Acknowledgement of Country
At the Brotherhood of St. Laurence (BSL), an Acknowledgement of Country should be delivered at the commencement of an event or meeting - but how should it be done?
An Acknowledgement can a beautiful respectful pause of thanks, thanks to the people who've looked after the land and water on behalf of us for more than 70 000 years - the Traditional Owners and ongoing Custodians of the Land - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
When looking at your acknowledgement it is important to remember that every single community is different, with its own culture and every one of those communities expresses that culture in a different way, with more than 250 Indigenous languages including 800 dialects, it's an extraordinary story of diversity.
When making an Acknowledgment, we all have a role to play in making it our own in a meaningful way by asking:
- who are the Traditional Owners?
- what's their name?
- What's their story?
and then asking yourself...
- what's my story?
- what's my connection to this land?
When you put the two stories together you end up with a collection and it's that collective of two stories that makes the framework of your acknowledgement.
Hear more about delivering an Acknowledgement of Country that really means something by watching the TEDx talk by Shelley Reys below and explore our new Acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the Lands page.
For closed captions and transcript please open in YouTube.