Indigenous focus accused of being lip service Manager: Members of K-pop’s BTS are positive for COVID

Social custom raises recognition, but advocates say it’s coming without any constructive action

SYDNEY — In a nation known for laidback attitudes, a solemn protocol is spreading. Before weddings and rugby matches, school assemblies and art gallery openings, board meetings and legislative debates, Australians are increasingly paying tribute to Indigenous people.

The custom, known as an “acknowledgment of country,” has been growing for decades. But it has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic as workplaces have incorporated it into online meetings.

Short statements recognizing Indigenous people and their ties to the land now adorn shop windows, wine bottles and corporate websites. And, in a sign of its increasing impact on pop culture, the issue featured recently in the finale to one of Australia’s most popular TV shows, The Bachelorette.

Many Indigenous leaders say the trend is a small but important step toward Australia’s recognizing and redressing the violent dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

But others fear that the custom has become a Band-Aid, hiding wounds in need of surgery.

“If you look at the trajectory of Aboriginal advocacy for structural change, the kind we’ve never done, the kind that actually will make a big difference ... every time we get close to it, we just choose to do really inane things as a nation that don’t get us anywhere but make everyone feel good,” said Megan

Davis, a law professor at the University of New South Wales.

In Australia, Indigenous groups ceremonially welcomed each other for thousands of years before British colonists arrived in 1788. Britain never entered into a treaty with Indigenous Australians and eventually deemed the continent terra nullius, or land belonging to no one. Massacres and pestilence would kill the majority of the Indigenous population over the next century. When Australia became a nation in 1901, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were unmentioned in the constitution; they were unable to vote until the 1960s. And for much of the 20th century, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and land in what became known as the Stolen Generations.

Indigenous activists began publicly to revive “welcome to country” ceremonies in the 1970s and ’80s as the Aboriginal land rights movement gathered momentum.

The 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney opened with a welcome to country. And in 2008, the custom kicked off federal Parliament for the first time, with acknowledgments of country becoming a daily ritual for legislators in 2010.

That same year, however, conservative politician Tony Abbott, who later became prime minister, called the growing acknowledgments of country “tokenism” and a “genuflection to political correctness.”

A decade later, murals marking “unceded land” are common in major cities. Many Twitter users list Indigenous names for their location.

In November, the last Sydney City Council refusing to conduct an acknowledgment of country relented. And the conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, frequently starts speeches with an acknowledgment of country.

Meggan Brummer, a marriage celebrant in Sydney, said the number of couples asking her to begin ceremonies with an acknowledgment of country has spiked in the past two years.

“Now it feels almost like you’re expected to do it,” she said.

Davis, who is Aboriginal, said the custom got out of hand during the pandemic as academic Zoom calls were flooded with an acknowledgment of country from each participant.

“It became this big performative competition for Australian progressives,” she said, adding that one acknowledgment is enough.

At the same time, the very real gulf between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians was growing, she said.

First Nations people were supposed to be a priority during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, they have lower vaccination rates and higher infection rates than non-Indigenous Australians. Already sky-high rates of Indigenous suicide and incarceration became worse.

A push for greater political recognition has also flagged. A 2017 convention of Indigenous leaders resulted in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a document calling for a truth-telling process, a treaty-making commission and a constitutionally certified Indigenous advisory body to Parliament.

Morrison’s government rejected the first two and recently revealed what critics say is a watered-down version of the advisory body ahead of a federal election next year.

“We have gone backwards in most areas of Aboriginal rights,” Davis said. “At the same time, we’ve got this embracing of Aboriginal culture in a pop culture sense. COVID has just made it worse.”

SEOUL, South Korea — Three members of the K-pop superstar group BTS have been infected with COVID-19 after returning from abroad, their management agency said.

RM and Jin were diagnosed with COVID-19 on Saturday evening, the Big Hit Music agency said in a statement. It earlier said another member, Suga, tested positive for the virus Friday.

All took their second vaccinations in August, the agency said.

According to the agency, RM has exhibited no particular symptoms while Jin is showing mild symptoms including light fever and is undergoing self-treatment at home. The agency said Friday Suga wasn’t exhibiting symptoms and was administering self-care at home in accordance with the guidelines of the health authorities.

Since their debut in 2013, BTS has garnered global recognition for their self-produced music and activism, which includes giving a speech at the United Nations and publicly calling out anti-Asian racism.