Indigenous Sport Month: Olympic boxer Paul Fleming opens up on his life and career
Olympic boxer Paul Fleming believes we need rationale and calm talk about Australia Day and the national anthem, as he opens up about his Indigenous heritage.
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He’s represented Australia at the Olympics, remains undefeated as a professional boxer (27-0-1, 18KO), and within 18 months of taking up art had designed two works being used by the AOC for the Tokyo team uniform.
Paul Fleming, 33, is a walking story of overcoming the odds.
Struggling with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, being unable to read and write until he was 25, witnessing violence as a child could have easily seen him spiral down the wrong path. Instead, Fleming tells Jamie Pandaram how he’s become a leading voice for his community, and is calling for reasoned, rational and patient discussion on critical issues including the national anthem and Australia Day.
The Indigenous Nation I’m connected with is ...
Wakka Wakka, Wanyurr Majay, and Yuggera country.
My heritage and culture means ...
It is a sense of identity, and for me to pay respect to everyone who has sacrificed, in order to create things like NAIDOC Week. I keep my heritage as a constant reminder of who I and where I come from.
My favourite custom from my heritage is ...
Everyone is your aunty and uncle, whether you’re related by blood or not. Everybody is aunty, uncle, no matter who your mob is. We can all feel connected.
My earliest memory is ...
Leaving Tully for the first time, I was only about three years old, I went with mum to Brisbane, and it was the first time I’d left my dad, I remember things from that trip.
One piece of advice I would give my teenage self ...
Start to manifest things from an early age, try not to be so whimsical and float through life, which is what I did as a kid.
The best advice I was ever given …
To be a man of your word. My dad taught me that. Your word is your bond, at the end of the day if you don’t have that, you’ve got nothing.
If I wasn’t in sport I would be …
A youth worker. I do that quite a bit now outside of boxing, I love working with kids and trying to help them become better people.
A common misconception made about me is ...
A lot of people who know me from others will ask them, ‘Is he really like that, is he that full on?’ They ask it as though I put it on or do it for show, but this is me naturally.
When I cop abuse I ...
Use it as an opportunity to teach people. It is easy to have an opinion of Indigenous people when you have had limited experiences or encounters with them. I try to make it something people can learn from.
When people see me I hope they think …
He is a family man that is also a positive role model for his community. My wife Bianca and I have been together 12 years, we have five children. There’s Bella-Rose, Ryker, Karmai, Jarli and Yamani. Our youngest three kids have Indigenous names; Karmai means spear, Jarli means wise owl, and Yamani means rainbow.
Family means ...
Everything to me, it’s the reason I wake up in the morning and try to be a better father, a better human being.
A word or phrase I use too much ...
Bianca says that it’s, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’. Because 90 per cent of the time I don’t do it.
My weird sporting superstition is …
I never look my opponent in the eye. When I do my ring walkout, when I step into the ring, when we opposite each other in the corner, when we’re standing face-to-face ready to touch gloves, I never look them in the eye. It’s something I’ve just done since I started boxing, from 14 years old. Even when I’m boxing, I’m not looking them directly in the face, I tend to look at their chest, with the peripheral vision you can see their head movement but also their feet and anticipate their reactions.
My sporting hero is ...
Lionel Rose. He was the first Indigenous world champion, and he was celebrated at a time other Indigenous people weren’t. The fact that he was a boxer as well.
The sporting moment that carries the most significance for me ...
When I qualified for the 2008 Olympics, having had that goal since I was a young teenager and what I’d been focused on for so long. And the other one would be the Cowboys beating the Broncos in the 2015 NRL Grand Final. And I’m convinced JT (Johnathan Thurston) deliberately missed that sideline conversion at the end just so he could get to extra-time and create that moment of kicking the winning field to add to his legacy.
Being an Indigenous athlete today ...
It is powerful. We have the platform to speak on important issues, in a way we haven’t had before.
Have you encountered racism or unconscious bias against you in your career?
There are a lot of moments that, when I think back, were. Having a white-skinned father, and being dark-skinned, people didn’t believe that he was my dad. I used to get followed around in shops.
To improve support networks for Indigenous athletes coming through the ranks of professional sport ...
We need to put the right people in the right positions. You can’t just put someone in a position of authority because they’re your aunty or uncle, they’ve got to be capable of
doing what’s best for everybody.
Reflections on my career highlights ...
I ran the Olympic torch at 12 years old, I competed at an Olympics aged 20, and now I’ve got to design a uniform for the Australian Olympic team with an Indigenous design. I had a really tough upbringing, I witnessed domestic violence, I never passed a grade, I was illiterate until I was 25. And yet I have achieved all of this by the age of 33, just imagine what I can achieve by the time I’m 66, without those teenage years of wondering what might happen or if I could really achieve certain things?
Who put you on your pathway?
When I was a kid, my dad would hold up gloves, he’d have a ciggie hanging out of his mouth and he’d be on his knees and we would spar. I’d be in my undies, usually worn backwards, and have my gloves the wrong way around, but I’d be hitting the pads. Then my dad would use the open palm to slap me across the side of the head, it would make this big noise and people would stop and be shocked, but I liked that reaction, and I’d keep punching.
My inspiration is ...
It wasn’t so much as a person as a something. I’ve battled ADHD since I was young, and I’ve always been a million miles an hour. I’ve been seen as a loud one, the funny one, but boxing allowed me to achieve something so I could be seen as more than just that.
The key priority to improve player and leadership opportunities for the next generation of Indigenous athletes ...
The people who are in charge of, and overseeing these opportunities, need to understand that it is their responsibility to develop these athletes.
Should Australia Day be moved from January 26 and if so, why?
Forcing people is never the solution. We need to educate, have conversations, and then vote as a nation. And if the majority of the country wants to change the date then we should. But we are not ready to do that right now, if we had a vote today most people would vote to keep the date.
The biggest issue confronting Indigenous Australians today ...
We are divided among ourselves. We are fighting for a lot of common causes but we can’t even be aligned on a lot of topics or figure out what we want collectively. We need unity within our own people before we can go out asking for change from the rest of Australia.
To improve political decision making when it comes to Indigenous issues we ...
Again, we need the right people in the right positions. What we have now are people who are token representatives, only put in high positions because they’ll run the same agenda as those who put them there.
The national anthem was recently changed to include the words “we are one and free” Do you think the anthem require more changes ...
If you asked me a few years ago, I would have said ‘Absolutely, the whole anthem needs to change’. But running up to people screaming to change something doesn’t work. I feel we focus too much on the negative of our history sometimes. If someone in your family dies, do you only speak about their funeral? No, you remember the life they led, the great memories they created before they passed away. We have this unbelievably rich culture, the oldest continuous civilisation in the world. We have cave paintings showing that we were the first to use cremation, we studied the stars before the ancient Egyptians, we had strict marriage laws that stand today, where you can’t marry your 10th cousin because even that is too close to your bloodlines. I’d like more conversation around the richness of our culture.
Do I think the Aboriginal flag should fly on the Sydney Harbour Bridge all year round ...
The Aboriginal flag is now owned by a non-Indigenous entity, so it doesn’t matter whether it is flying for one day or every day, it is not representative of what we are about. What the Indigenous cause is about, I carry inside me, it’s what we as a people speak about and show the world everyday, flag or no flag.
Originally published as Indigenous Sport Month: Olympic boxer Paul Fleming opens up on his life and career
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