Originally Posted by
Icarus2001
So the first link (no agenda in the Quadrant eh?)
Instead, as is well if not widely known, they were created as recently as the 1970’s by none other than Ernie Dingo and his cobber, Dr Richard Walley
However if that "journalist" had bothered to actually check what Dr Walley had said about the practice he apparently created:
“It’s an old thing that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years,” Richard Walley OAM told NITV News over criticism Thursday by an historian that Welcome to Country ceremonies are new rituals.
“It’s the new interpretation of it that’s quite recent, but it’s connected to something that’s quite ancient.”
Dr Walley never claimed to have created Welcome to Country, just start the modern interpretation into mainstream Australia of a long held tradition
The Australian Geographic article:
For thousands of years Aboriginal people have performed a type of ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremony when one tribal group sought to enter the lands of another. This traditional protocol took many forms, it could be spoken, sung, performed and possibly there would be a smoking ceremony, depending on the traditions of the local group.
Almost exactly 40 years ago these ceremonies first began to enter the Australian mainstream after a performance by West Australian Richard Walley and the Middar Theatre at the Perth International Arts Festival (which is on again for another few days) of 1976.
Yep that's pretty much what I said
In an aviation context some airlines are performing Acknowledgment of Country on flights, not Welcome to Country so this debate is a bit redundant anyway
As for the dot art article:
Before Indigenous Australian art was ever put onto canvas the Aboriginal people would smooth over the soil to draw sacred designs which belonged to that particular ceremony.
Body paint was also applied which held meanings connected to sacred rituals. These designs were outlined with circles and encircled with dots.
Dot painting originated 40 years ago back in 1971. Geoffrey Bardon was assigned as an art teacher for the children of the Aboriginal people in Papunya, near Alice Springs. He noticed whilst the Aboriginal men were telling stories they would draw symbols in the sand.
Bardon encouraged his students to paint a mural based on traditional dreamings on the school walls. The murals sparked incredible interest in the community. He incited them to paint the stories onto canvas and board. Soon many of the men began painting as well.
At first they used cardboard or pieces of wood, which was later replaced by canvas.
Bardon helped the Aboriginal artists transfer depictions of their stories from desert sand to paint on canvas.
Yep that's pretty much what I said. Indigenous art, some in dots, was first done on rocks, bodies, in the sand even, before being transferred onto canvas. But the art and the stories behind it go way back. Think of it like Renaissance artists painting things like the Sistine Chapel. Artwork made of an artist's interpretation of religious or spiritual stories from long ago. Indigenous spiritual stories have mostly been passed down via oral tradition, but same principal. We don't look at grand examples of Renaissance art and think "yeah these events probably never happened so the art is therefore meaningless" now do we?
Aviation context - we've had some fantastic Indigenous artwork on Australian aircraft. Of course those exact paintings weren't done thousands of years ago, but the meaning and stories behind them have a long tradition.
Flying Art Series