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> It is their land and you should pay respects, a small ceremony isn’t too much of an inconvenience. The problem, IMHO, is that it's become meaningless. I mean

> It is their land and you should pay respects, a small ceremony isn’t too much of an inconvenience. The problem, IMHO, is that it's become meaningless. I mean they say it at the start of some of our meetings at work FFS. I work for a large IT systems integrator! The person just says the words, clearly having never rehearsed them, with no emotion. This isn't helping. It just alienates otherwise empathetic people who think, "this pointless crap again?"

bradrn 4y ago
I agree with this. The corollary, of course, is that it becomes much more meaningful when the speaker does know what they’re talking about. One of my university lecturers works closely with Aboriginal people; you can clearly tell that she welcomes us to Country because she understands the significance and believes it is the appropriate thing to do, rather than just going through the words mechanically as is so often the case.
- nbar 4y ago
  I’ll never forget seeing an email from McKinsey outlining cuts to Gov. spending on aboriginal health with you guessed it in the email footer, “We pay respects to the Eora people……”
ace2358 4y ago
Meaningless for who? You or the people your paying respect to? Is it meaningless to take a minute silence for fallen humans in a war? Is it meaningless to pay respects to your close ancestors? Maybe! Maybe not. I know which side my soul falls on.
- teakettle42 4y ago
  > Meaningless for who? You or the people your paying respect to? Everyone. The person saying it doesn’t mean it. The people they’re ostensibly saying it to receive no benefit. > Maybe! Maybe not. I know which side my soul falls on. On the side of meaningless gestures and self-righteously signaling how virtuous you think you are?
  - ace2358 4y ago
    Yikes! Honestly of all the indigenous elders I’ve personally spoken to, none of them expressed your opinion of ‘no benefit’. Now they are a distributed culture so I know that the local communities don’t speak for other communities. But I’m curious to know how deep your connections go into any indigenous community. I will readily admit that I don’t have huge amounts of contact with my locals, but speaking FOR them and saying they receive no benefit is a bit weird… Also, why does anyone have to benefit at all?
    - teakettle42 4y ago
      > Honestly of all the indigenous elders I’ve personally spoken to, none of them expressed your opinion of ‘no benefit’. I’m sorry, is that an argument? Are you giving them back the land? No? Then what benefit do they receive, exactly, and why are they owed it? > Also, why does anyone have to benefit at all? If you’re going to ask everyone to expend energy genuflecting to your religious dogma, surely there must be some benefit to someone beyond merely benefiting your own social power/standing?
- jen729w 4y ago
  You have mis-read this entire thing, my friend. To use your analogy, if everyone took a minute silence but spent it browsing Facebook on their phone, would that be respectful? No, it would be pointless. Edit: to be very explicit, I think Australia needs to reconcile with its Aboriginal people. I don't know how that looks, I'm not an expert. We should probably ask NZ. But reading a boilerplate statement at the start of a meeting doesn't do that. It makes it look like we're doing something whereas in reality we are doing literally nothing. And it makes good people who might actually want to do something cynical, because they just think "this pointless nonsense again?"
  - ace2358 4y ago
    >I don’t know what that looks like, I’m not an expert Yikes! Maybe the people who are asking us to do a welcome to country might know what it looks like! Honest question, have you ever spoken to an elder about the topic of welcome to country?
    - jen729w 4y ago
