Recently, as a speaker in an overcrowded symposium panel, where our time had already been cut from ten minutes to five, I found myself agonising over acknowledgement of country – a weighty endeavour that we need to encapsulate into a very compressed timeframe. This agonising happens to me time and again, when I experience an overwhelming need to re-think how I frame my relationship to this important formality. A formality which is itself a representation of my/our thinking about indigenous and non-indigenous relationship to country. It is in my nature to consider the weight, nuance, and actual sound of each word that I’m using from the podium. I don’t like using standard phrases, as I am cautious that they can become a form-of group speak that denotes political allegiance but reveals little of our personal situated relationship to the ideas represented in the words. A way of hiding in plain sight. Whilst I acknowledge that it can be expedient to use standard acknowledgment of country and the thought that goes into preparing them is important work, I prefer not to mouth words that have political import without considering my own situated relationship to those words, professionally, academically, and personally.
In Genevieve Grieves, keynote at Aesthetics, Politics and Histories: The Social Context of Art, for the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) in 2018, she spoke thoughtfully and directly about acknowledgment of country. Genevieve encouraged all of us to personalise our acknowledgment of country to mitigate the risk of it becoming a collection of disassociated words mouthed without due consideration. She made clear that an important aspect of acknowledgement of country is for us to continue to consider its meaning and resonance in our lives and our actions.
Every day, all the time, the words we use, impact on people sometimes softly sometimes harshly and sometimes subliminally, without us even knowing it’s happening. It is my practice to interrogate every word of acknowledgment of country until each word is found worthy of its place. This attention to how we use words, publicly, from the podium, makes developing presentations a complex time-consuming and rewarding activity for me. I understand speech writing, including acknowledgement of country to be a reflexive, responsive, and ethical process that acknowledges knowledge is always emergent.
Words can be weighty and politically problematic, often harmful, and they can also be generous and lively and poetic and more. Words become even more important when they are navigating vulnerability, violent histories, and asymmetrical power situations. There is something about delegates/speakers all mouthing the same words that bothers me, and yes, I am aware that that could be construed as ego. Bearing in mind I am not part of any religion, or a member of any clubs, I grew up travelling and was always the ‘new kid’ throughout primary school. I never really knew the rules and the nuance of playground politics always escaped me. Those formative experiences of being the outsider, whose place in the group was always contingent on group dynamics – has have never left me.
My life has been a mission to understand what and why people think and act as they do. For me one of the issues of using a standard acknowledgement of country, is that it allows the speaker to remain completely hidden. An alternate and equally problematic issue is that once you decide to personalise acknowledgement of country, you risk harm if you are not alert to all of the possible consequence of your word choices. You may also open yourself up to criticism because you are exposing where you sit on the trajectory of an evolving politically dynamic relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people, personally, socially and politically. Being open to be being corrected, is an important part of this formality.
In the end, I did my acknowledgement of country in the following way:
Hi I’m Naomi McCarthy. I’m talking from Dharug land and I pay my respects to and offer my gratitude to Aborignal elders and the wider Aborignal community for making me welcome on their unceded land.
I’ll end with a quote I used in my last post 15 September 2021. ‘Standing at the edge of the abyss’ continues to be where I find myself.
Richardson, L., & St Pierre, E. A. (2005). A method of inquiry In Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (p. 959–978). Sage Publications Ltd.
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