conservative politicians have targeted a symbolic gesture that stimulates the Indigenous economy. Disproportionate rates of incarceration, suicide and preventable disease among Indigenous people are a better target for public outrage, he says.
“It’s just ugly politicking,” he says. “It’s beating up on a small group of people to try and create an issue so you can get political gain.”
Some Indigenous groups, however, believe the current practice of Welcomes to Country have become commercialised and strayed from their original purpose.
The Juru people in north Queensland banned the ceremonies on their land because they were being done by people without proper cultural authority for excessive fees.
Wally Bell, a Ngunnawal elder based in Canberra, now refuses to do a Welcome to Country. “Our ceremony is quite traditional and meaningful and a lot of that essence … has gone by the wayside,” he says.
He will instead conduct a “rite of passage” whereby he explains the ancient custom of seeking permission to enter another group’s land, without “putting on a show”.
Parker says while local Indigenous communities are entitled to have a nuanced discussion about the practice, it’s important not to conflate that with sweeping calls from the wider public to reform or cease giving welcomes or acknowledgments nationwide.
