Name: Free Ex on the Weekend: Louise Perry on "Ancestor Annihilation"
Uploaded: 2026-04-30T20:46:00Z
Duration: 4 min 40 s
Description: Louise Perry wrote this week about the backlash to "Welcome to Country" ceremonies in Australia. These ceremonies are an example of what she calls "ancestor annihilation," a phenomenon seen all around the Anglosphere.

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Louise Perry wrote this week about the backlash to "Welcome to Country" ceremonies in Australia. These ceremonies are an example of what she calls "ancestor annihilation," a phenomenon seen all around the Anglosphere. Photo: Croslin/EPA/Shutterstock

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260501/05ff19de-66c1-4ec6-9d79-4215322b385d/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Louise Perry wrote this week about the backlash to "Welcome to Country" ceremonies in Australia. These ceremonies are an example of what she calls "ancestor annihilation," a phenomenon seen all around the Anglosphere.

Free Ex on the Weekend: Louise Perry on "Ancestor Annihilation"

Louise Perry: I think that this instinct towards ancestor annihilation is expressive of some much more profound sense of animosity towards the past and towards people who've come before. Anthropologists had this idea of ancestor worship, it's one of these human universals, or close to human universals. You can argue that Memorial Day is an example of ancestor worship, or putting up statues to our former leaders is also a form of ancestor worship. You see it in modern America, you see it in modern Australia, except less so at the moment because there has been a left-wing reaction. In the piece, I come up with this idea of the opposite of ancestor worship. The expression that I come up with is ancestor annihilation. Tearing down statues is a very good example of ancestor annihilation. Basically, the complete flip-side of ancestor worship is what we started seeing expressed by a faction within modern Western societies. So one way that you might explain the statue iconoclasm that was particularly popular during the summer of 2020, is that it was a relitigation of the American Civil War. So it was an ancestor annihilation. It was an objection to a particular political position and the immorality of slave owners. The problem with taking that view is that there were lots of examples in America of statues being torn down, which were not of Confederates or slave owners. And also that you see this ancestral annihilation happening across the Anglosphere, in places where there is no history of slavery. So Australia is a great example of that. Land acknowledgements, in Australia, they are absolutely everywhere. They're on every website. But basically every Australian educational institution. Loads of Australian companies will put these things on their website. The one that I found most jarring when we were last in Australia was a memorial to ANZAC soldiers, which had a land acknowledgement right next to it, like, physically right next to it. What the war memorial is saying, it's a form of ancestor worship, a war memorial. It's saying we are grateful to these men who died for Australia. And then you have a sign right next to it saying, "We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land", et cetera. Which is saying that those men who thought they died for Australia, they actually never owned Australia. Australia was never actually their home, what did they die for? It's a very weird messages to have alongside one another. "Welcome to Country", it's a ritual practice which has started to be used at the beginning of public events, typically. I guess the best version of the idea is it's saying, "I'm an Indigenous Australian. I have this deep connection with the land and a spiritual connection with the land. And I just want everyone to kind of bear that in mind". In practice, it's often not like that, and there's a fair bit more hostility than welcome in some of these opening addresses. I think it's no wonder that they've become a source of controversy. And I think already we're seeing quite a significant backlash against it. What I write about in my column this week is on Anzac War Memorial Services last week in Melbourne and Sydney and Perth, where there was booing and jeering of the "Welcome to Country". This is of course being condemned by the prime minister. But I argue in the piece, look, it's not really realistic to expect Australians to hold this double standard, where on the one hand what the "Welcome to Country" messages are doing is offering ancestor worship to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians. Meanwhile, non-Indigenous Australians are expected to participate in ancestor annihilation. The land acknowledgements and "Welcome to Country" rituals, are a form of ancestral annihilation because you are asking people to repeat these mantras saying that actually my ancestors, if I'm non-Indigenous, do not have a claim to Australia. In some sense, my presence here is illegitimate. I'm unwelcome. Asking people to go through these rituals again and again, I think goes very contrary to human instincts. And I think it shouldn't surprise us that we're seeing a backlash, and particularly a backlash from Veterans. Because, you know, if you're asking Australian men and women to risk their lives and die for Australia, and also asking them to say that Australia is not theirs, I think that they're gonna start to notice that there's a tension there. They think that this instinct towards ancestor annihilation is expressive of some much more profound, a sense of animosity towards the past and towards people who've come before.