The acknowledgement of country. G'day I'm Martyn Iles and this
is The Truth Of It, and this is a practice that has exploded in
prevalence in workplaces, public places, events right
across the country and people have therefore been asking me
about it. I've received several requests to explain this
because there's a number of people who say they're
uncomfortable with it and they don't know why or maybe they're
just wondering what they should think of it. And that is
because it's not immediately clear cut. There are many more
serious practices associated with indigenous cultural
recognition, like smoking ceremonies, calling up spirits
(which has been happening actually at some public events)
and all that kind of thing. Presumably, people can see on
the whole that those are bad ideas and best not to
participate in but Welcome to Country is just one of those
things that's less clear. It's not immediately apparent to
everybody but I have given it quite a bit of thought and
those thoughts have led me to the point where I have now made
a conscious decision to avoid saying it. Some will say I'm
over-cautious, but let me explain to you why I've made that
decision. It's not out of any prejudice to Indigenous people. Quite the
contrary, it's because I'm actually not convinced that
it's the right thing to do and if it's not right, then it's
not right for anyone. That's the whole point of finding out
what is right and what is wrong. It's for everyone.
There are a few reasons though why I'm convinced it's not
right, but one of the reasons is bigger than the others. It is a
spiritual reason. Let me explain. The Welcome to Country
is, as you know, about land, ancestors, and descendants.
Why? Well, there are, we are told, that it must include these
components these things are important to Indigenous
culture. To question that is to be told and this has
happened to me, I'm sure it's happened to some of you, is to
be told that you are coming from a white perspective and
that you don't understand the importance, for example, of the
land in Indigenous culture. In other words the Welcome to
Country arises from a certain foundation of beliefs. It's not
random. It's not just the white guy who decided to be nice and
polite. It's rooted in certain convictions and a certain worldview that belong to ancient Indigenous convictions and
worldview which contemporary Indigenous people either hold
to or don't hold to in varying degrees. They're not some kind
of mass who all think the same, not at all, on this stuff.
But, what convictions and worldview specifically is this
that we need to drill down into? Well, let's go to a very
good source, the Uluru Statement From the Heart. A great source.
Here's a quote from that statement which will set us on
a pathway to finding the answers. Quote: "Sovereignty is
a spiritual notion." It's important right? A spiritual
notion. "The ancestral tie between the land or mother
nature and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
who were born there from, remain attached there too, and must one
day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link
is the basis of the ownership of the soil or better of
sovereignty." Now, in other words, what you see there is a
statement of pagan belief or a very strong shadow of pagan
belief and worldview and to explain why that matters, I
need to explain paganism. So, strap yourselves in. Paganism is a
belief system with a few key parts and one part is this, and
this is really at the core of it, pagan gods are part of the
universe. Pagan gods are of the same order of things as the
heavens and the earth, of creation itself. They are the
same stuff that the universe is made out of. They are like
created things in that sense and, when I say that you, you
know of biblical references that talk in that way, god's
like the creation. Yeah, that's paganism. Ancient pagan
belief systems include a whole range of different things. For
example, they could be tribal and Indigenous belief systems
and that's obvious but also there are those pagan empires
like Greece, Babylon, Rome, also forms of paganism. Notice though,
they all have a common trait and there's common themes that
tie these together as pagan right and they actually
manifest very similar practice as a result. We won't get to
that just yet. They all have this common trait: Many gods and
all of those gods are really part of the stuff of the
universe itself. Take ancient Greece, this is a really clear example,
partly because we got so much written about it right, from
the primary sources as well. From Hesiod's Theogony -
quote: "The race of venerable gods who rose from the
beginning, whom the spacious heaven and earth produced." See?
"gods who are part of the heaven and earth paradigm who are part
of the same stuff. Notice that they're produced by the
heavens and the earth. Or, you can take the ancient Babylonian
myth where you find a very similar sort of connection
between gods and stuff. Where Nammu, the lady of the gods is
giving birth to the universe and she's described as a "primeval
sea" out of which the gods and out of which the creation
emerged. The same stuff right? Or, the Dreamtime narratives like
the rainbow serpent. You will be familiar with that.
