Crossing Lines: Sport History, Transformative Narratives, and Aboriginal Australia

Bond, Chelsea; Phillips, Murray G.; Osmond, Gary

doi:10.1080/09523367.2015.1038704

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…56 Many of these works combined oral history interviews with empirical, archival research to develop their narratives, yet few have moved beyond stories of deficit and victimhood to comprehensively include Indigenous voices. 57 A wave of more recent scholarship primarily led by Indigenous Australian historians has enriched Aboriginal sport histories, not only in terms of subject matter and range of voices but also in the narrative intent of their work. Lawrence Bamblett, in his seminal work, has cautioned against reliance on "straightline stories", narratives that emphasise tragic tropes and overlook how Indigenous people purposefully and strategically engaged with sport to negotiate better lives while under government control.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indigenous Women's Sporting Experiences: Agency, Resistance and Nostalgia

Osmond

Phillips

2018

Aus J of Politics History

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Australian sports historiography, in privileging Western, reconstructionist approaches to narrating histories of Aboriginal sport, has overlooked Indigenous research methodologies that privilege Aboriginal voices. This paper adopts the Indigenous research methodology of yarning in a collaborative project with former sportswomen from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement in Queensland. Yarning, as a culturally respectful way of eliciting memories and valuing expression of Indigenous voices, was used to explore their experiences, memories and meanings of competitive marching, a popular sport for young women in mid-twentieth century Australia. The yarning sessions revealed insights into sport that are missing from the empirical, archival record, and allowed the exploration of agency and autonomy, acts of resistance, and complex intersections of nostalgia and trauma. This paper offers specific and broader insights on sport in Australian Indigenous communities and on the entanglement of the sporting past with the histories and politics of race and gender in Queensland. In repositioning researcher and researched in Aboriginal sport history, this paper demonstrates the potential of transformative narratives about the experiences of Indigenous Australians. but sport rarely features in these accounts. 2 One possible explanation for the paucity of sporting voices is that men, who had the longest and most sustained engagement with sport throughout Cherbourg's history, have been slower than women in grappling with their experiences under the Act. 3 It is the women of Cherbourg who have most thoroughly tackled the past. Often, this is done in the spirit of healing, attempting to reconcile the past, with the intent of building a productive and meaningful future. 4 This paper grew from a collaborative research project about sport history in Cherbourg that sought to engage with community memories, meanings and perspectives on the sporting past. 5 During that engagement over several years, female Elders asked us to help them research and tell the history of the Marching Girlsteams of competitive, precision marcherswho were active in the 1950s and 1960s. That project led to an analysis of official rationales for marching, and how the sport furthered assimilationist policy aims of the Queensland government. 6 It did not attempt to explore the women's experiences or their memories of marching, which are warmly recalled in Cherbourg six decades later. Marching memories feature in a sport exhibit at the community's Ration Shed Museum, where a plaque reads: "The marching girls are fondly remembered by the Cherbourg community as a crossover recreational and semi-sporting activity […]". 7 Former participants, typically aged in their sixties and seventies, take an active interest in preserving memories of their activities, including sewing replica marching uniforms for the museum display. 8 These representations of marching provide an ideal opportunity to explore the subjective, lived experiences and memories of Cherbourg women. What di...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indigenous Women's Sporting Experiences: Agency, Resistance and Nostalgia

Osmond

Phillips

2018

Aus J of Politics History

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“…This is a central tenet of Indigenous research methodologies globally, one with which sport historians have begun to engage. 52 Through the 're--telling' of Australian football history, hopefully the challenge that W.E.H. Stanner, citied in the introduction, rings true.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aboriginal Rules: The Black History of Australian Football

Gorman

Judd

Reeves

et al. 2015

The International Journal of the History of Sport

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This paper is interested in the significance of Australian football to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia. In particular, this paper is interested in the cultural power of football and how it has foregrounded the struggle and highlighted the contribution that Indigenous people have made to the national football code of Australia. This paper also discusses key moments in Indigenous football history in Australia. It questions further that a greater understanding of this contribution needs to be more fully explored from a national perspective in order to appreciate Indigenous peoples' contribution to the sport not just in elite competitions but also at a community and grass roots level.

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“…But you gave him a second chance. ' Bond et al (2015) make some important comments about research into indigenous Australian sports history, which should be discussed here. Although not aware of their article during the fieldwork, their reference to the concept of 'yarning' is important and has inspired us.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Health, Crime, Sport, Community, and Island Life: The Post-Retirement Struggles of a Fiji Soccer Hero

James

Nadan

2021

Int J Sociol Leis

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This article explores the soccer career of the ex-Fiji national-team player, Henry Dyer, and his post-retirement struggles. He experiences ‘fragmentation’ because of two ‘epiphanies’ (traumatic life-events)—his failure to get an elite coaching job after retirement and failure to secure an overseas playing-contract. After a period of fragmentation, when he cut all ties with the sport, he has reinvented himself as a caring person who, through the social and support club, Nadi Legends Club, visits ex-players going through illness. We also use Henry’s story as a gateway to explore (1) race and class aspects; and (2) masculinity issues. We look at the case through the theoretical lenses of symbolic interactionism and Foucault on power.

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Crossing Lines: Sport History, Transformative Narratives, and Aboriginal Australia

Cited by 11 publications

References 8 publications

Indigenous Women's Sporting Experiences: Agency, Resistance and Nostalgia

Indigenous Women's Sporting Experiences: Agency, Resistance and Nostalgia

Aboriginal Rules: The Black History of Australian Football

Mental Health, Crime, Sport, Community, and Island Life: The Post-Retirement Struggles of a Fiji Soccer Hero

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