Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
It turns out the origins of “Welcome to Country”—that allegedly 60,000-year-old Indigenous ceremony performed by Elders at the start of football matches to formally welcome visitors to their ancestral lands—aren’t quite what they seem. The ceremony essentially implies that unless you’re of a certain bloodline, it’s not your land. But as it happens, this “ancient” tradition was introduced within my lifetime, in the 1980s.
Most of you likely knew that, but the recent media coverage confirms it. Following her passing this month, the ABC reported: “Rhoda Roberts, the woman behind ‘Welcome to Country’, dies at 66.” The Guardian noted: “Rhoda Roberts, Indigenous cultural leader who introduced the term ‘welcome to country’, dies.” Even SBS—where she served as inaugural Elder in Residence—stated: “She has been credited with starting the tradition of acknowledgement at public events and coining the term ‘Welcome to Country’,” which she developed “in the 1980s.”
To be clear, I’m not here to speak ill of the dead; she isn’t here to defend her actions, and this isn’t a personal attack. However, the fact that these major media outlets are explicitly linking her to the origin of the “Welcome to Country” means they are essentially admitting she created it—or at least the modern version we see today.
But I think this is a bit unfair. Perhaps she coined the term, but as many of you would know, it was actually Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley who are credited with staging the first modern public performance of “Welcome to Country” in 1976.
As The Guardian declared in 2016: “Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley on the 40th year of their welcome to country.” So that was at least four years earlier than the timeline currently being attributed to Rhoda Roberts.
But if you dig even further back, there was a “Welcome” documented at the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin, performed by Uncle Lyle Roberts. As Australian Geographic stated in their retrospective, “In pictures: Remembering Aquarius,” they note: “It was the first festival known to invite traditional owners, the Bundjalung people, and to open with a Welcome to Country.”
So that was a cool three years earlier than even Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley—and a full decade before the 1980s timeline being credited to Rhoda Roberts this month.
In her own words, Ms Roberts spoke in late 2025 about coining the term “Welcome to Country”:
“Everyone kept trying to correct it, ‘Welcome to the Country’ or ‘our Country’, and I said, ‘It’s not ours. We live with it.’ So that’s how it became Welcome to Country. It makes people feel special. It’s a bit like, if I’m going to turn up at your house, I’m going to bring a good bottle of Shiraz and a bunch of flowers. It’s good manners.”
To me, she isn’t describing an ancient ritual passed down through the ages; she is describing a deliberate linguistic choice she made. Before that, the ceremony was largely a protocol used internally between different Indigenous groups—a way of negotiating passage across borders—not a scripted public performance for the general population.
Anyway, what do you think? Was “Welcome to Country”—as we know it—invented in the 1980s, the 1970s, or 60,000 B.C.?
You decide.
MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn
It turns out the origins of “Welcome to Country”—that allegedly 60,000-year-old Indigenous ceremony performed by Elders at the start of football matches to formally welcome visitors to their ancestral lands—aren’t quite what they seem. The ceremony essentially implies that unless you’re of a certain bloodline, it’s not your land. But as it happens, this “ancient” tradition was introduced within my lifetime, in the 1980s.
Most of you likely knew that, but the recent media coverage confirms it. Following her passing this month, the ABC reported: “Rhoda Roberts, the woman behind ‘Welcome to Country’, dies at 66.” The Guardian noted: “Rhoda Roberts, Indigenous cultural leader who introduced the term ‘welcome to country’, dies.” Even SBS—where she served as inaugural Elder in Residence—stated: “She has been credited with starting the tradition of acknowledgement at public events and coining the term ‘Welcome to Country’,” which she developed “in the 1980s.”
To be clear, I’m not here to speak ill of the dead; she isn’t here to defend her actions, and this isn’t a personal attack. However, the fact that these major media outlets are explicitly linking her to the origin of the “Welcome to Country” means they are essentially admitting she created it—or at least the modern version we see today.
But I think this is a bit unfair. Perhaps she coined the term, but as many of you would know, it was actually Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley who are credited with staging the first modern public performance of “Welcome to Country” in 1976.
As The Guardian declared in 2016: “Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley on the 40th year of their welcome to country.” So that was at least four years earlier than the timeline currently being attributed to Rhoda Roberts.
But if you dig even further back, there was a “Welcome” documented at the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin, performed by Uncle Lyle Roberts. As Australian Geographic stated in their retrospective, “In pictures: Remembering Aquarius,” they note: “It was the first festival known to invite traditional owners, the Bundjalung people, and to open with a Welcome to Country.”
So that was a cool three years earlier than even Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley—and a full decade before the 1980s timeline being credited to Rhoda Roberts this month.
In her own words, Ms Roberts spoke in late 2025 about coining the term “Welcome to Country”:
“Everyone kept trying to correct it, ‘Welcome to the Country’ or ‘our Country’, and I said, ‘It’s not ours. We live with it.’ So that’s how it became Welcome to Country. It makes people feel special. It’s a bit like, if I’m going to turn up at your house, I’m going to bring a good bottle of Shiraz and a bunch of flowers. It’s good manners.”
To me, she isn’t describing an ancient ritual passed down through the ages; she is describing a deliberate linguistic choice she made. Before that, the ceremony was largely a protocol used internally between different Indigenous groups—a way of negotiating passage across borders—not a scripted public performance for the general population.
Anyway, what do you think? Was “Welcome to Country”—as we know it—invented in the 1980s, the 1970s, or 60,000 B.C.?
You decide.
MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn
