Aboriginal sportsmen and women have deeply enriched Australian sport, and, internationally, have done the nation they represent proud.

After all these years, it seems compulsory to preface any discussion of Australia’s Indigenous athletes with acknowledgement of the original pachyderm in our parlour. So here goes:

There are three unfortunate reasons why Aboriginal sport and racial politics are inseparable: 1. Aboriginal people have had no choice but to play sport because the role has been conferred by predominantly European society. Their self-worth and sense of contribution have depended on it. 2. Aboriginal sportspeople have been judged according to European expectations. Their notions of fame and success mostly differ from those of non-Indigenous Australians. What they value, compared to sporting greatness, is unfathomable to non-Indigenous Australians. 3. Individual racial bigotry.

Throw in a history of State interference – coercive at one end, ill-informed at the other – and the discussion never fails to turn into debate; debate into dispute; dispute into ideological impasse.

On with the celebration! For decades now, posters of Aboriginal sporting heroes have adorned Australia’s bedroom and workshop walls. Those adored have been the likes of AFL players Syd Jackson, Graeme Farmer, Michael Long, various Riolis, Lance Franklin, Michael O’Loughlin and Adam Goodes; rugby league and Union’s Artie Beetson, Larry Corowa, Laurie Daley, Cliff Lyons, Greg Inglis, the Ellas; Boxing’s Lionel Rose, the Mundines, Hector Thompson, Robbie Peden and Daniel Geale; Tennis’s Evonne Goolagong; athletics’ Nova Peris, Kyle Vander-Kuyp and Cathy Freeman – the list is astounding.

There are many, less known, who suffered from lack of funding or remoteness. The Mulletts from Gippsland come to mind, many of whom were champion badminton players. And there were largely-unknown world-beaters such as Greg Lovell, the woodchopper, Steve Bowditch at squash and Horrie Seden and Ivy Hampton (darts).

In the early colonies, anyone representing the colours was lauded, encouraged. Partisanship was powerful motivation, and competition was so fierce that a colony cared little about the hue of the person representing them, as long as they won. Ignorance of a competitors’ background typified the times.

Fighting first provided the path to prominence in this society. As the 19^th Century progressed, participation in all sport widened considerably. The first Australian cricket team to England was Aboriginal, in 1868.

Aboriginal players took to Australian Rules with relative ease, partly because of the influence of a freewheeling game certain of their people played anciently, Marn Grook. Indigenous men have been some of the best: Goodes, Franklin, O’Loughlin, Long, the Riolis, Farmer, the Krakouers, McLeod – again, the list is endless.

Every aboriginal VFL player was seen as a pioneer up to the 1970s, because he arrived alone. There was a definite lineage, starting with Geelong’s Albert “Pompey” Austin, through Fitzroy’s Joe Johnston and Doug Nicholls, Essendon’s Norm McDonald, Geelong’s Polly Farmer and Carlton’s Syd Jackson. Thanks to them, and men of foresight and compassion like Essendon’s legendary coach, Kevin Sheedy, an explosion of Aboriginal participation took place from the 1980s. It’s difficult to imagine the game now without them – and that’s not a rhetorical statement. They actually imagined, and helped everyone else imagine, the game differently. If not for them, we’d have had to rely on the one-off genius of the Abletts, Carmans, Blights, Daicoses and Whittens to show us. The Krakouer brothers astounded us with their intuitive grasp of the game, their whole exponentially greater than the sum of their parts, as their otherworldly on-field interactions demonstrated.

In the 1960s, Polly Farmer revealed the possibilities of a pair of hands in a game of feet. Arthur Beetson, another revolutionary big man, performed the same service to rugby league. Eric Simms for Souths was one of the first ever picked mainly because of his sharpshooting goal-kicking abilities. These men demonstrated new possibilities.

Sport increased their standing. Pastor Doug Nicholls, for example, a Fitzroy footballer and sprinter, was all the more influential as a public figure for it – better able to use sport as a platform for the rest of his public life than most other retired sportspeople.

Nicholls was also treated poorly, but at least the sword was double-edged for him. The magnificent fast bowler Eddie Gilbert, ignored and mistreated, died in a sanatorium. In the 1920s, sprinter Lynch Cooper, a world champion demonstrably faster than contemporaries, was denied selection for Scotland’s world-renowned Powderhall race.

