The Melbourne Storm has taken steps to limit the number of matches it opens with a welcome to the country next season. The decision received both applause and condemnation, which has become the polarizing nature of the traditional ceremony.
Personally, I have no problem performing a welcome (or recognition) to the country before NRL matches. I also don’t mind if someone who organizes an event feels inclined to initiate legal proceedings.
Whether or not an occasion is important enough to warrant hosting one is a subjective judgment that must ultimately be made by the person organizing the event.
What’s interesting is that this rather simple recognition of Indigenous heritage has become as controversial as it is today.
Politicians, activists and smug self-righteous people have to share the blame for that. They cannot simply attribute the reaction to mainstream intolerance, because that is completely wrong.
First, the divided opinion is not about race. We watch the All Blacks perform their Hakka before matches and love it. Australians have embraced other Pacific nations and performed similar ceremonies as the international game grew.
The problem with welcomes and acknowledgments to country is the sometimes preachy nature of the way they are delivered.
And if every speaker at an event does one – which is completely unnecessary, by the way – they lose their meaning and start to irritate.
The Melbourne Storm has taken steps to limit the number of matches it opens with a welcome to the country next season. (Pictured: Welcome to the country before a football match in Perth in 2022)
And of course, in the context of the failed Voice to Parliament referendum, they have also been unnecessarily politicized.
Activist and academic Marcia Langton threatened not to harm them and encourage others to follow her lead if the referendum was not passed into law.
By making that threat, she undermined the good will to recognize our first inhabitants and their traditions in this way.
The blanket rejection of the vote (60 percent of Australians voted against it and it failed in every single state) was evidence that the Labor government did not sufficiently make its case for the constitutional change.
Still, the vote went ahead with the knowledge that it would fail, creating increasing divisions over previously uncontested aspects of reconciliation.
The nagging and threats associated with demanding that citizens vote for it were counterproductive. The suggestion that anyone who did not support it was somehow racist or less sympathetic to our Indigenous past was not only offensive to many, it has inevitably led to a pushback in other areas of Indigenous rights and recognition.
The growing intolerance for welcoming and recognizing the country is a consequence of this.
Who has ever been to an event where every speaker, one after another, who stands up to speak, begins by recognizing his country?
Brendan Kerin, a cultural educator with the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council in Sydney, issued a blunt Welcome to Country to the AFL, which he said was not for whites.
Welcome to countries that are now commonplace for football matches. Fans are broadly supportive, but concerns are sometimes raised if they come across as too ‘preachy’. (Image: Melbourne Storm players at AAMI Park on September 27)
It happens all the time and is completely unnecessary. In fact, it goes against the entire purpose of recognition. The welcome reflects the native greeting that newcomers would receive when entering the territory of certain tribes. The recognition is about respecting that tradition.
There are more than 250 indigenous tribes spread across the continent. It’s a tradition that dates back thousands of years, and when done correctly, it’s a beautiful cultural practice that most Aussies would love to embrace.
But when it descends into virtue signaling — an opportunity for any self-proclaimed advocate of indigenous rights to show how woke they are — it loses its meaning and creates a backlash against what started as a unifying way to raise awareness of Aboriginal culture. .
Endless expressions of gratitude to the country to begin every speech at events is a shameful misunderstanding of greeting by those who do so. That’s actually ironic.
I was recently at an event where no fewer than five speakers in a row began their talks one after another with recognition of the traditional owners of the land on which we met.
Their attempts to show how involved they all were in the habit really only revealed how little they all know about it.
It should happen once and that’s it!
You don’t say “hello” to people repeatedly during a conversation. The Maori Hakka is not performed during a competition. And you don’t acknowledge the country over and over again if one has already been done at the beginning of an event.
I was recently at an event where no fewer than five speakers in a row, one after the other, started their talks with recognition of the traditional owners of the land on which we met, writes Peter van Onselen
The other divisive aspect of the traditional welcome is the growing desire of some activists to turn it into a lecture, or to punish those who listen to it. About the shame of white settlement, for example, or the need for next steps towards reconciliation, such as a treaty, for example.
You may agree with these views as part of the “journey” toward reconciliation, or not, but cloaking such preaching in what should be a well-intentioned and uplifting cultural welcome is both bad form and misleading.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so the saying goes. Expressing contempt for those attending an event (which, let’s face it, if we’re talking about a football match, they’re there for the sport, not a ceremony) cannot win over the hearts and minds.
What it does do is lead to a situation like we have now, where one of our NRL teams chooses to limit the occasions on which it starts matches with a welcome to country.
That wouldn’t happen if the original purpose of the ceremony was adhered to.
The Storm presumably believe they have made a decision that reflects the feelings of the majority of the club’s supporters. Now I don’t know if that is the case – sometimes decisions made can be misleading or downright wrong – but that is almost certainly the club’s thinking. Melbourne Storm officials would not take this step if they thought most of their supporters would rebel against it.
We’ll have to wait and see if other clubs will follow in the Storm’s footsteps.