And yet the flag only appeared in 1971......

What? About the same time as that traditional dot painting style.
Gne

mccrindle reasearch survey 2013Personally I see the upper left as representing our history, why should we not acknowledge it? It's good enough for the state of Hawaii, it too represents a significant part of their history. Perhaps my view is shaped by having served under the flag, as did my Father in WWII, and a brother KIA.Amen Keg.

and the ‘traditional’ welcome to country and smoking ceremonies..

Are there any literary, educational or other grants that are exclusively for non-aboriginal people? No?
Then why am I excluded from receiving money for things reserved for ATSI people? Such discrimination in reverse only serves to continue the Apology Grovelling and dividing our nation. We are all in it together, don't go down the Them and Us road.

Here's a more recent and larger survey:

The survey found 64 per cent of respondents believed the Australian flag should change, compared with 36 per cent who believed it should remain the same.

History is a multifaceted thing. For some it represents what they see as positive aspects of Australia's history. For a lot of Indigenous people it represents a government, a people who legally discriminated against them, denied them to right to vote, separated families, banned them from clubs, cafes and hotels.

Dot painting specifically on canvas originated in the 1970's, but the tradition of Indigenous art, partly in dot style, had been done on rocks, bodies and even in the sand for about 5,000-10,000 years.

Nope, Welcome to Country ceremonies have been an established part of Indigenous culture for thousands of years, generally being kept between groups of indigenous people only, but also were made for Dutch and Indonesian explorers 300-400 years ago.

The whole fact non Indigenous Australians only became aware of such practices in the 70's may have had something to do with the social changes in Australia regarding relations between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians that occurred in the 60s and 70s. With open discrimination still pretty common, learning the cultural practices of Indigenous people wasn't a high priority for most other Australians.

There is some thread drift RH however, there is no suggestion at play to alter the QA emblem.

Shouldn't an ape feature on the new flag? After all that's where it all began.

An aquaintance who is currently a senior Public Servant in Canberra once informed me that they were invented by Canberra Bureaucrats in the early 70's. And so were the 'traditional smoking ceremonies'.

Make of that what you will.

My own opinion is that there were around 500 different Tribes of Indigenous Peoples existant around the time of the arrival of the First Fleet, that they all had these 'traditional' ceremonies, ie 'Welcome to Country' and 'Smoking' is indeed somewhat hard to accept.

Considering also, that it is well recorded that most Tribes simply did not get along with each others and quite often engaged in some fairly bloody battles with each other!

True, faithfully recorded in thousands of years of written aboriginal history along with aboriginal aerodynamics texts.

I would be reluctant to rely on a Wikipedia article that contains no historical (as in, written prior to 2000) references.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/benn...ut-preferable/

https://www.australiangeographic.com...me-to-country/

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arc...361a5db68c546f

https://www.aboriginal-art-australia...hind-the-dots/

Do some reading and make up your own mind, Dr Dre clearly has.

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

I'm afraid your links don't persuade me one way or the other Icarus, I'd like to read something scholarly by someone who knows what s/he's talking about. I'll ask the question of someone who has had much to do with the outback communities when we next meet for coffee to gauge their opinion.

It's a pity there is no avenue currently available whereby we can learn of the Aboriginal norms and culture. The Alaskian Clinkit native tribe have perfected the teaching of their customs to visitors

Do you mean "other Americans"??

That is part of the point, to think that a group of aboriginals in Cape York had anything in common with a group in lower WA is difficult to understand. To try to call hundreds of disparate nomadic tribes a “First Nation” is social engineering, unless of course you follow Bruce Pascoe and believe they built thousands of huts and were farming.

The core issue is, when the British came to Australia there were people already living here. It is evident they were here for a very very long time, so long in fact they are considered the first inhabitants of this land or by definition, Aboriginal. There is a flag that represents this fact and is freely available for public use. Considering what it represents it should given sufficient exposure to become readily identified as being associated with Australia. There are Australian aircraft that fly around the nation and overseas, many of these aircraft have a flag painted on their external surface, why not add the Aboriginal flag?

I get what you’re saying. Why not? Perhaps because it’s a flag that represents about 2% of the population, whereas the national flag represents everyone. I realise there are other ways of looking at it.

Why not? Go ahead. If you want the “aboriginal” flag up there then also put up the TSI flag. Why not?