Meanwhile, boxing lured young Aboriginal men like a sideshow shyster. Throughout the first half of the Twentieth Century, Aboriginal participation in boxing was the highest of any ethnic group in the world, as a percentage of population. A great many Aboriginals seemed to fight a disproportionately high number of times, yet still had to supplement meagre returns moonlighting as jackaroos, shearers, farm hands, or, in the case of Dave Sands and his fighting brothers, axemen.

We probably cannot make the same generalisation regarding today’s Aboriginal boxers. Anthony Mundine didn’t need to box, or at least keep boxing. His circumstance was relatively secure, and he had a rugby league career before he switched.

Boxing has thrown up magnificent talents, and played an important part in embedding the Aboriginal experience in our awareness. Dave Sands was a national hero before he died, prematurely, in a car accident. Ron Richards came to mainstream notice in the 1930s, when Aboriginal people were barely recognised as a people at all. Richards defeated Gus Lesnevich, the future long-term world light-heavyweight titleholder.

Aboriginal representatives were praised and encouraged as Australia turned its eyes to the world with that fierce colonial competitiveness and partisanship. Anyone who represented us successfully was a hero.

In the 1960s, when Aboriginal Lionel Rose and Johnny Famechon both held world titles, sporting voyeurs wanted them to fight. Those of us who loved them both wanted nothing of the sort. They were equally heroes to us. There were others. Hector Thompson momentarily troubled Roberto Duran in his prime, in 1973, as Tony Mundine did Carlos Monzon a year later.

The 1990s gave rise to athletes who became champions for their people. AFL and rugby league players were now more consciously filling that role. Nicky Winmar’s quietly dignified gesture of lifting his jumper and pointing to his skin, Michael Long’s stand against on-field bigotry and, recently, Adam Goodes’ controversial public actions, gave us pause. Goodes, and before him men like Sheedy, addressed the fraught issue of assimilation. Sheedy began to connect with those communities that exerted a strong pull on young players. Later, Goodes would connect with recruits – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – to Sydney Swans through the power of stories, something an Indigenous person understands very well. Despite all his feats, including two Brownlows and two Premierships, Goodes probably gets little credit for this insightful approach that has helped revolutionise Indigenous participation in sport. Anthony Mundine more aggressively asserts Aboriginal identity.

Internationally, two women stand at the pinnacle: Freeman and Goolagong. Cathy gave us the perfect storm at the euphoric home Games of 2000. That image of the final passing of the torch to her was priceless. And then, that “famous victory” in the 400 metres. The tension throughout those Games was maintained beautifully between, and because of, those two moments.

To paraphrase Michael Long, sport has been the greatest ally to indigenous people. It has also been their worst enemy. The discussion continues.

Top of the world (not including national representatives in Rugby League and Union, or Premiership players/Brownlow medallists in AFL)

Boxing:

Lionel Rose – World Bantamweight Champion, 1968-69

Anthony Mundine – WBA World Super-Middleweight Champion, 2003-4; WBA World Super-Middleweight Champion 2007-08; WBA International Middleweight Champion, 2009; IBO World Middleweight Champion, 2009; WBA International Super-Welterweight Champion, 2013-14.

Robbie Peden – IBF World Super-Featherweight Champion, 2005

Daniel Geale – IBF World Middleweight Champion 2011-13; WBA World Middleweight Champion, 2012

Tennis:

Evonne Goolagong – Champion Wimbledon 1971, 1980. French, 1971, Australian, 1975, 1976, 1978 Doubles: Wimbledon, 1974. Australian, 1974, 1975, 1976.

Athletics:

Cooper Lynch – World Professional Sprint Champion, 1929

Cathy Freeman – 1997 World Champion, 1999 World Champion, 2000 Olympic Champion, 400-metres

Swimming:

Samantha Riley – 1994 100 and 200m world breaststroke champion

Ben Austin: 2004 Paralympics Gold medal, 100m freestyle, 4X100 freestyle. World record 100, 100, butterfly

Woodchopping:

Greg Lovell – 16 world titles

Team sports – national representatives:

Soccer:

Harry Williams – 1970-77

Jade North – 2002-, Captain for one game, 2010

Cricket:

Jason Gillespie 1996-2006

Dan Christian – 2102-

Basketball:

Rohanee Cox 2008-

Nathan Jawai 2008-

Patty Mills – 2012-

Danny Morseau – 1980-84

Hockey:

Nova Peris-Kneebone – Gold medal, 1996 Olympics

Des Abbott – 2007 –  Hockey Champions Trophy 2008, 2009, 2010.

Published in Australia’s Sporting Heroes 2016