Part of the stuff of creation and animal in fact, which is
significant in Indigenous Dreamtime but, this rainbow serpent
created "more life" as in of the same kind for the world. Does
this really matter? It kind of does. I'm going to give you
a couple of quotes. The first one is from Werner Jaeger on the
difference between the Christian God and pagan
gods and he particularly is taking up Greece and the Greek
and Hebrew gods but Christian and pagan or Judeo Christian
and pagan. He says this: "Logos is God the Creator who is
stationed outside the world and brings that world into
existence." As Christians we'll know 'Ex nihilo' - out of
nothing. "Brings that universe into existence by His own
personal fiat or His own personal command." "The Greek god" says
Werner. In other words the pagan gods "are stationed inside the
world. They are descended from heaven and earth. They are
generated by the mighty power of Eros who likewise belongs
within the world as an all-engendering spiritual, all
engendering primitive force." So there's this force of spirituality
which is also of the stuff of the world and creation called
Eros. This is what Professor John Lennox, who many of you
will respect says - He says: "The key statement here..." He's talking about
Werner's comments... "The key statement here is the Greek
gods are stationed inside the world. We should not think that
the only difference between Hebrew and Greek worldview..." In
other words, Judeo-Christian and pagan worldview "...is that the
Hebrews reduce the number of gods to one. Hebrew monotheism
is not a slim-down version of pagan polytheism. The God of
the Hebrews is outside the world. This is an absolute
difference in category, not a mere difference in degree. It
is also why, as we have already noted, the God of the Hebrews
gives meaning to the world, whereas the pagan gods do not." In fact they
cannot. "The meaning of the system will not be found inside
the system." Professor Lennox says: "Look, to identify whether
something is paganism, you need to have, to start, with five key
things. One - Matter is eternal and it existed before the gods.
Two - In its basic state, matter was formless, unorganised, and
boundless chaos. Three - Some god imposed order and form on
the basic stuff of the universe and the process, and this process is
what is meant by creation. Four - Even this god, like all
others, arose out of the original matter and is part of
the stuff or one of the forces of the universe. Five -
Everything in the universe emanates out of this god like
sunbeams out of the sun and so in some sense, everything is
god." Notice that last point "...in some sense, everything is God."
The mighty power, for example, of Eros runs through it all. This
primitive animating life force, this spiritual pulse. Well, the
Indigenous Dreamtime belief has a very similar thing and
that system of belief, the land, is in some sense like Eros. It
is the spiritual empowering, the spiritual pulse, which has its
origin inside creation, in the bowels of the land itself right.
Right from within the heart of creation. It's an all
engendering primitive force of the divine. It is the animating
power of spirits of ancestors, of people, of animals (and it's very
animistic belief). Ancestors and that's why we acknowledge them
now because it's all part of this spiritual force, the land,
which continues in perpetuity and descendants that are yet to
spring from it. It's why we acknowledge them now and in the
Indigenous system Uluru is the most sacred land of all. It's
the sacred central nervous system of this spirituality and
geological arteries if you like, a belief to spread across the
land from Uluru, taking this spirit force from the heart of
the nation if you like, or the heart of the land. It is a
pagan system with the land at its core. It also encompasses,
as I said, animism with animal beings like the rainbow serpent
taking on a god-like quality and these two come from where?
The land. And, animal spirits are closely tied to witch doctoring
and it gets quite freaky actually, and spooky, when you
get into some of that stuff. These are bound up with the life-
force of the land and you know land forms are always named
after animals and things like that. It's all it's all the god
of the stuff. You know the god is in the universe. It's in the
land and that which is birthed from it. The moral of the story
is here we have classic paganism. God is stuff. God is
not outside the system. In a sense everything is god. The
all engendering primitive force emanates from the land itself.
That is the backdrop see, and I go through all that theory to
say that is the backdrop from which Welcome to Country
emerges. Or it is the context in which it comes up as a thing,
right? And you say well alright is it really a big deal? It kind
of is you know and this is what I've had to grapple with. It
actually is a big deal and I can't get around that. First of
all because paganism actually is in a sense, real. These
spirits are real. They're very real. They're just not good.
Second, the first commandment was given by the Hebrew God as
we've been reading or the one true God, the Creator of
heavens and earth who made things that 'ex nihilo' out of nothing.
