Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Beyond equality: The place of Aboriginal culture in the Australian game of football Journal Item How to cite: Judd, Barry and Butcher, Tim (2016). Beyond equality: The place of Aboriginal culture in the Australian game of football. Australian Aboriginal Studies(1) pp. 68–84. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Accepted Manuscript Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=220966850376591;res=IELAPA Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk Beyond equality: the place of Aboriginal culture in the Australian game of football Barry Judd School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Victoria, Australia Tim Butcher Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia Abstract: This paper provides an overview of Aboriginal interventions in the sport of Australian (Rules) Football in the period since the formation of the Australian Football League (AFL) in 1990. Recalling several pivotal events that have defined and redefined the relationship between Aboriginal people and the Australian game of football, this paper finds that the struggle to end on­field racial vilification in the 1990s attracted widespread support from the overwhelmingly non­Aboriginal public because these actions were consistent with the political principle of equal­ ity. The key actions of Nicky Winmar and Michael Long gained general appeal because they demanded that Aboriginal people be treated as though they were Anglo­Australians. In this regard, the 1990s fight against on­field racism in the AFL was a continuation of the Aboriginal struggle for rights associated with Australian citizenship. As the 1967 Commonwealth referenda on Aborigines demonstrated, most Anglo­Australians understood and supported the political principle of equal­ ity even though the promise of citizenship in substantive improvements to social and economic outcomes almost 50 years later remains largely unfulfilled. Nevertheless, in the recently concluded 2015 AFL season, Adam Goodes, the most highly decorated Aboriginal man to play the sport at the highest level, was effectively booed into retirement. Goodes became a controversial and largely disliked figure in the sport when he used the public honour of being 2014 Australian of the Year to highlight the disadvantage and historical wrongs that continue to adversely impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their commu­ nities. This paper argues that Goodes effectively sought to shift the paradigm of Aboriginal struggle beyond the sympathetic notions of racism and equal treatment to issues of historical fact that imply First Nations rights associated with cultural practice. Goodes’ career initiates a new discussion about the place that Aboriginal cultures, traditions and understandings might have in the sport today. His deci­ sion to perform an Aboriginal war dance demonstrates that the new paradigm we propose is primarily about the political principle of difference, not equality. Adam Goodes’ actions on and off the field have reflected more perfectly than any imported consistently argued for the right of Aboriginal code Australian values and ideals. According to peoples to remain culturally different and the right Deakin, the game had an important role to play for these differences to be recognised and accom- in both building and strengthening the nation. modated, if not embraced, by the Australian game By the end of the twentieth century the sport for of football. The cultural frontiers Goodes pressed many Australians had indeed become a touch- in the elite Australian Football League (AFL) stone of the Australian nation, saying much about competition reflect a growing reality in lower- national cultural values and national identity. level football competitions, where Aboriginal The salient narratives of the game that emerged peoples are increasingly demanding they play during this period inextricably linked the concept the game according to what we describe as an of Australian nation to the racial construct of Aboriginal football ethic, which embodies and whiteness and the cultural construct of an Anglo- celebrates distinctive Aboriginal cultural values Australian culture explicitly British in origin. and practices. The national values and identity evoked therefore In this paper we argue that the ethico-politi- came to celebrate only the archetypes of an ideal- cal responses of Nicky Winmar and Michael Long ised Anglo-Australia. In other words, the founda- to racial vilification in the formative years of the tional narratives and mythologies that frame the AFL inform the recent moves by Adam Goodes to Australian game of football functioned to exclude assert an Aboriginal football ethic. We show that Aboriginal people and to define them as exist- Anglo-Australian notions of equality, although a ing both outside the game and outside the nation key construct in the Australian public’s acknowl- despite their presence in both. edgment of Aboriginal players’ participation in During the past two decades the expansion the sport, severely restrict that participation. of the AFL into a national competition has been The case of systematic public booing of Goodes accompanied by official endeavours to broaden underlines the continued inability of the Anglo- the popular appeal of the sport by attracting play- Australian public to understand the ethico- ers and spectators from non-Anglo-Australian political demand of Aboriginal people for the backgrounds. To achieve this, the AFL developed recognition of cultural difference. and implemented strategic initiatives to engage with both multicultural and Aboriginal Australia. Background and context In seeking to engage with Aboriginal Australia, Since the formation of the AFL in 1990, Australian the AFL brand closely aligned itself with the (Rules) Football has increasingly pressed its claim politics of Aboriginal reconciliation, becoming to be the national game. Now played in every a national advocate for the process. In support- Australian state and territory, the recent expan- ing this process the AFL espoused the belief that sion of the AFL has positioned the Australian the Australian game of football could function as game of football as the most popular and lucrative an effective social forum in which reconciliation sport in Australia today. While widespread popu- between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples larity and ubiquitous media coverage, combined might be achieved and maintained through the with a geographic range that spans the continent, practice of playing and spectating football. Over- strengthen the national claim of the sport, such representation of Aboriginal participation as claims are intensified by its status as Australia’s players in the AFL is often cited as substantive only Indigenous popular sport. evidence of this success. Since the early twentieth century, advocates Although prevailing narratives continue to of Australian Football have promoted its benefits be discursively underpinned by exclusive racial according to the political agenda of Australian notions of whiteness — and their cultural coun- nation building and the search for a uniquely terpart, Britishness — in practice the sport has Australian national identity. In 1908 then Prime increasingly come to reflect the racial and cultural Minister Alfred Deakin (cited in Cashman et al. diversity that is characteristic of contemporary 2001:111–13) argued that as a purely Australian Australian society. The AFL has yet to resolve the invention, the Australian game of football inherent tensions that exist between the prevailing narratives of Australian Football, which locate its To restate our argument in somewhat different national credentials in the historic role the sport and perhaps more political terms, whereas previ- played as a marker of Anglo-Australian exclu- ous bounded and highly targeted struggles to end sivity and uniqueness, and the contemporary racism sought to assert the right of Aboriginal claims of Aboriginal peoples whose skilful excel- peoples to participate in football as though they lence in the sport has made the game an inherent were Anglo-Australians according to principles part of their contemporary cultures and identities of civil equality, contemporary struggles seek to throughout significant regions of the continent. assert the right of Aboriginal people to be recog- nised as culturally distinct groups within the Purpose Australian game according to the principles of In this paper we find that the tension that political difference. exists between the nationalist mythology of Recent Aboriginal interventions within the Australian Football and the contemporary elite national competition of the AFL have demon- beliefs of Aboriginal peoples — who play, spec- strated the shift in the way Aboriginal people tate and support the game that belongs to them understand Australian Football. To demonstrate — remains unresolved. We believe these tensions this we draw on our personal observations of lie at the heart of much of the conflict that exists the ‘booing saga’ that enveloped the final play- between Aboriginal