'It's In Our DNA': Why Aboriginal Cultural Protocol Welcome To Country Is Not Topic For Debate
An Aboriginal academic says the ancient cultural protocol of Welcome to Country demands genuine understanding and respect and urges Australians to embrace it as a living expression of unceded sovereignty - not a culture war talking point.
In Aotearoa, the pōwhiri has long been the formal ritual of welcome. Once used by iwi Māori to assess whether newcomers were friend or foe, today it greets all manuhiri (visitors) onto a marae or place.
Every iwi applies its own tikanga and kawa to pōwhiri - from karanga, to whaikōrero. But at its heart it is about extending and receiving manaakitanga (hospitality) and acknowledging the sacred link between people and place.
Across the Tasman, Aboriginal peoples maintain a similar tikanga - the Welcome to Country.
Delivered by a local Elder whose whakapapa ties them to that land, it too provides spiritual protection and affirms custodial authority.
Yet, as recent Anzac Day events in Te Whenua Moemoea revealed, this protocol is increasingly debated and even turned into "political bait" for the 2025 election.
Curtin University senior research fellow Dr Cally Jetta told RNZ there remains "a lot of resistance and denial" in Australia, as too many would rather "forget that side of everything and move on" than confront the deep history and responsibilities that a Welcome to Country embodies.
What is a Welcome to Country?
According to Jetta a Welcome to Country is a way to honour ancient and continuing First Nations customs.
"It's about honouring the fact that you are just one link in a chain. That this land - and the people who have been on it, looking after it - go back generations. Through that welcome, you are offered spiritual and cultural protection. It's a beautiful thing."
She said that "Country" does not refer to the nation-state of Australia but rather the hundreds of distinct Nations - similar to Aotearoa where different iwi and rohe would have different customs - each with its own language, story and protocol.
"When people say, 'I don't wanna be welcomed to my own country,' we're not talking about the country of Australia," she said.
"Australia didn't exist as a concept, as a word, as a term, as a nation prior to 1901, and definitely not back in 1788.
"Every single [area] represents a different country, a different cultural group that has different history, different ancestors, different stories, different ways of working with that land and country to look after it."
Jetta said whether it was indigenous people or non-indigenous people, they were all welcomed if they're not from that particular place.
Weaponising culture
Jetta believes the Welcome to Country has become "a political tool to weaponise and divide society to win political votes".
"Blackfellas here are just the poor scapegoats in the middle," she said.
"And any hate and resistance felt as a result of government initiatives. Don't go back on the government, they come back on Aboriginal people and communities themselves."
Although Labor won the 2025 federal election in a landslide, she said acute social crises were still being overshadowed by persistent anti-Indigenous rhetoric.
"Australia has massive drug issues, massive homelessness. People can't afford to get a house. And yet some political parties, their opening line, 'we're sick of being welcomed to our own country' just shows how hateful and petty politicians can be when they're chasing votes."
She believes Welcome to Country has been "misinterpreted and deliberately twisted".
"This isn't something that should be used as a political tool. This is something that should be treated with respect and dignity because it's 70,000 years old, far older than any concept of the nation of Australia."
Solidarity and the road ahead
Jetta hopes non-Indigenous Australians recognise that Welcome to Country is part of Australia's collective heritage, not an "optional extra".
"It's not just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and heritage. It's Australian knowledge and heritage."
She said the outcome of the 2023 Voice referendum - a proposal to recognise its First Peoples in the constitution, which was overwhelmingly voted down - had been a major setback.
"We were hoping that we would see that change with the Voice referendum. But it didn't happen. It just means we keep working harder."
Looking forward, Jetta said change would require true allyship from non-indigenous allies.
"We need non-First Nations allies as the dominant majority to stand up and help. When people hear these messages from their own communities, that's when real change happens."
However, she believes the world is at a "turning point".
"While we've seen this rise of that hard extremist right-wing rhetoric. We've seen on the other side, the younger generations and those coming through that are just going, no, we don't accept that."
"It's in our DNA. If we were meant to have rolled over and given up, we would've disappeared by now,"
"We won't stop walking until our grandchildren no longer have to debate their right to be welcomed on their own lands."
