Welcome to Country and Home

This weekend was the opening of the Perth's International Arts Festival.

 Each year, the festival starts of with a big, free event. Last year, it was the Giants. You remember, those big huge puppets roaming the streets of Perth. 

The year before that, it was a bizarre pirate ship with Darth Vader projected onto the apartment buildings. Yes, I was as confused as you.

This year, it was a little closer to Home.

Home was a story about Western Australia. 

A place less foreign then the French performances of Giants and pirates.

"As the Swan River carves a winding path from the Indian Ocean through Fremantle to Mount Eliza and from Perth to the Hills, Home celebrates 40,000 years of culture, shines a light on the fragile beauty of Western Australia’s landscape and charts an epic journey of arrival, foundation, boom time and resilience.

Director Nigel Jamieson – a master builder of grand public performance and storytelling – has assembled a roll call of Western Australia’s most renowned artists to dramatise our relationship with the place we call home. Our place. For Home, Jamieson has collaborated with Noongar elder and artist, Dr Richard Walley, and the 14 clans of the Noongar nation to create a spectacular Welcome to Country. Through dance, music and song, the Welcome to Country celebrates the powerful connection we all share with this precious land and sets the stage for Perth International Arts Festival’s most ambitious home-grown event ever."

It was one of the best Welcome to Country performances that I have seen, and I realized I haven't shared the Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country practice with my devoted readers.

I must admit that I was unaware of the ongoing struggles of the Australian aboriginals. When most people think of Australia, they think of surfing, kangaroos and koalas, not the Stolen Generation. I by no means intend turn my blog into a political rant, but it was only 8 years ago the Prime Minister officially apologized for taking Aboriginal children away from their home. Ironically, it was 8 years ago to the day of the performance of Home.

What is a Welcome to Country? According to the Noongar protocol:

"The Welcome to Country ceremony is an acknowledgment and recognition of the rights of Noongar people. The act of getting a representative who has traditional local links to a particular place, area or region, is an acknowledgement of respect for traditional owners. It is respect for people, respect for rights and a respect for country. The land, waterways and cultural significant sites are still very important to Noongar people. It is an acknowledgement of the past and provide a safe passage for visitors and a mark of respect."

I have no good video I've taken myself, but here's some good ones. Even G20 had a Welcome to Country.

And the performance before Home was a very memorable one.

And we got an expert reminder of the Noongar people (the people of south western Australia) and their 4 kin groups, 6 seasons, and 14 clans.

We as Americans have no acknowledgement to the Native Americans whose land was stolen. I like it as a small tribute to the people who came before. After all, it wouldn't hurt us all to take the time to pay tribute to our past.

A non-indigenous person can't do a Welcome to Country, but they can do an Acknowledgement of Country, and I've been to many meetings or seminars where the original custodians of the land are acknowledged. Many corporations or government agencies provide guidelines.

So for all that I've had the privilege to learn, experience, and love from my time in Perth and Western Australia...

I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I am living on, the Whadjuk (Perth region) people. I wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.