If you’re living in Australia, even if you aren’t interested in Australian Rules Football (AFL), you’ll probably know that this weekend has been ‘indigenous round’. It’s the eighth week of the AFL season and traditionally it’s the round when football celebrates the contribution that indigenous players have made to football and that football has made to reconciling what once was called ‘white Australia’ and ‘Aboriginal Australia’.
I should open up right at the start and confess that the weekend is particularly important to me for more reasons than one; when I first settled in Australia, I lived in the far north, where the enormous gaps between the well-being and daily lives of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians were only too clear. Indigenous Australians have shorter life expectancy, low levels of access to education, employment and health services.
The majority of indigenous Australians live a traditional nomadic life that sits uncomfortably with the life of mainstream non-Aboriginal Australia. Plus the Aborigines of Australia are still living with the fall-out of more than two centuries of white settlement that discriminated against them, marginalized them, separated families and interfered with long-held cultural systems and rituals. As a human rights activist and an Australian, I have long felt strongly that we still have a long, long way to go to before we can say that Australia is a country where justice and rights prevail for all people. As a strategist and analyst, also, I still feel deep down that we haven’t yet found — or maybe even systematically sought — the right way to go about bridging the rights gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
The second reason why indigenous round is important to me is less serious although not entirely frivolous: my footy team, Essendon (also known as ‘the Bombers’) plays the pivotal game of the round. Each year, in what has come to be known as the ‘Dreamtime Game’, the Bombers face the Richmond Tigers in a game of footy whose importance goes way beyond the regular competition. Put together, the Essendon and Richmond playing jumpers make up the colours of the Aboriginal flag (which is how the Dreamtime Game concept was born). Importantly, Essendon was among the first footy clubs to recruit indigenous players to its senior ranks, and remains a firm supporter and promoter of indigenous talent. (Note: the 2012 Dreamtime Game was a heart-stopping game, with both teams fighting hard for a win and the Bombers prevailing, not least because of strong performances by its young indigenous players. One of them, Alwyn Davey, is shown in the photo that accompanies this blog.)
But I am proud of my footy club not only because of their performance on the footy field but also because of the work the club does in the community, and especially with children and young people in indigenous communities. Now many footy clubs send players to visit the kids in indigenous communities. Some run sports clinics and other social programs. But none has shown the long, strategic and ongoing commitment to Aboriginal communities that the Essendon Football Club.
Having been the first club to systematically recruit indigenous players and pay attention to their specific needs as well as their specific talents, Essendon moved to install ‘all of community’ programs that would directly address some of the broader challenges the people in these communities face: high school drop-out rates, youth suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, gang rivalries and domestic violence. Essendon recognises the expertise of other organisations working in these areas and partners with them to put together multi-pronged actions in consultation with the communities themselves.
What the footy club brings, of course, is the unrivalled community focus that football provides. Sport in general, of course, is important in Australia, but footy in particular takes a central role in indigenous communities: it grew out of a native game and uses the particular strengths of speed, agility and ball skills that athletic young Aborigines have in abundance.
The footy club provides space and equipment to the communities, and a structure that encourages kids to go to school so that they can play in the local footy team. Working with the Australian Football League in each state, the club develops teams that may eventually play at junior and then senior championship level. Mums, dads, grandparents and siblings come together around the team and community cohesiveness is built while intra-communities rivalries make way for shared support of the local team.
In short, footy is the glue that holds the communities together. Since 2005, the Essendon Football Club has worked in collaboration with the Bill Hutchison Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is “to harness the power of sport to help children across Australia” (see www.bhf.org.au). The Hutchy Foundation is a major partner in the club’s indigenous programs but also in education actions such as the ‘On the Ball’ program and in supporting girls’ football.
In March 2012, I was privileged to represent the Bill Hutchison Foundation at the Grand Final game of the Northern Territory Football League in Darwin, the NT capital. On a steamy, wet tropical day (a tropical storm had passed through in the days before the final), the Tiwi Bombers played Nightcliff in a nail-biting final in front of some 12,000 footy fans, many of whom had made their way through the storms from the Tiwi Islands off Australia’s northern coast. The Hutchison Foundation and Essendon Football Club were there because the Tiwi Bombers grew out of the club’s commitment to indigenous Australia and the Essendon Bombers continue to support the Tiwi Bombers both financially and as mentors and friends.
The Tiwi Bombers won the championship – for the first time. Soon the Essendon Bombers’ second indigenous team, the Wadeye Magic, will enter the competition and soon the day will come when the Tiwi Bombers and Wadeye Magic meet in a Grand Final. That will be a great day.
Meanwhile, as we celebrate the glory of indigenous Australia and football coming together, we have to keep working to make sure that the challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians remain prominent on the agenda. That is why the Dreamtime Game is ultimately important – for a brief moment, it shines the light on indigenous issues and brings all Australians together.