For thousands of years, the protocols of welcoming visitors from other lands and country has been practiced within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. If you were crossing into someone else's country, it was a requirement to send a request to the land's people to be granted permission to enter and be offered safe passage and protection. This in turn required the visitor to acknowledge, adhere to and respect the rules of the country that was being entered.
Yawarllaayi/Gomeroi elder Barbara Flick Nicol who has worked within the Aboriginal health and legal fields for many years says that these protocols have never disappeared but the way in which they are expressed, despite having gone through many shifts, especially within the last 200 years.
"Aboriginal people are always aware if they are in another people's country, and especially talking about land in other's country.
A first it was a principle for us – it wasn’t expressly stated, but there was an understanding that there was a traditional protocol - that went way back before the invasion of the country. If people wanted to [venture to other's lands], it was mostly men who wanted to have discussions with men from another country or nation – they would carry a message stick, asking properly.
That was the protocol that they could meet. It’s always been something that we did as a people, understanding and observing the fact that when you are in somebody else’s country, that you acknowledge them."
Entertainer, Ernie Dingo claimed that in the 1970s he and writer Richard Walley brought the Welcome to Country custom into the mainstream at the Middar Aboriginal Theatre after visiting Pacific Islander dancers insisted on being officially welcomed onto the country they were visiting. Dingo said he got permission from his elders to share the practice with non-Aboriginal people and this event was then taken up by the Australian Tourism Commission, and followed on from there.
However, when we look at the modern practice of Acknowledgement to Country, whereby event openings, public talks, school assemblies - even, SBS World News' broadcast - pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands, there isn't a clear date that this practice started to become the norm.
In 2010, the Federal Parliament made opening the session with an acknowledgement of country a permanent feature and today, it is official protocol to begin parliament with the Lord's Prayer andan acknowledgement. However, years before this installment, it's said that the Native Title movement and specifically the Mabo decision greatly altered the way that official events, meetings and formal gatherings around the country were opened.
