Reconciliation Week is about strengthening relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous peoples, for the benefit of all Australians, and this year’s theme is ‘All in’.
Reconciliation Australia explains that an Acknowledgement of Country is an opportunity for anyone to show respect for Traditional Owners and the continuing connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to Country.
Debate around the Acknowledgment of Country seems to have intensified in the last couple of years, with old tropes re-emerging as flashpoints in a public sphere that seems increasingly divided and harmful to First Nations people.
The acknowledgement of the traditional owners of land on which events are held, when those events take place should surely be something we can all get behind. However, it seems not.
Central to arguments against the acknowledgement of country seem to be that acknowledgements are hollow, over-used box ticking exercises undertaken by organisations and people who want to be seen to be progressive while doing next to nothing to make a positive contribution.
I can certainly accept that there are many examples of this tokenism occurring – I’ve been to few events where it was clear that the acknowledgement barely met the threshold of ‘token’.
What I can’t accept is the logic that the solution is to stop making acknowledgements of country.
Surely the answer is not to stop acknowledging traditional owners, but to make acknowledgments real and genuine? Or, to be in line with this year’s theme, surely the answer is to go ‘all in’ and do it with feeling.
Although I have observed some very tokenistic attempts at acknowledgement of country, I have also been privileged to witness some incredibly heartfelt and meaningful acknowledgments, that have influenced my interest and approach.
This first happened when I was delivering complaint triaging training to a group of Human Resources & Employee Relations specialists at an organisation with an office in Redfern in Sydney. Although I would usually make an Acknowledgement at the start of training, I was told this would be done by a participant.
The person started with the familiar phrases, but then she explained the history of the land itself. She explained why Redfern was such an important place for First Nations People. She explained that Redfern, because of its location and resources, was a meeting place, a source of water, a vital camping ground, and resource-gathering site for the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.
She explained the history and importance of the place that is now Redfern Park, which their office overlooked. The location was an important meeting place for Aboriginal people, post colonization, and of course, the site of Paul Keating’s historic “Sorry” speech in 1992.
After that experience, we changed how we do things at Worklogic. When we travel to clients’ sites to deliver training, we take the time to research the Aboriginal history of the land we are travelling to, and we speak about what we have learned as part of our Acknowledgment. It is a small thing, and it won’t change the world, but it has, if nothing else, increased the collective knowledge of Worklogic about the Indigenous history of the places we visit, and our collective respect for the incredible diversity of First Nations culture.
A more recent experience in Aotearoa New Zealand reinforced for me, the importance of authentically acknowledging First Nations people at events. I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at a conference in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. I naively (ignorantly) contacted a friend and asked for her advice on a statement equivalent to an Acknowledgement of Country, and a week later, found myself (let’s be honest) blundering through a greeting in line with Māori culture, outlining who I was and where my people were from, in Māori language, in front of several hundred people.
Despite how badly I fluffed and floundered my way through it, many Māori attendees at the conference sought me out afterwards to thank me for the effort I had made. They didn’t judge my pronunciation; instead, they thanked me for the effort and expressed genuine gratitude that I had tried.
These two experiences demonstrated to me that an Acknowledgement of Country can have meaning. It can have a positive impact. Or it can be an empty token. Which of these it ends up being doesn’t depend on the words on a page. It rests entirely with the speaker, and the extent to which they are willing to go all in, to make it real.
If you’d like to find out more about creating an acknowledgment of country that has meaning, there are some fantastic resources available at ABC Indigenous, Reconciliation Australia and indigenous.gov.au.