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The Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country have become core Australian customs. [31] Some jurisdictions, such as New South Wales, make a welcome (or, failing that, acknowledgement) mandatory [dubious – discuss] at all government-run events. [32] The Victorian Government supports Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country. [33]
This ceremony, and the closely related Acknowledgement of Country, became more popular during the 1990s, having been promoted by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and taken up in the aftermath of the Mabo decision recognizing Aboriginal title. By the early 2000s, land acknowledgements had become commonplace in Australia.
It asserts that Aboriginal peoples were the first on the continent now known as Australia, occupying and caring for the land for more than 65,000 years, [4] and that sovereignty of Country has never been ceded. [1] It is sometimes shortened to "Always was, always will be." [5]
Drawing on this important relationship with Country, many First Nations Australians — including Aboriginal Australians across the continent and Torres Strait Islanders alike [13] [34] — identify a sense of responsibility or obligation to care for Country as a central tenet of traditional custodianship.
A Welcome to Country (or Acknowledgement of Country) is a ritual or formal ceremony performed at many events held in Australia, intended to highlight the cultural significance of the surrounding area to a particular Aboriginal clan or language group who are recognised as traditional owners of the land. [15]
Keating's speech has been described as "a defining moment in the nation's reconciliation with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people", being the first ever public acknowledgement by the Commonwealth Government of the dispossession of the country's First Nations peoples. [2]
The establishment of the council was an acknowledgement of past policies which had done harm to Aboriginal peoples, [7] and its purpose was to guide the process of reconciliation in the nation over the coming decade, which would end with the celebration of centenary since the Federation of Australia. [10]
acknowledgement of the significance of Aboriginal peoples moving back to traditional country; a clear distinction between homelands and settlements, missions or reserves; an acknowledgement of the traditional connection to the land and the ancestral spirits; and; a description of the permanency of homelands as traditional home territory.