AFL champion and Brownlow medallist Gavin Wanganeen’s challenge to Indigenous youth

“There’s so many opportunities out there.” Indigenous footy legend Gavin Wanganeen has a challenge to young Indigenous people.

Indigenous AFL champion Gavin Wanganeen is urging Aboriginal people to chase their dreams in the business and professional arenas as well as the sporting field, insisting economic independence and education are keys to overcoming generational disadvantage.

In an interview for the Closing The Gap series, Wanganeen urged young Aboriginal people to start visualising professional success, saying nothing was beyond them with hard work and persistence.

Aboriginal people generally lacked a head start in life because wealth had not been handed down between generations, said Wanganeen – the 1993 Brownlow medallist and first Indigenous person to play 300 AFL games.

Wanganeen’s mother, Cheryl, was a member of the stolen generation, who did not meet her own mother until she was 62 years old – Gavin was 45 when he met his maternal grandmother.

Wanganeen said racism on the football field now was non-existent aside from a very small section of people in the crowd who had not educated themselves.

“It’s good to see fellow Australians calling this out, which is inspiring to see,” he said.

Gavin Wanganeen celebrates the Port Adelaide’s 2004 AFL Grand Final win at the MCG.

Wanganeen said the next challenge for Aboriginal people was better education outcomes and building economic independence.

“The challenges for Aboriginal people to get off the bottom is all about economic independence and how they can set themselves up, whether it’s in business or buying their own property, which is out of most Australians’ reach, let alone Indigenous Australians, which is 20 times harder,” he said.

“My message to young Aboriginal people would simply be, there are so many opportunities out there for you. You’ve just got to find what you think you can be good at, and if you don’t know that, you just go searching for that.

“Just go searching – there’s so many opportunities out there. You put the hard work in. You be dedicated, you make sacrifices towards that career that you want, you can go and achieve it. There’s no doubt.”

Gavin Wanganeen, now a professional artist and business operator, in Adelaide’s parklands. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Kelly Barnes

Now a professional artist who has established a recruitment company and coffee business, Wanganeen said he was motivated to achieve success beyond his 327-game, two-premiership AFL career for Essendon and Port Adelaide.

“I want to be able to achieve elsewhere, not just on the football field, and I want to be successful at other things, especially as an Indigenous business owner,” he said.

“ I don’t know too many Aboriginal people who’ve got these ultra-successful businesses that they could possibly pass down to their kids and have that generational change.

“ That’s something that I really want to be able to do and be successful at something else, not just at football. If I’m being successful as an Aboriginal business owner, I’m going to give back to my community and I’m going to bring them in and wrap my arms around them.

“So I think business, and opportunities there, are really important.”

Asked his view on how a Voice to parliament would address generational disadvantage, Wanganeen said: “I think it’s a simple one for me – working with the decision-makers that are making decisions that going to affect Aboriginal people is very important.

“It’s locked in our Constitution, so it can’t be easily taken away and we get consistency with decision-makers.

“That is only going to be a good thing, because it’ll be the first time ever that it’s actually there with the decision-makers and consistently being there. It’s a no-brainer.

“Good things are going to come from that. But to not be granted that opportunity, we’ll be going backwards because you’re not going to be getting that consistency of voice from Aboriginal people.
“The right Aboriginal people in these roles are talking for their people, their mob – that’s just a simple one for me.”

Wanganeen cautioned if the Voice vote failed there would not be another referendum for a lifetime, so he said this was an opportunity to have a say and make a difference – not sit on the fence.

Talara McHugh is a Narungga/Ngarrindjeri woman.

Originally published as AFL champion and Brownlow medallist Gavin Wanganeen’s challenge to Indigenous youth