If you have recently witnessed a ceremony (for example: a school assembly, meeting or presentation), the speaker may have delivered an 'Acknowledgement of Country' or a 'Welcome to Country.'
This tradition is becoming more common in modern Australian society due to our changing social values, and represents an increased effort to acknowledge the significance of Indigenous Australians in our culture. It is a formal feature of either spoken or written language, and caters to the positive face needs of Indigenous Australians in the audience.
Notably, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese included an Acknowledgement of Country at the beginning of his victory speech on election day in May 2022.
The choice to include this as an introduction immediately indicated his support of the Indigenous community and signalled his personal values to Australian voters.
Acknowledgements of Country are also being integrated into written language, as seen in the email I received in early 2022 from VATE (the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English):
An 'Acknowledgement of Country' is delivered by a non-Indigenous person, and will generally follow a formula similar to this example:
I begin today by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we <gather/meet> today, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.
A full explanation of these two procedures is available here: Indigenous.gov.au
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