A tanderrum is an

Aboriginal Australian ceremony Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. Over 300 languages and other groupings ...

enacted by the nations of the

Kulin people The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Aboriginal nations in south central Victoria, Australia. Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River va ...

and other

Aboriginal Victorian Aboriginal Victorians, the Aboriginal Australians of Victoria, Australia, occupied the land for tens of thousands of years prior to European settlement. Aboriginal people have lived a semi-nomadic existence of fishing, hunting and gathering, ...

nations allowing safe passage and temporary access and use of land and resources by foreign people. It was a diplomatic rite involving the landholder's hospitality and a ritual exchange of gifts, sometimes referred to as "Freedom of the Bush". Visiting people were presented to elders by an interim group known to all parties.

Eucalypt Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', '' Corymbia'', '' Angophora'', '' Stockwellia'', '' Allo ...

leaves were used in the ceremony to indicate visitors were free to partake of the resources. Water was shared from a tarnuk, sipped through a reed straw, with the hosts partaking first to reassure the visitors that the water was not poisoned. The signing of

Batman's Treaty Batman's Treaty was an agreement between John Batman, an Australian grazier, businessman and coloniser, and a group of Wurundjeri elders, for the purchase of land around Port Phillip, near the present site of Melbourne. The document came to ...

in 1835 was likely to have been interpreted as a tanderrum ceremony by the

Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbo ...

and

Boon wurrung The Boonwurrung people are an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation, who are the traditional owners of the land from the Werribee River to Wilsons Promontory in the Australian state of Victoria. Their territory includes part of what is now the ...

peoples, according to some historians. Certainly the Wurundjeri and Boon wurrung people continued to act with hospitality to the settlers in the first years of the

Foundation of Melbourne The city of Melbourne was founded in 1835. The exact circumstances of ''the foundation of Melbourne'', and the question of who should take credit, have long been matters of dispute. Exploration A series of colonisers, mostly operating from Sy ...

, while other Aboriginal nations engaged in resistance over dispossession of their lands. William Thomas, the Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the

Port Phillip District The Port Phillip District was an administrative division of the Colony of New South Wales from 9 September 1836 until 1 July 1851, when it was separated from New South Wales and became the Colony of Victoria. In September 1836, NSW Colonial Sec ...

, described a tanderrum ceremony enacted by the

in 1845. Tanderrum ceremonies are still performed today by Wurundjeri elders sometimes as part of a

Welcome to Country A Welcome to Country is a ritual or formal ceremony performed as a land acknowledgement at many events held in Australia. It is intended to highlight the cultural significance of the surrounding area to the descendants of a particular Aborigin ...

protocol.

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples o ...

artist

Ellen Jose Ellen is a female given name, a diminutive of Elizabeth, Eleanor, Elena and Helen. Ellen was the 609th most popular name in the U.S. and the 17th in Sweden in 2004. People named Ellen include: *Ellen Adarna (born 1988), Filipino actress *Ellen ...

has a sculpture called ''Tanderrum'' (1997) on Herring Island Environmental Sculpture Park, done in conjunction with Wurundjeri elder Joy Murphy. National Parks describe the sculpture:

References

External links

{{wikisource, Tanderrum Wurundjeri Dja Dja Wurrung Indigenous Australian politics Indigenous Australian culture Political history of Australia