      I'll come back to my example above. A minute's silence is a meaningful moment because we all shut the fuck up for a minute, stand still, and actually think about those lost at war. I think about my grandad. It makes me cry. If instead we all just went about our business while being silent: checked Facebook, had a piss, replied to an email, then it would cease to be meaningful. And you'd say "oh but what would you know about meaning, the people who know say that you should be silent for a minute!" I may be totally wrong -- no, I've not spoken to an elder -- but if they think that they're actually getting any respect, or moving forward their cause, by having companies have someone read the Welcome to Country in broken monotone at the start of a meeting, or having companies put up banners on websites that you have to click through, or having the Qantas crew say "laides and gentlemen welcome to Melbourne where the local time is midday and it's eighteen degrees outside and we would like to pay our respects to the people of this land past and present" at the standard cadence of an airline steward, then I'm going to be politically incorrect and say that they're deluded. And they're worse than deluded: this is at best doing nothing and at worst it is causing harm, because this is causing your regular Aussie to become sick of the whole sorry charade. Words have a literal meaning, but you don't get the emotional meaning for free. You have to earn that part. I can say "I love you", but I don't love you. This entire country is saying these words but they have lost all meaning in the vast majority of cases. If you think that's good I don't know what to tell you.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I think that what is needed is an extra sentence two: " ... or at least, it was their land, until we, colonizers from overseas, won a war against them, or at least left them them so powerless that it is now left to us to say these meaningless platitudes to remind people, without reminding them of the violence, genocide and destruction that we rained down on the original inhabitants."
- ace2358 4y ago
  Always was, alwas will be their land. Laws don’t change that they were cultivating this beautiful country for some tens of thousands of years prior. You can write silly words on a page and say it’s law and has meaning. And you can disagree with those words. That no culture knows this land better than their culture is indicative. What an embarrassing and shameful situation that we have rid this land of their culture and people can’t be bothered to let their guard down, open their hearts and love their fellow humans…
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Sorry, but this is simply ridiculous. Land changes hands - by violence, and occasionally by consent - throughout human history. Sometimes, even the actual identity of the people present changes slowly over time, without anyone noticing until a few hundred years later. > "their culture" Native Americans are not all a monolithic block, and in my part of the world, for example, the Hopi still "remember" (as a part of their own oral history) when Athabascans from what is now called Alberta & British Columbia migrated (with a certain level of violence) into their area (and eventually became the Dine). From the tone of my Hopi neighbor, I'd say there is still some resentment about that. The Americas were essentially just as full of conquests and land-grabs as Europe or Asia. The big difference, or at least the one we register today, is inter-continental colonialism combined with genocidal intent. That is not exclusive to western European cultures, but for reasons that I still don't pretend to understand or know, that part of the world seems to have operated in this manner far more and far effectively than any other. However, the notion that a particular part of the Earth "always was, always will be" the home and place of a single group of people is just not a description of human history on this planet.
stevage 4y ago
It's even worse when the event in question doesn't even have a physical location. What could be more insulting to indigenous cultures?