He gave a first commandment to his people in a particular
context before I get to that commandment. And the context
was that his people were surrounded by exactly the same
category of belief system. The pagan nations all around them.
And the whole point continually made and continually
established through their laws and practices was this.
Separate yourselves. Don't touch that stuff. Be pure. Be
sanctified from it. Set yourselves apart. As it says, be
holy as I the Lord your God am holy. In other words pure and
separated. And this is what God says when He gives the first
commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall
not make for yourself a carved image. Or notice the language
here. A carved image or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the
water under the earth. A likeness of something that is
part of the stuff of creation, right? You shall not bow down to them. You
shall not serve them. For I the Lord your God am a jealous God.
It's serious, right? Or in Romans 1, this pagan
spirituality is singled out as quote unquote 'the lie', which is
contrasted with the truth about God. It says quote, they
exchanged the glory of the immortal God, the One who's
transcendent, the Creator. For images resembling mortal man
and birds and animals and creeping things. They exchanged
it for the stuff of creation. I think we've been generally slow,
and I speak for myself, to catch on to the spiritual issues that
are going to be at play in this whole indigenous recognition
stuff. Many indigenous cultural practices are intrinsically
spiritual. And some are obvious and overt like I mentioned some
of them at the start, and we're even seeing a real rise in
those. Some not so obvious, and I accept that Welcome to
Country is in the 'not so obvious' category. But
personally, I am left with enough doubt given all that
context and more than enough warnings from scripture to play
it safe, and to make a decision that I will avoid doing it and
I'm left with an answer as to why in my own spirit I was
troubled when I heard it done. And I have heard that from many
Christians who say they're just not comfortable, and maybe this
is why. Briefly some footnotes that I really do need to add.
One, three of them. One, people will say, are they not
Christian versions of Welcome to Country? Yes, there are. I'm
not going to go through all the Christian versions out there
and say whether one is completely free of ideology or
whether one's completely pure. I'm not going to do that. There
are versions, and I accept that there are statements out there
that people use that replace Welcome to Country that are
pretty good statements, okay? I'm not going to go into all of
that. What I'm talking about here is the practices people
are encountering it in the public squares - in their work,
in their play, in their studies, and so forth. That's
what I've been asked about. Churches will have their own
ways of dealing with this. Personally, I'd rather just
not because I just feel like it's not coming from a good for
good reason from the very beginning but that's me and I'm
not going to get too involved in what churches are trying to
do to make a better way of dealing with
this. Two, someone's going to say to me, wasn't Adam from the
land? Dust you are and into dust you shall return said
God. Now that is, He did say that but importantly, what
did He mean by it? He meant that Adam was a finite creature
and he was going to return to dust and that would be the end
of his physical body. He wasn't being spiritually
reunited with dust to continue in perpetuity as part of this,
you know in this spirit realm and force of the
world. No, no. God made His spirit 'ex nihilo' out of nothing
and God required it back when he died. You notice when God is
outside the system, it changes everything. Don't be deceived
when people come up to you with verses like that, that sound
like 'ooh this is a little bit of paganism'. No, it is not. It's
completely different because the nature of God is different.
Three, and finally, people say and someone did say this to me,
'why can't you just be nice?' You know, this is important to some
people. Why can't you just say it? My answer to that is
actually, I am being nice. If we define nice is acting in
people's best interests. Because affirming paganism or
entangling oneself in false spirituality is not in anyone's
best interests. And by the way, acting for the good of others
is the biblical definition of love, which is actually a
Christian virtue. Niceness is not, right? Nice is not a fruit
of the spirit. We're here to do what is best and right for
everybody and on that definition, we need to find the
truth about these things and act accordingly. Finally, I do
want to suggest this, because I really do believe it and I know
of a couple of organisations that are doing great work here,
which I won't mention because next, they'll get a journalist
shoving a microphone in their face to ask if they agree with
me, and they probably don't anyway. But I just want to
suggest that there are organisations doing practical
charity, economic empowerment work. And Christian
organisations doing evangelism, discipleship, and charity and
so forth in indigenous communities. And they are very
much worth supporting, because they are doing a lot of good, a
lot of good and frankly are likely to achieve far more good
than the sorts of platitudes that we're now asked to make
over dinner, like Welcome to Country. I'm Martyn Iles and
that was The Truth of It.