Welcome to Country isn’t for every occasion. Good on you, Melbourne Storm

The news of the Melbourne Storm reviewing their Welcome to Country policy is good, but hardly controversial. What we know is the Storm are not doing away with Welcomes to Country. They are engaging with Indigenous communities to consider the way in which they recognise Indigenous people and culture at home games. Quite specifically, they have said they will keep the ceremonies at culturally significant celebrations.

So let’s be clear – we have an entity that is still committed to performing these ceremonies at certain events and is working collaboratively with Indigenous groups as to how it recognises Indigenous culture and people. And the punishment for that sin? Being brandished as an oppressive force in the demotion of Indigenous recognition.

Indigenous dancers perform during the Welcome to Country before a Melbourne Storm-Cronulla Sharks match.Credit: Getty Images

This kind of response is a perfect demonstration of what saddens me so much about our current condition – that, at least in the public arena, many people have lost the ability to think and speak rationally about these issues.

The loudest voices seem totally incapable of nuance: if you are not willing to wholeheartedly implement a Welcome to Country at every occasion, not willing to move heaven and earth to make sure Indigenous culture is front and centre of your events, you are on the side of the oppressor. You hate Indigenous Australians – you’re a racist.

It’s infantile and a nation cannot function properly or hope to be strong with that as its foundational rhetoric.

One of the markers of maturity as we transition from adolescence to adulthood is our ability to recognise areas of grey – to appreciate that a problem or solution may not be black and white.

When it comes to Welcomes to, and Acknowledgments of, Country, I wonder if the answer is not black and white. Perhaps these ceremonies are not to be done away with altogether, nor are they to be performed in every setting. Perhaps the grey teaches us that their legitimacy and significance are most clearly borne out when we limit their proliferation.

And perhaps the substance of these ceremonies is another element that requires a mature conversation. If you want the Australian public to grasp the reality of these ceremonies, if their sacred and genuine nature is to be preserved, my advice: cease with the activism. Because while the historical form of these ceremonies may be up for debate, I am quite sure that the most accurate versions are not those that include a lecture in colonial guilt. Have the ceremony, but lose the extremism. It only discredits the person performing it and risks alienating the broader community.

Aside from the need for nuance, stories like this also raise other issues for me. I often wonder what we hope to achieve through these ceremonies that allegedly champion “Indigenous recognition”. What exactly is the recognition that we want? Because the reality is, marginalised Indigenous Australians exist right across this country, suffering disproportionately high rates of domestic and sexual violence, who don’t have English as their first language and live in remote and regional areas.

I would think that is a seismic issue, which, for as long as it remains unresolved, demands our outrage and emotional reactions far more than the regularity of a sports club’s Welcome to Country.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price stands with her grandmother, Tess Napaljarri Ross, before delivering her first speech in the Senate in July, 2022. Credit: James Brickwood

And hear me right: I am not saying it’s one or the other, that we either care about “recognition” or about addressing issues on the ground, as if it’s some kind of zero-sum game. What I’m saying is that perhaps the best way we can “recognise” Indigenous Australians is by working to empower those who are disadvantaged.

I am not interested in pointing out race, or treating people according to their race, for the sake of it. So if that is the ultimate aim of recognition being promoted here, I want no part of it. But if the aim of recognition is to address the disadvantage that our most marginalised Indigenous Australians face, I am all in. Because that is addressing need, not race. The recognition is of one’s fundamental humanity, of someone’s inherent worth and value as a person, not their ethnicity. While infantile responses are no way to build a strong country, I think that recognising everyone’s inherent value is a good start.

So, have the Welcome to Country, but also allow people to think about when and how that’s best done. Let’s not crowd out the nuance, and importantly, let’s not lose sight of what we’re trying to achieve for Indigenous Australians. Sounds a bit like what the Melbourne Storm are doing; and for that, they should be congratulated. The way I see it, they are an example to the majority of good-hearted Australians who genuinely want the best for their fellow citizens but want to consider the best way to do that.

That’s an Australia I would love to see, the kind of Australia I know we can be.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is a senator for the Northern Territory and the federal opposition’s spokeswoman for Indigenous Australians.

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