ttbn is right. None of us a forced to sit through these performance pieces and listen to someone dressed in dead animals tell us fables about the past. My observance is that what many now adopt that view. While there is a general politeness about the obligatory singing of the national anthem or the ANZAC observations on or around ANZAC Day, many people now treat the Welcome malarkey as something that they can ignore.

Go to any sporting event and you'll find great swathes of folk talking through the ceremony. Don't go and try to use the toilet facilities or food court while the native-du-jour explains how wonderful things were 70,000 years ago. Because a sizable proportion of the attendees will take the opportunity to duck off to the loo or buy their meat pie rather than endure the lecture.

Count me in that crowd.

All anyone has to do is visit their National or State
libraries, go to museums that deal with Australian
history and have Indigenous history collections or
read books by reputable historians.

Getting the facts is such an educational experience.
It needs to be encouraged. Especially for our young people.

This is a final attempt at clarification:

"Welcome to country between Indigenous Australian
communities have a history of thousands of years.
But Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley say theirs was
the first to be performed in the country for
non-Indigenous Australians".

There's more at the following:

http://theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/23/ernie-dingo-and-richard-walley-on-the-40th-year-of-their-welcome-to-country

It's our choice to appreciate of not, this ceremony

Hi Foxy,

You ask several questions as to why there are those on this forum who do their upmost to demonise and denigrate Aboriginal people, the answer is not a mystery by any means, these Old Farts are simply displaying their bigoted racisms. Would you expect anything less from a Trumpster and a sycophantic admirer of Pauline Pantsdown.

What about the quote from the incessant poster ttbn; "I (ttbn) have as little to do with people as possible these days," I'd say that's mutual, people would avoid the old bloke like the plague, so he comes on here and bangs on constantly to strangers.

The more I look at democracy the more I think it's extremely flawed.
I think maybe I'd rather just have one ruling party, and that we democratically vote people in and out of positions within the party.

That way were not playing pass the baton with two stupid major parties who exist for the sake of disagreement, but that all are working towards the greater good and the best outcome for all the citizenry.

Does our democracy foster good outcomes, poor outcomes or neither?

Maybe the indigenous should just face the harsh reality that this isn't THEIR country anymore.
With a million international students and a million immigrants every year, this nation of theirs has been conquered by foreigners, and their isn't any going back.

'Welcome to country' is no more than lip-service and a delusion.