Too Deadly

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land: the Piscataway, Anacostan, and Pamunkey peoples. I would also like to thank the NASSH Distinguished Lectures and Honor Awards Committee—Dave Wiggins, Jerry Gems, Ornella Nzindukiyimana, Russell Field, and Vicky Parashak—for their invitation to deliver the 2023 Maxwell L. Howell and Reet Howell International Honor Address. This is a great privilege, and I hope I don't disappoint you.I am particularly honored to have been invited to deliver this anniversary address because I had the privilege of knowing Max Howell for several years before his death in 2014. Max's greatest contribution to me, one for which I am eternally grateful, was introducing me to Murray Phillips. Under Murray's supervision, I completed a doctorate in sport history, started attending NASSH (in 2004 at Asilomar), and became a faculty member at the University of Queensland. I cannot thank Murray enough—as a mentor, inspiration, colleague, and friend—and much of what I will present today reflects shared experiences with Murray.I could talk about Murray for the remaining time, but I am sure he would prefer I not do that. Instead, I would like to introduce you to my work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the Australian state of Queensland and to reflect broadly on the teachings from those communities and on my learnings.But first, who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples? In short, they are the two official First Nations groups in Australia. As usual, this “in short” is useful only to a point. More than most umbrella terms, it obscures a complexity and richness and vast injustice of recognition. Most Aboriginal people live on continental Australia or on the southern island state of Tasmania, yet Aboriginal people of the Kaurareg nation are the traditional owners and residents of some of the southern islands of the Torres Strait. Likewise, while the archipelago comprising around 275 islands (sixteen inhabited) in the Torres Strait is the homeland of Torres Strait Islanders, many Islanders in fact live throughout the country. Australia is home to eight hundred Indigenous dialects grouped within over 250 language groups, and three languages are spoken in the Torres Strait.1 The Torres Strait Islanders share some colonial experiences with Aboriginal peoples but have a unique history and culture that is little understood even within Australia.Who is Aboriginal and who is Torres Strait Islander is legally defined by three equal factors—descent, recognition, and identity. Blood quantum does not apply.2 In terms of nomenclature, today I will alternate between using Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Indigenous, and First Nations, to describe these peoples collectively.I do not belong to those communities—I am non-Indigenous, Australian Canadian by citizenship, and a Newfoundlander by birth and culture. I have, however, had the privilege of working alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for the past fifteen years, and I continue to deepen my understanding of the complexity of Indigenous identities, experiences, and perspectives.It is likely that you know of Patty Mills and Cathy Freeman. Mills is known to us as an NBA basketball player, having made his name with the San Antonio Spurs and now with the Brooklyn Nets. He was the captain of the Australian men's basketball team in Tokyo 2020 and was a flag bearer at the opening ceremonies. He is a Torres Strait Islander, through his father, but Patty is also an Aboriginal man through his mother. Mills personifies the complexity of identities that I just mentioned.Cathy Freeman is an Aboriginal woman, more specifically a Kuku Yalanji and Birri Gubba woman, famous for her athletics achievements in the 1990s and early 2000s. You may associate her with incidents at the Victoria Commonwealth Games in 1994—where she defied team officials by celebrating her victories in the 200m and 400m by triumphantly hoisting both the Aboriginal and Australian national flags—or as the torch bearer at the Sydney Summer Olympics in 2000.3 I will return to Freeman as a touchstone throughout this address.The positive achievements of Patty Mills, Cathy Freeman, and hundreds of other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander athletes cannot mask the continuation of systemic racism, nor do they alleviate the appalling legacy of colonialism as seen in intergenerational trauma, high incarceration rates, gaps in life expectancy, health, and educational outcomes, and in a whole slew of markers of the health of our body politic. These are issues recognized in Australia not only by Indigenous peoples themselves but also by governments in what are called Closing the Gap policies. The federal government is proposing to hold a national referendum this year to recognize Indigenous peoples in the constitution and to establish an Indigenous body—the Voice—to advise Parliament.4Queensland, where I live and work, offers a microcosm for the issues that these initiatives aim to address or redress. Likewise, the sport history of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is bound up with the colonial history of Australia. So, before I introduce those sport histories, let me say a few things about my state. First, Queensland is huge: in area, it is 2.5 times the size of Texas, and 17 percent larger than Alaska. Second, Queensland is home to 28 percent of Australia's one million Indigenous people. Third, the Torres Strait Islands are politically and geographically part of Queensland. Fourth, Queensland has a particularly invidious record historically on Indigenous peoples, even in the comparative Australian context. A “protection” act was promulgated in the then colony in 1897 following decades of atrocities by settlers. The protections offered by this act may have been well-intentioned in principle but, in their application, they served as the basis for vast deprivations of liberties and shocking human rights abuses. It is in this context that the “too deadly” of my title has its most sinister overtones.Key to protectionism was the establishment of Aboriginal reserves throughout the state on subprime lands distant from major white towns. First Nations peoples were forcibly relocated to these reserves, and families were frequently broken up in the process. Residents were called inmates by the authorities and treated as such. Until the 1960s, Indigenous peoples who were incarcerated on the reserves were not free to leave, to access their wages or savings, or to make their own choices about marriage partners or even their own living arrangements. They could be moved at the superintendents’ will to other reserves and separated from their families, often as punishment for real or perceived transgressions. Even into the early 1980s, Aboriginal people required permits to visit family members on the reserves. The