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Aaron Smale: Bill, Will and talkback trash
Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech. Bookbinder Bill Tito treats Shakespeare like a taonga, but receives racism and bigotry in return. Photo / Aaron Smale In a past life, Mana magazine editor Derek Fox asked me to take a photo of the bookbinder Bill Tito. Derek had written a human interest piece on a lovely man who came to the big city and landed an apprenticeship as a bookbinder, a master craft he has practised ever since. He's nearly 80. Bill is not only a lovely man but also interested in everything, and he had built a marketing style that revolved around pithy rhymes and his own natural charisma and charm. One of his catchlines was, 'Don't despair, think repair.' Books are one of my indulgences and stepping into Bill's workshop was to enter a wonderland of history and craftsmanship. It was filled with old and severely worn titles people had treasured over generations and couldn't bear to get rid of. Many were copies of The Bible the size of a modest doorstep. One was tiny and could fit into the palm of your hand. But it didn't matter – Bill would lovingly restore them all. Many others were editions of Shakespeare's works, also heirlooms that he restored to their former glory. In a recent radio ad, he referred to Shakespeare as England's kaumātua. That sounds to me like an expression of the utmost respect, which was how Bill intended it. Kaumātua can mean elder, but it's more than that. It encapsulates wisdom and reverence. It's a different meaning to rangatira, or chief/leader, but the two terms can overlap considerably. It was too much for some listeners to Newstalk ZB, where Bill was the target of racist vitriol in letter and by phone from mostly anonymous dickheads. There were insults about Māori literacy and just general racist nastiness. (Actually, in the 19th century, many Māori were more literate than many Pākehā getting off the boat, who weren't exactly speaking Shakespearean English, while some iwi had their own printing presses.) One woman accused Bill of virtue signalling. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have a clue what she was on about – he doesn't use email, let alone Facebook. But it's clear from her letter that this woman is a white supremacist, and a gutless one at that. She wasn't the only one. Suffice to say, Bill Tito was baffled and hurt. He does not deserve that kind of rubbish. Some Pākehā have a notion that everyone from the land of their forebears lived in castles and sat around reading Shakespeare all day, making them direct heirs and guardians to high culture and civilisation. The more likely history is that they're descended from illiterate peasants who left a shithole of a place in the hope of something better on the other side of the world. One of my first Pākehā ancestors to land here was a kid who, with his family, left County Monaghan in Ireland barely a generation after the famine and arrived here in the middle of the Land Wars. He was illiterate and spoke Gaelic. Within one generation, he and his sons owned several farms on confiscated land. Their something better came at someone else's expense. In his day, Shakespeare was entertainment mainly for the illiterate lower classes; his works didn't become canonised and revered as a high point in English literature until some time after his death. Only then did they become objects of status for upper-class snobs (and colonial wannabes). One of the strengths of the English language is that it's a mongrel of a thing. It's a mix of influences, including Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Celtic, Latin, French and German. Shakespeare ripped off narratives and characters and locations from other countries' histories all the time, including Italy and Denmark. Did the Italians tell him to cease and desist because he was sullying their high culture with lowbrow productions? Like all great literature, Shakespeare transcends his own time and place because he's dramatising the human condition, which is why his work has been produced in so many different ways. Leonardo DiCaprio featured in a version of Romeo and Juliet set amid a mob feud in a stylised Los Angeles. Do those who bitched at Bill Tito object to that? In 2012, the recreated Globe Theatre in London staged 37 performances of 37 Shakespeare plays by 37 theatre groups from around the world. One of those groups was Māori, Ngākau Toa, featuring Rawiri Paratene, one of our country's finest actors and a lover of Shakespeare. The costuming, language and performance were totally Māori and totally Shakespeare, and the Shakespeare aficionados viewing it were completely blown away by the intensity. Does that offend the sensibilities of ZB listeners? I reckon Old Will would be chuffed to be referred to as a kaumātua. And I also think Old Will would thank Old Bill Tito as a kaumātua and rangatira of his craft for preserving his works in physical form so lovingly.
