Daily Insight

It turns out the origins of “Welcome to Country”—that allegedly 60,000-year-old Indigenous ceremony performed by Elders at the start of football matches to formally welcome visitors to their ancestral lands—aren’t quite what they seem. The ceremony essentially implies that unless you’re of a certain bloodline, it’s not your land. But as it happens, this “ancient” tradition was introduced within my lifetime, in the 1980s. Most of you likely knew that, but the recent media coverage confirms it. Following her passing this month, the ABC reported: “Rhoda Roberts, the woman behind ‘Welcome to Country’, dies at 66.” The Guardian noted: “Rhoda Roberts, Indigenous cultural leader who introduced the term ‘welcome to country’, dies.” Even SBS—where she served as inaugural Elder in Residence—stated: “She has been credited with starting the tradition of acknowledgement at public events and coining the term ‘Welcome to Country’,” which she developed “in the 1980s.” To be clear, I’m not here to …