bradrn 4y ago

I agree with this. The corollary, of course, is that it becomes much more meaningful when the speaker does know what they’re talking about. One of my university lecturers works closely with Aboriginal people; you can clearly tell that she welcomes us to Country because she understands the significance and believes it is the appropriate thing to do, rather than just going through the words mechanically as is so often the case.

nbar 4y ago
I’ll never forget seeing an email from McKinsey outlining cuts to Gov. spending on aboriginal health with you guessed it in the email footer, “We pay respects to the Eora people……”

ace2358 4y ago

Meaningless for who? You or the people your paying respect to? Is it meaningless to take a minute silence for fallen humans in a war? Is it meaningless to pay respects to your close ancestors? Maybe! Maybe not. I know which side my soul falls on.

teakettle42 4y ago
> Meaningless for who? You or the people your paying respect to? Everyone. The person saying it doesn’t mean it. The people they’re ostensibly saying it to receive no benefit. > Maybe! Maybe not. I know which side my soul falls on. On the side of meaningless gestures and self-righteously signaling how virtuous you think you are?
- ace2358 4y ago
  Yikes! Honestly of all the indigenous elders I’ve personally spoken to, none of them expressed your opinion of ‘no benefit’. Now they are a distributed culture so I know that the local communities don’t speak for other communities. But I’m curious to know how deep your connections go into any indigenous community. I will readily admit that I don’t have huge amounts of contact with my locals, but speaking FOR them and saying they receive no benefit is a bit weird… Also, why does anyone have to benefit at all?
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    > Honestly of all the indigenous elders I’ve personally spoken to, none of them expressed your opinion of ‘no benefit’. I’m sorry, is that an argument? Are you giving them back the land? No? Then what benefit do they receive, exactly, and why are they owed it? > Also, why does anyone have to benefit at all? If you’re going to ask everyone to expend energy genuflecting to your religious dogma, surely there must be some benefit to someone beyond merely benefiting your own social power/standing?
jen729w 4y ago
You have mis-read this entire thing, my friend. To use your analogy, if everyone took a minute silence but spent it browsing Facebook on their phone, would that be respectful? No, it would be pointless. Edit: to be very explicit, I think Australia needs to reconcile with its Aboriginal people. I don't know how that looks, I'm not an expert. We should probably ask NZ. But reading a boilerplate statement at the start of a meeting doesn't do that. It makes it look like we're doing something whereas in reality we are doing literally nothing. And it makes good people who might actually want to do something cynical, because they just think "this pointless nonsense again?"
- ace2358 4y ago
  >I don’t know what that looks like, I’m not an expert Yikes! Maybe the people who are asking us to do a welcome to country might know what it looks like! Honest question, have you ever spoken to an elder about the topic of welcome to country?
  - jen729w 4y ago
    I'll come back to my example above. A minute's silence is a meaningful moment because we all shut the fuck up for a minute, stand still, and actually think about those lost at war. I think about my grandad. It makes me cry. If instead we all just went about our business while being silent: checked Facebook, had a piss, replied to an email, then it would cease to be meaningful. And you'd say "oh but what would you know about meaning, the people who know say that you should be silent for a minute!" I may be totally wrong -- no, I've not spoken to an elder -- but if they think that they're actually getting any respect, or moving forward their cause, by having companies have someone read the Welcome to Country in broken monotone at the start of a meeting, or having companies put up banners on websites that you have to click through, or having the Qantas crew say "laides and gentlemen welcome to Melbourne where the local time is midday and it's eighteen degrees outside and we would like to pay our respects to the people of this land past and present" at the standard cadence of an airline steward, then I'm going to be politically incorrect and say that they're deluded. And they're worse than deluded: this is at best doing nothing and at worst it is causing harm, because this is causing your regular Aussie to become sick of the whole sorry charade. Words have a literal meaning, but you don't get the emotional meaning for free. You have to earn that part. I can say "I love you", but I don't love you. This entire country is saying these words but they have lost all meaning in the vast majority of cases. If you think that's good I don't know what to tell you.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

I think that what is needed is an extra sentence two: " ... or at least, it was their land, until we, colonizers from overseas, won a war against them, or at least left them them so powerless that it is now left to us to say these meaningless platitudes to remind people, without reminding them of the violence, genocide and destruction that we rained down on the original inhabitants."

ace2358 4y ago
Always was, alwas will be their land. Laws don’t change that they were cultivating this beautiful country for some tens of thousands of years prior. You can write silly words on a page and say it’s law and has meaning. And you can disagree with those words. That no culture knows this land better than their culture is indicative. What an embarrassing and shameful situation that we have rid this land of their culture and people can’t be bothered to let their guard down, open their hearts and love their fellow humans…
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Sorry, but this is simply ridiculous. Land changes hands - by violence, and occasionally by consent - throughout human history. Sometimes, even the actual identity of the people present changes slowly over time, without anyone noticing until a few hundred years later. > "their culture" Native Americans are not all a monolithic block, and in my part of the world, for example, the Hopi still "remember" (as a part of their own oral history) when Athabascans from what is now called Alberta & British Columbia migrated (with a certain level of violence) into their area (and eventually became the Dine). From the tone of my Hopi neighbor, I'd say there is still some resentment about that. The Americas were essentially just as full of conquests and land-grabs as Europe or Asia. The big difference, or at least the one we register today, is inter-continental colonialism combined with genocidal intent. That is not exclusive to western European cultures, but for reasons that I still don't pretend to understand or know, that part of the world seems to have operated in this manner far more and far effectively than any other. However, the notion that a particular part of the Earth "always was, always will be" the home and place of a single group of people is just not a description of human history on this planet.

stevage 4y ago

It's even worse when the event in question doesn't even have a physical location. What could be more insulting to indigenous cultures?