Transnational Understandings of Australian Aboriginal Sporting Migration: Sporting Walkabout

Abstract

This article will examine the impact of Aboriginal sporting participation and movement around the globe. The experiences, influences and inspiration that Aboriginal sporting men and women absorbed while travelling internationally have played a prominent role in changing the perceptions and understanding of Aboriginal people to the wider populace. The later stages of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were a period in which Aboriginal people were erroneously categorized as a dying race, belonging to the Stone Age and uneducable. However the influence of sport and travel ensured that Aboriginal cricketers, footballers, athletes, boxers and horsemen and-women played a part in challenging these erroneous perceptions. As a consequence sporting success played a vital role in inspiring other Aboriginal people to challenge the stigma and stereotypes that they were expected to endure and carry. The sporting arena was not just a venue for sporting participation but, I will argue, was responsible for generating and exposing Aboriginal people to a range of far-reaching influences, not least political ideology. Early International Contact and Movement At the time of British arrival on the Australian continent in 1788 Aboriginal Australians had already occupied the country for upwards of 60,000 years. One convenient invented myth which has been perpetuated since the arrival of the Europeans was that Aboriginal culture was static and unchanging. Aboriginal Australia was locked into some perpetual Stone Age of development, one in which they had survived simply through isolation in a protected cocoon away from the ravages/advancements of the rest of the world.