Australia Post has expanded upon its addressing guidelines to include instructions for posting letters and parcels using Traditional Place names “to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land your item is being delivered on”.
The move coincides with NAIDOC week in Australia and comes following a petition from Gomeroi woman, Rachael McPhail, who along with 14,000 others who signed the Change.org petition, agrees Traditional Place names should be made part of the official address information in Australia.
Now, Australia Post has endorsed the idea and has outlined step-by-step instructions to helps Australians everywhere do just that.
Australia Post will now accept mail that places the Traditional Place name after the recipient or sender’s name, but before the street address, suburb or town. Honoring McPhail’s work, Australia Post has used her name in its visual example.
“At Australia Post, we have a long and proud history of promoting and celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture and implementing measures that contribute to a lasting reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians,” the postal service says on its site.
McPhail’s petition called for Australia Post to create a “comprehensive and accurate database of traditional place names, by consulting with Elders and First Nations knowledge holders on each Country”.
While there’s no word yet as to whether Australia Post is working to create this, the company is, for now, asking Australians to refer to the AIATSIS Map of Indigenous Australia.
Created in 1996, the map strives to represent the language, social or nation groups of Aboriginal Australia.
McPhail says of Australia Post’s endorsement: “Thank you to everyone supporting this initiative, and to Australia Post for taking the first important step towards acknowledging traditional place names in Australian addresses!”
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