You have mis-read this entire thing, my friend.

To use your analogy, if everyone took a minute silence but spent it browsing Facebook on their phone, would that be respectful? No, it would be pointless.

Edit: to be very explicit, I think Australia needs to reconcile with its Aboriginal people. I don't know how that looks, I'm not an expert. We should probably ask NZ. But reading a boilerplate statement at the start of a meeting doesn't do that. It makes it look like we're doing something whereas in reality we are doing literally nothing. And it makes good people who might actually want to do something cynical, because they just think "this pointless nonsense again?"

>I don’t know what that looks like, I’m not an expert

Yikes! Maybe the people who are asking us to do a welcome to country might know what it looks like!

Honest question, have you ever spoken to an elder about the topic of welcome to country?

I'll come back to my example above. A minute's silence is a meaningful moment because we all shut the fuck up for a minute, stand still, and actually think about those lost at war. I think about my grandad. It makes me cry.

If instead we all just went about our business while being silent: checked Facebook, had a piss, replied to an email, then it would cease to be meaningful. And you'd say "oh but what would you know about meaning, the people who know say that you should be silent for a minute!"

I may be totally wrong -- no, I've not spoken to an elder -- but if they think that they're actually getting any respect, or moving forward their cause, by

having companies have someone read the Welcome to Country in broken monotone at the start of a meeting, or

having companies put up banners on websites that you have to click through, or

having the Qantas crew say "laides and gentlemen welcome to Melbourne where the local time is midday and it's eighteen degrees outside and we would like to pay our respects to the people of this land past and present" at the standard cadence of an airline steward,

then I'm going to be politically incorrect and say that they're deluded. And they're worse than deluded: this is at best doing nothing and at worst it is causing harm, because this is causing your regular Aussie to become sick of the whole sorry charade.

Words have a literal meaning, but you don't get the emotional meaning for free. You have to earn that part. I can say "I love you", but I don't love you. This entire country is saying these words but they have lost all meaning in the vast majority of cases.

If you think that's good I don't know what to tell you.

> Meaningless for who? You or the people your paying respect to?

Everyone. The person saying it doesn’t mean it. The people they’re ostensibly saying it to receive no benefit.

> Maybe! Maybe not. I know which side my soul falls on.

On the side of meaningless gestures and self-righteously signaling how virtuous you think you are?

Yikes! Honestly of all the indigenous elders I’ve personally spoken to, none of them expressed your opinion of ‘no benefit’.

Now they are a distributed culture so I know that the local communities don’t speak for other communities.

But I’m curious to know how deep your connections go into any indigenous community. I will readily admit that I don’t have huge amounts of contact with my locals, but speaking FOR them and saying they receive no benefit is a bit weird…

Also, why does anyone have to benefit at all?

> Honestly of all the indigenous elders I’ve personally spoken to, none of them expressed your opinion of ‘no benefit’.

I’m sorry, is that an argument?

Are you giving them back the land? No?

Then what benefit do they receive, exactly, and why are they owed it?

> Also, why does anyone have to benefit at all?

If you’re going to ask everyone to expend energy genuflecting to your religious dogma, surely there must be some benefit to someone beyond merely benefiting your own social power/standing?