Enough of the ‘acknowledgements’

For some years I have been silently gritting my teeth at the now obligatory ‘Acknowledgements of (Aboriginal) Country’ every time a local official or politician has risen to speak at a public gathering. And like everyone else who has felt the same way, I have kept my mouth shut, because inevitably, I would be seen, amongst a lot of other unpleasant things, to be a rude interrupter of what increasingly appears to be the legitimate status quo.

At a Citizenship ceremony last year, the then Mayor of Bass Coast did a 20-minute speech and video presentation ‘Acknowledgement of Country’, suggesting that Aboriginals were the real founders of Australia and that their culture was its founding principle. Not once did he mention the contribution of migrants to our national roots.

After the ‘Voice’ debacle, local officials have extended the length and range of their ‘Acknowledgements’, like the one at Corinella Hall during a Bass Coast Council election candidature meeting, where the fellow warbled on about aboriginal culture for so long that the only way I could avoid disrupting the meeting was to walk out of the meeting and let off steam outside.

A couple of months later, at a Council-sponsored literary reading at the premises of a local providore and restaurant, the mayor and our councillor both insisted on doing the short form Acknowledgement prayer, and on the second go, someone said, “Oh no, not again!” The good Councillor made the mistake of commenting that, “There is always one in every group”, to which I replied, “two” and others followed, “three”, going up to around eight.

There is clearly a building community irritation and frustration with this presumptuous ideological practice, which would be very analogous to Christians demanding to recite The Lord’s Prayer, or the Red Guard insistence on quoting the wisdom of Comrade Chairman Mao at length, every time they got up to speak.

The last straw for me was at the Corinella art show night of nights, when our local state Legislative Assembly member did the full prayer meeting Acknowledgment Declaration. I somehow got through it in silence, but promised myself that next time this happens, I am going to recite, as a counter acknowledgement, the Australian Citizenship Declaration of Loyalty. 

Christopher Nagle, Grantville