National Reconciliation Week gets attention. But attention is not change.

In workplaces and communities, we are busy planning morning teas, screening movies and recommending books. And while these things can be meaningful, they are not nearly enough.

Because beneath the activity sits something we are less comfortable naming – fear.

With recent public debate around Welcome to Country ceremonies, there is the real fear of getting it wrong. A fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of a conversation that feels, right now, more charged and more divided than ever.

I know that fear intimately. As a non-Indigenous person who has spent years working in this space, I have felt the pull between wanting genuine connection and dreading the misstep that might undo it.

As a child I was bewildered by the lack of acknowledgement of First Nations peoples, their wisdom and sovereignty. I was confused by my own ancestry too, stretching back to the First Fleet, and the complexities it brought.

Curiosity and absence sat side by side. My uncertainty became fear, and fear became silence. That silence was not neutral. It was part of the problem.

There is also an elephant in the room. As a non-Indigenous person, what right do I have to be a voice on reconciliation?

But I’m not trying to speak over, about or for First Nations peoples. I’m speaking to non-Indigenous Australians about the work we keep leaving to others.

Our programs have always been First Nations-led and for many years, non-Indigenous allies worked in the background.

That changed when a colleague challenged us – why were we asking First Nations peoples, just over 3 per cent of the population, to carry the load of explaining, educating and reassuring the rest of us?

She was naming something very real – cultural load. And she was right.

We must stand in our own responsibility alongside our First Nations colleagues.

So, what is holding us back as non-Indigenous Australians? For many of us, I think it begins with the fear of getting it wrong.

Repeated booing at Anzac ceremonies revealed something deeper. Photo: AAP

The repeated booing at Anzac ceremonies is painful and disturbing. But it also reveals something deeper – a widespread misunderstanding of Country.

Many Australians still hear Country as geography. For First Nations peoples, Country is living. It’s breathing. Country is family.

When someone says, “I don’t need to be welcomed to my own country”, I can hear the feeling underneath it.

If you were never taught what Country means, or that there are hundreds of Countries across this continent, then a Welcome to Country may sound like exclusion rather than invitation.

But that is precisely why the conversation matters.

If we are disturbed by the booing, rising polarisation or increasing reports of racism, we cannot simply condemn it from a distance.

We need to learn more, ask better questions, test our assumptions and be willing to have hard conversations with people we may disagree with – not to win, but to understand. 

We also need to be willing to ask how our own silence, fear or avoidance may be contributing to the problem.

For many First Nations peoples, racism is not a debate or an occasional headline. It is a daily lived experience.

For me, being an active ally is both a privilege and a choice.

That choice carries responsibility.

If National Reconciliation Week is to mean real change, it cannot simply ask First Nations people to share more stories, more pain, more wisdom and more patience.

It has to ask more of non-Indigenous Australians.

More courage. More honesty. More humility. More reflection.

Not just next week. Every day of the year.

Carla Rogers is co-founder and director at majority Indigenous-owned Evolve Communities, which provides cultural competence training, reconciliation resources and ally-ship accreditation

National Reconciliation Week runs until June 3