islands of the Torres Strait were also deemed to be reserves but were spared the worst excesses inflicted on Aboriginal peoples.5Sport provided a rare space for the cultivation of community identity on the reserves, and sport continues to provide a source of pride, identity, and community building in these Indigenous centers today.6 Prior to the establishment of reserves in Queensland and indeed in the rest of Australia, Indigenous peoples enjoyed limited freedoms in sport. These freedoms constricted when “protection” legislation was enacted throughout the Australian colonies, those entities that became states when they federated in 1901 to form the Commonwealth of Australia. The sport historian and genocide scholar Colin Tatz characterized this situation as an inversion of that experienced by enslaved African Americans, who went, in Dave Wiggins's memorable words, from “plantation to playing field.”7In Queensland, I have worked with several proud Aboriginal communities that were former reserves: Cherbourg, Palm Island, Woorabinda, and Yarrabah (figure 1). In the Torres Strait, I have been working with the Thursday Island community for some years, and I am currently developing new relationships with communities on Badu, Boigu, Erub, Hammond Island, and Iama.All of these places, and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland, have produced an impressive number of athletes historically. They continue to do so today. Cathy Freeman is a Queenslander. Born in 1973 near the central coastal city of Mackay, she was not raised in one of the reserves. But her family and her sporting lineage have direct associations with these places. Her biological father, Norman Freeman, was a Cherbourg and later a Woorabinda man, a rugby league footballer of local legend. Her paternal grandfather, Frank Fisher Senior, was a Cherbourg man and a highly respected cricketer and footballer. Her maternal grandfather, George Sibley, was a well-known boxer from Palm Island who was exiled to Woorabinda in 1957 as punishment for his involvement in a labor strike. Cathy Freeman has not forgotten her heritage.8 Murray and I met her at Cherbourg in 2010, where we were all attending an event, and she offered us a support letter that helped us secure research funding to work with the community on a sport history project.The more famous of the Queensland reserve athletes, including Freeman's grandfather Frank Fisher, are recognized by the work of Colin Tatz, who initiated the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sporting Hall of Fame. The hall is not a physical, bricks-and-mortar space but rather a series of books and websites.9 One of these books was designed so community members, especially school children, could rip out the pages to post on classroom and council room walls. In this sense, the hall of fame differs from other initiatives globally, such as the Tom Longboat awards that Janice Forsyth has so compellingly analyzed.Many of the individual athletes from Queensland honored by Tatz's hall of fame have parallels to Tom Longboat in terms of their contemporaneous representations. Forsyth describes how, during his lifetime, Longboat was subjected to a cascade of conflicting and contradictory media descriptions—for example, and I quote, as a “lazy Indian who would not train” and as a “gifted athlete admired by all.”10 Representations of Longboat, she argues, created “a composite picture that barely resembled the man.”11Just as Longboat the man was represented in both positive and negative lights that ultimately obscured his real self, so too were several famous Aboriginal sportsmen—for example, 1930s champion cricketer Eddie Gilbert, from Cherbourg, and Jerry Jerome, boxing title holder who won the Australian middleweight crown in 1912, who was incarcerated at both Woorabinda and Cherbourg at different times.12 Despite their contemporaneous fame, we will never know the real Gilbert and Jerome.While we know something of some of these particular Aboriginal sporting heroes, or think we do, many athletes from the Queensland reserves have had little recognition outside their communities. This is a point that is emerging as central to my work. What is that work? In each community, I begin with introductions, getting to know key community figures, Elders, council leaders, librarians, and directors of local knowledge centers. This typically leads to ongoing discussion about the community's sport history, with informal storytelling, or yarning, sessions.13 At some point, I am inevitably asked to focus on a particular topic, or individual, or event. Always, I make return visits and bring with me reports, photographs, and other documents I have found in archives, libraries, and other repositories. These items renew the conversation, sparking new tangents. There is something organic about this that is contrary to my academic training, of methodically planning and following through on a strict schedule. With community, things are typically messy for a period, unstructured, or open-ended, until in the best of cases an invisible line of trust is crossed, and more pointed work begins on a project.Let me you an As I Murray and I working with Cherbourg in 2010, with the support of Cathy Freeman. Cherbourg has a community knowledge the which was and by a of Elders, most of are several years, we with local people about and to several In the of we to as much as we example, by for to the to and through One of our most was the of a of a of Eddie of our early had a visit by community members to the which is not in Cherbourg but at a in As part of that I had the who created the a her that Cherbourg people and her work. her death in I her family and that they her to the They were to do and the now has a on cannot know for but the of that to a point in our with the It became a of not the asked us to and I have on this at a NASSH so me you know this but I will it because it to the and of building Despite two years of with us and discussion of sporting the had never their own sporting as members of the Cherbourg In sporting out that was a major sporting in Australia and from the through to the and it also out that Cherbourg had several that and even This was not even within Cherbourg, and we were honored by the to research and their for which we government research and community This was a in which Murray and I were by one by a local to the of a community year that great and in The to the who and we to was “too is a Aboriginal people in Australia, to describe people A in the Sydney of the Sydney rugby league an Aboriginal man, out the in the and I have just the Torres Strait with our research a scholar who is a Torres Strait Islander man with family and to the island of were proposing a new and islands to community community is so we will the of and the for each island on their individual have three years, but we will be to our research and community