A personalised acknowledgement of country

One of the important actions in seeking reconciliation here in Australia is the use of what is termed an “acknowledgement of country”. 

This, and the different Welcome to Country, which can only be performed by an Indigenous person who is approved to do so, are outlined at How to Acknowledge Country in a meaningful way | SBS NITV,   Welcome to Country | AIATSIS,   and at TEDx Sydney talk by Shelley Reys “deliver an Acknowledgement of Country that really means something” - the last is particularly important for this post.

Following a recent NAIDOC  Week event at my workplace, I decided to take the TEDx suggestion to develop a personalised acknowledgement of country, which is below. 

In reading the below, please note the following, which was in a recent news post of mine: 

Indigenous people dislike (consider culturally inappropriate) acknowledgement of “emerging” elders and prefer past and present (I’ve  actually always thought this should be future) (SBS - NITV);

My attempt at a personalised Acknowledgement of Country is:

We acknowledge that we are on the lands of the Wurundjeri people, a people who been here so long they saw the Bay come into being.

A people who knew the land well, and made a good and sustainable living from it. In fact, the name Wurundjeri comes from the Woiwurrung words Wurun, for the Manna Gum, and djeri, for the grub found near the Wurun.

The Wurundjeri people also mined diorite from Mt William that was traded widely - including into what is now also known as New South Wales and South Australia - for making greenstone headed axes.

All this continued until a temporary welcoming ceremony known as a tanderrum was misinterpreted in 1835 by white colonisers as being similar to an old English feudal ceremony that exchanged land ownership for service.

We also pay our respects to the elders of the Wurundjeri people - past, present, including the current ngurungaeta   Murrindindi, and, in acknowledgement that their custodianship of this land should and will continue, future.

 

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