Megan Davis starts her discussion about the empty symbolism of Acknowledgements of Country spoken by non-Indigenous Australians with reference to the Republic. She writes: “There is an uncritical but flawed assumption that Aboriginal people are unquestionably Australian republicans. Professor Marcia Langton, responding to republican ridicule of the pomp and circumstance of the British royal family, pointed out that many Aboriginal people in fact have deep respect for the ceremony of the Crown, because our culture understands the power of ritual and symbolism. Such customary protocols speak to the conservatism of culture – it is slow to change – but provide continuity between the past and the present.” Although WfaAR was aware of this while campaigning for the 1999 referendum and since, this is timely reminder for the Australian republican movement that it cannot take the support of Indigenous people for the Republic as a given. [“The Promise of an Australian Homecoming” by Megan Davis, The Monthly July 2020 edition, p8-11)
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
