Last night, my husband Stu and I went to a wonderful piano recital. The music was augmented by perpetually kinetic graphics on two large screens. It was an audiovisual feast for the senses.
As the show was beginning, a disembodied voice filled the sound proofed room. An Acknowledgment of Country. It caught my breath. Stu leaned close to my ear and whispered, ‘feels kind of hollow now, doesn’t it?’
I sat there feeling so defeated. My busy brain unable to quash the thought that 60% of the 1000 people surrounding me had voted no on the Voice to Parliament referendum. That the acknowledgment doesn’t carry the same weight of importance or inspire the same deep feelings of respect to my fellow audience members, as it does for me.
Before I got too carried away with my doom and gloom I remembered I was in the heart of Melbourne with an arty crowd. Good chance my music appreciating companions were as devastated as Stu and I. And, that they were feeling wrenched by the acknowledgment too.
How can we live with this feeling of guilt because we, as a nation, have duped our First Nations people with smoke and mirrors? We go through the motions, but when it really matters, we can’t follow through. We are shamefully the only colonial country without constitutional recognition of our Indigenous people.
My wish is that one day I will sit and listen to Acknowledgement of Country with a sense of pride in the recognition of 65,000 years of culture and tradition of Aboriginal people in Australia. I wonder how we will get to that place now.