Blog: It’s the Indigenous game after all

By Lucas Holmes

With the Australian Football Leagues (AFL) annual Sir Doug Nicholls Indigenous Round coming to a close for the 2020 season, it is once again a timely reminder of the impact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have had on the sport of Australian Rules.

Despite this, during past Indigenous Rounds players have been heavily criticised by some members of the Australian population for using traditional dances in celebration amongst other cultural acts. Let alone the vast number of attacks on individual players by spectators and those on social media, causing some of the most well-known (for all of the wrong reasons) images in Australian sport. 

The most notorious of these occurred in 1993 when Nicky Winmar (after being bombarded with racial slurs and being spat on) lifted his guernsey and pointed to his chest.

Again in 2013, Adam Goodes had a racial slur hurled at him by a 13-year-old girl in the crowd, causing the match to be temporarily halted. Goodes later revealed that instances such as this created the “toxic” environment that led him to early retirement.

These are two of the higher-profile cases on the field in recent years, but in the lead up to this year’s round, it was an off-field incident that had the Australian population up in arms.

With the AFL planning to have the Aboriginal flag printed on the grounds that were to be used as part of the acknowledgment. This was until clothing brand WAM (who hold the rights to the design of the Aboriginal flag) sent a ‘cease and desist’ notice to the AFL. Meaning that if the AFL were to use the flag design, they would’ve had to compensate WAM (which didn’t end up going ahead).

In my discussions with a number of Indigenous people they (as well as myself) are of the belief that ‘you can’t own a flag’.   

Let’s hope that this issue unites the nation as a whole and plays a part in continuing the growing relationship between the nation’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations.