Submitted by Paul Daley on
We should allow for the possibility of a shared history but the timing of this changed position looks opportunistic
Debate over whether Australian football has its beginnings in Indigenous Marn Grook, a ball game with an ancient continental past, is intensifying after the AFL’s sudden insistence that the Aboriginal pastime has apparently influenced the earliest official Aussie Rules code.
Welcome to the resurgence of tensions on another front of Australia’s contested past whereby colonial Australian documentation, and its omissions, is accepted by many non-Indigenous authorities to be ascendant over Aboriginal oral transfer of cultural practice.
Related: Nicky Winmar statue is not just about footy, it’s about Australia as a nation | Des Headland
Documentary omission – the material absence of a document - does not, of course, nullify Indigenous experience
Related: Boom or bust, cultural importance of AFL football remains constant | Jonathan Horn
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