Indigenous week in AFL

We had our second trip to view the football and it was Indigenous week. This is a round of football that covers matches from Friday night to Sunday and it is held to honour the current and past players who are indigenous.

As the grounds were they play were originally used by aboriginal tribes, there is a ceremony held before each game with a member of the local tribe who give the blessing of the land.


Each team wears their colours but they have been designed with the aboriginal culture in mind.The above picture is Daniel Rich one of Brisbane Lions players who had a really good first quarter. The Lions (local team for Brisbane) got off to a really good start kicking seven goals to two but they couldn't keep it up and ended up losing by twenty points.

Lance known as Buddy Franklin one of the best players in the league made the move to Sydney Swans last season after reportedly signed a contract for ten million dollars for ten years. He is wearing the Indigenous jumper for the Swans which was designed by team mate, Adam Goodes' Mum.

Besides Buddy and Adam there are seventy seven Indigenous players who are currently playing AFL.

Who do you think you are?

Going through the TV guide last night, I saw this program and the person was Adam Goodes, currently the best ever indigenous Australian Rules footy player.

It was a very interesting program. His father was white and his mother had been one of the kids caught up in the Stolen generation. She had been taken from her people when she was bout five and put into a mission, then she was adopted out to a family and brought up as a white child. She had known very little about her culture or her family.

The researchers had done a very good job of finding old records and photographs. It seemed that Adam's great great great grandfather was a sea captain (also white) who started the Moota Mines on the west coast of South Australia and there is a huge statue of him in front of a University that he had donated a lot of money to start it. He had borne a son to an aboriginal woman and he (the son) had been turned over to the head of the tribe to bring up. The tribal elder had insisted that the son go to the European school and be educated and so he was brought up in both cultures.

Adam had said that while he had always known about his culture but as an outsider as they didnt know exactly what tribe they belonged to, he could now move forward and take on board his background. He was named Australian of the year because of his work to eradicate racism.