in that But like Cherbourg, is up to be “too with our Cherbourg experiences and my work in other this new cannot building that we are not just in this for our own It will and It will But it also me to new of working and to reflect on what it to be a working with First Nations is in this line of in his The that “a that has to do with you often a source of Indigenous do now have something do with me, and me with and the that I in community, and the that I have, provide me with a great source of They and as I from community, to my home or my my an for is to this that I would like to things I have am through my work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. I have for who has a major in and sport history, is not from these A NASSH and the of by and in discussion on this in the context of sport history and Australia, are some who that only Indigenous people research and about Indigenous There are also those who this a respected scholar of Indigenous Australia have the on He as a of the be to or culture not be a to different of history are to the national as it is a yet history and all be in this is history not because it is made by an Indigenous or a because of the in which it is it is am to with but my experiences with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities point to a in what to be a This is characterized by the by about us It for the recognition and of Indigenous have and Indigenous peoples their or their involvement or in is but with including Indigenous and and with and history do work with Indigenous is a that be to But a is to be for the involvement of in Indigenous histories, are that are on and would to more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander their own sport histories, but the in Queensland at is that these are They are not because communities but for a of other There are few Aboriginal sport and to my knowledge from Torres Strait communities. Most of the former reserves and the Torres Strait Islands are from and libraries, and most are not by and access to have or knowledge centers with to history or to and and other is and is for research and community members who have asked us to work with are They the of research and But they are and they are we may have our up early on and offered our but they made the to us in their They the and those best work for They know that we have access to and and research and they have that by to work with are not in of but are the is a for many communities. many have a are and our on the this when she to we don't work on this history will be I am with working with Indigenous communities on I the the and my to out the record where it be But I am also of the Indigenous and I the and of the Indigenous peoples with I of those have made it into and few sport in these so I to for to be into this has to by an Aboriginal on which my is to More I individual on the of few from me, and be these be as as they are a of with a and a I am to address in my is in in my of to a particular history through and and of to of a I know but I have to that these particular will be served by the my of even my as the themselves and to to a I say my I think of of Indigenous history as As on the work of are in the in different and an to a central however, they are to the of the as its and they from a central or a that The for me is to the of the I am to by their and to that the spoken are not for me to up and The is not just to but to frequently in with communities that sport with or As I have I I would and the and time, however, I that I was but not a the are most the are to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander of the and are also in many in many I something It is the the and that are not the There is also a to the to a past and a I think the of is by as to a of to Indigenous peoples in Australia are to the that often around their their experiences, and their The themselves are what this the of these not and not the a for me as a historian academic work is by the of the that So, I community which the record and are for those in community who to access But I also to the the and that the the of pride, identity, and are of the key that is by of the sporting past that within communities. These do not with about those communities. As I have Colin Tatz the in Australian First Nations through his and his Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sporting Hall of work was It was because it recognition to many of were not It because it of the made by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander But it was a it is It is not only but also because it the with sporting and of The is understood in terms, on and achievements as white and as Tatz's work Australia has barely moved this in acknowledging Indigenous sport for example, the from the The the one this is a and to new But on the other this is a It is also a form of and to and to to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is so much more that has our In Woorabinda, for example, people of sporting on their I of the number of people who me of the local rugby league team from the a team that the to the community and to the In communities like Woorabinda, is a not only in the great but also in the and in who would never make it to a sporting hall of on Palm Island, where champion from the is in the Torres Strait, where we have been of and their from Badu, for example, by in to Thursday Island for for They say they are and by the and then in the and the community great in this of people who will never make it to a hall of point is that communities have their own informal of or but This is because it is a of much we by and by not and First Nations people and is on the to and as we to to local on community heroes, we to for what to Indigenous peoples. In Australia, and in Australian sport history, have this in and I a in our about and now in Australian in is that the of in sport is from our sporting when the anniversary of was several other of by historian however, we to of and are about community pride, identity, and that are but which The communities with which I work the of like and other Indigenous they their history and the of sport in that history through about inspiration, and as much not more than about an for but these other of Indigenous that the of and are also These other are also we and but these other are too I have today is on to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I am of using like to a where the is people. I have these because many of us in this room who are not Indigenous peoples have been our in years to on our work, or work, with First Nations peoples. we continue to do this then we do so outside the for new to to to to and our of and our own many of this is “too deadly” a research politically for some I that. But it is also a to research to our of and and of with the past in the

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