A furious dad has vented his anger after a Welcome to Country ceremony was performed before his son’s Little Athletics session.
James said his son and other kids were ’rounded up’ at Inner West Little Athletics in Sydney to watch non-indigenous coaches perform the ceremony.
‘Some of the parents kind of looked at each other and the kids were looking at each other, and the coaches kept going on with it,’ James told 2GB on Thursday.
‘And I’m thinking, what’re we doing? Do we do this around the world? Welcome to Country – these kids probably don’t even understand what the whole story about Indigenous culture is.
‘To do it every session now – I’m thinking, “are we going down the wrong path here?” It’s just a bit too much.’
James claimed the coaches did not appear to be Aboriginal, and questioned whether Welcome to Country ceremonies were going too far.
‘Who were they welcoming, and why?’ host Ben Fordham asked.
James said he had lived in the Northern Territory for many years but suggested such ceremonies be reserved for special occasions rather than routine events.
Fordham said a friend had recently attended a pilates class in Melbourne which started with an Acknowledgement of Country.
Unlike a Welcome to Country, an Acknowledgement of Country is brief and can be delivered by an non-Aboriginal person.
‘It makes no sense whatsoever. All it does is divide people based on race – that’s all it does,’ Fordham said.
‘And that’s why, overwhelmingly, people are turning away from these things.
‘We’re better off just saying ‘look, we’re here in , we’re all ns – full stop’.’
Fordham said ns should acknowledge Aboriginal ancestors who lived on the continent prior to colonization but many other peoples had also worked and sacrificed a lot in building the country without any such ceremonial recognition.
‘We can highlight all those things, but when kids are going to mini athletics to a training session and the non-Indigenous coaches kick off with an Acknowledgment or Welcome, you can understand why the kids and the parents are scratching their heads,’ he said.
Marty Romer is Aboriginal and a life member of Emu Plains Athletics Club and he too believes the ubiquity of Welcome to Country ceremonies are diluting their meaning.
‘To me, it’s something that doesn’t need to be done unless it’s on a special occasion, not every time you step onto a sporting field,’ Mr Romer told Daily Mail on Friday.
‘Maybe at the start of the year, you know, thanks for letting us use the fields, then away you go.’
Welcome to Country ceremonies are not cheap and across 21 government departments over the 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years have cost taxpayers $452,953.
Cost breakdowns revealed on average $1,266 was spent per ceremony, with some of the highest-spending departments the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet ($41,801), the n Institute of Sport ($47,003) and the National Indigenous ns Agency ($60,342).
Opposition government waste spokesman James Stevens said there was ‘a place’ for the ceremonies, but that the events had become a ‘multimillion-dollar industry’.
‘Welcomes to Country should be genuine and authentic, not a lucrative income stream at the taxpayers’ expense,’ he said.
‘Spending millions on ‘Welcome’ ceremonies does nothing to address the challenges facing Indigenous ns.’
Indigenous Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price last week said the Coalition would axe federal funding for the ceremonies if they won the upcoming federal election.
Daily Mail has contacted Inner West Little Athletics for comment.