Last month, I attended the launch event for the Acknowledging Country in our mother languages project. I had first heard about the project through the UTS Multicultural Women’s Network (MWN). The project is led by Dr Elaine Laforteza, Special Projects Officer for the MWN, and the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Lead for Diversity & Anti-Racism at the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion.
I thought it was an amazing idea, though one I didn’t fully grasp until I heard from the speakers during the project launch. They talked about why it is important to connect with First Nations Peoples, what it means to acknowledge Country in mother languages, and how using a first language helps different communities of diverse backgrounds around Australia connect with First Nations Peoples. In this blog, I share my takeaways from the event and my experience recording an Acknowledgement in my mother language.
Strengthening solidarity between communities
This project means so much to me because it allows me to honour this Country and its Elders through my own ancestral language, acknowledging First Nations custodians from my ancestors to theirs – outside Western and English frameworks. Hearing others share Acknowledgements in their mother languages creates a powerful frequency of culture, connection and solidarity. Leah Subijano (Chair, Multicultural Women’s Network)
Elaine Laforteza described the project as the result of years of collective effort by UTS staff and students, sharing their mother tongues and working together to translate the Acknowledgement of Country into languages many had never previously heard spoken. Almost all participants expressed emotional connection and Amanda Moors-Mailei described the process alone as such a gift.
Until now, for most people, the Acknowledgement has existed only in English – this project expands it beyond that limitation. The launch was timed to align with International Mother Language Day, reinforcing the celebration of linguistic diversity and the cultural significance of speaking in one’s first language.
Elaine emphasised that hearing the Acknowledgement of Country in different mother languages is more than symbolic. She links this to broader experiences, such as during the Voice to Parliament referendum (2023) period, where speaking to minority communities in their first language helped foster deeper understanding and mutual respect. Language, in this sense, becomes a bridge.
The way Elaine described this project frames the initiative as a powerful act of belonging, where linguistic diversity becomes a way of deepening recognition of Country and building stronger connections between Indigenous and multicultural communities.
Reclaiming identity
During the event, Professor Lindon Coombes, Director of Jumbunna Research, shared his story about reconnecting with his mother language. Lindon said that his great-grandmother, who was born and raised in northwest New South Wales, refused to speak English despite the consequences she faced. Yet, within just one generation, their family language was largely lost: his mother could understand her grandmother but could no longer speak the language herself. That loss, he noted, was not accidental; it was shaped by deliberate colonial policies aimed at suppressing Indigenous languages.
Despite this rupture, fragments survived; words, expressions, gestures, ways of speaking. Years later, reconnecting with his language through formal study of Wailwan and Yuwaalaraay became deeply personal. It wasn’t just about vocabulary; it reawakened memories of family members who had passed, the way they spoke, used their hands, their facial expressions, and all the embodied nature of language.
Listening to Lindon telling his story reminded us that language is more than communication. It carries memory, resistance, identity and connection to ancestors. And, because it can be lost in a single generation, reclaiming and sustaining it is both urgent and profoundly meaningful.
A shared resistance to erasure
Dr Anne Casey, an academic from the UTS Faculty of Design and Society, spoke about growing up in Ireland, where the Irish language, Gaeilge, was suppressed under British rule and prohibited in schools. While she proudly spoke her mother language, she later learned that her grandfather had been beaten as a child for doing the same. His silence was not indifference, but survival.
Living now on unceded land in Australia, Anne described the deep complexity of being both shaped by a colonised history and positioned as a settler in another colonised country. That tension between inherited trauma and present responsibility is not simple to resolve.
It was through dialogue with a First Nations Elder that she began to reconcile this. She came to understand that speaking her own once-forbidden language in an Acknowledgement of Country was not a contradiction, but an act of solidarity. For Anne, reclaiming Gaeilge meant that she found a way to honour Indigenous sovereignty here, in shared resistance to erasure.
By acknowledging Country in my native Irish language, I’m calling out the many silencings. I am seeking to walk in solidarity with our First Nations brothers and sisters, aunties, and uncles, to resist erasure, to restore voice, to reclaim lost culture, to honour ancient wisdoms and traditions tied to a bone-deep caring for Mother Earth, to pay respect to the ancients who have protected this country for millennia, and whose spirits are everywhere among us. Dr Anne Casey
My own experience doing the translation
Arabic is my mother tongue, and I was thrilled to share the translation of the Acknowledgement of Country in my first language. The experience brought many insights and deep emotions. As the daughter of Indigenous people of the land of Palestine, I carry my own lived experience of connection to land, and it parallels many other nations resisting colonisation of land, culture and languages. I was able to choose Arabic words that reflect what it truly means to acknowledge Country and the sovereignty of First Nations people, while remembering what it feels like to be Indigenous to land that to date remains under colonisation and settler atrocities.
I feel that this was a profound experience for everyone who recorded the Acknowledgement in their mother language. Elaine, Leah, Lindon and Anne helped me work through many questions I had before recording my part, especially about why it is important to acknowledge Country in Australia, and what it means to do so in a language that is part of my identity. Speaking in our mother tongues is an important way of connecting with the First Nations people of Australia, but it is also a declaration that we refuse the colonisation of our languages, just as we refuse the colonisation of our lands. We continue to carry our ancestors within us as we live here and connect with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through shared values of solidarity, resistance and justice.
Explore more
On the project’s official website, you can explore more information including a project explainer, an Acknowledgements library recorded in more than 40 languages and a podcast series. For UTS people, as we embark on the curriculum transformation (CxT) project, I encourage you to think of ways to create authentic integration of Acknowledgements of Country in different languages into UTS curriculum and other ways we might open the door to different languages within learning and teaching.
This is a thought provoking reflection Mais. I hadn’t thought about the acknowledgement of country in this way before and I agree it is so important to be reminded of the meaning of the acknowledgement and the power there is in to saying it in your own language. Thank you for sharing!