Australia Post Updated Their Address Policy To Include Traditional First Nations Place Names

In some positive NAIDOC week news, Australia Post has encouraging people to use the traditional First Nations name of places when sending their mail.

This follows a successful grassroots campaign led by Gomeroi woman Rachael McPhail, in which she has received almost 15,000 signatures of support.

“Adding in the nation or Country that you are on is something easy that all Aussies can do to be more inclusive of our Indigenous history. I would love for @auspost to make the original place name a standard part of address information in Australia, the same as your house number and postcode,” she wrote on the Instagram page she has been running as part of the campaign. The Instagram page @place_names_in_addresses has accumulated over 10,000 followers.

The campaign has been supported by Indigenous community leaders and businesses.

Clothing The Gap, a Aboriginal-owned social enterprise clothing store, wrote they supported the idea as “it’s a simple, effective and respectful action we took as a business to acknowledge and respect the Traditional Custodians land we live, work, play and prosper on”.

Wongutha man Travis Akbar, also wrote that “something as simple as seeing yourself represented…on an envelope – it has impact. Is a simple postal address going to save society? No. But it will surely make any non-Indigenous person think twice about where they are standing, and most importantly it acknowledges our land”.

Small changes can go a long way to reforming a culture. This is a good step that will help to educate people about the different Countries, especially where they themselves live. Hopefully that will lead to some people wanting to learn more ?

— Leah (@mithril_mayhem) November 11, 2020

@auspost encourages use of traditional place names following campaign. We love this idea & have included a ‘Traditional Place Name’ field for everyone who orders from us.

Tag other businesses you would like to do the same… #AlwaysWasAlwaysWillBehttps://t.co/uRXgx3JVML

— clothingthegap (@clothingthegap) November 12, 2020

Auspost has updated its guidelines to include information on how to include traditional place names.

“To acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land your item is being delivered on, you can include those place names in the address field. To find Traditional Place names, check AIATSIS, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Councils, or Cultural Centres in your local area. When sending items you can include a Traditional Place name in either the address you’re sending from, or in the recipient’s address.”

this reminded me i should know the traditional name/names of where i live! so good to see that auspost also has some advice on finding that out cause i had no idea where to start tbh

— meredith (@cyber_autism) November 12, 2020

McPhail is not done yet though. She will lobby Auspost to create their own national database of traditional place names by consulting with Aboriginal elders.

“The logistics of that project is going to be huge because there’s so many different countries, or nations, on this continent.”

She also would love to see other “businesses, universities, banks, MyGov, PayPal, Star Track, Uber etc. asking people for the traditional place name as part of the address information when people are filling in the forms or going through the online checkout”.