Spotlight on First Nations in sport with inaugural Indigenous Sport Month

For the next month, Australia’s Indigenous sportspeople will bare their souls and tell their stories as part of News Corp’s inaugural Indigenous Sport Month.

NRL stars Latrell Mitchell, left, and Cody Walker with South Sydney’s Indigenous Round jersey. Picture: Brett Costello

Every day for the next month, Australia’s Indigenous sportspeople will bare their souls and tell their stories as part of News Corp’s inaugural Indigenous Sport Month.

Their experiences are, of course, as varied as the people themselves – you’ll read as much about triumph as you will tragedy. The stories will be uplifting but also enraging, and that’s the whole point.

“While it’s a celebration of our Indigenous athletes, it’s also an interrogation of some of the troubling issues they face,” News Corp national deputy sports editor Tim Morrissey said.

“You’ve got to listen and expect that sometimes the answers you get may make you feel uncomfortable. And that’s part of a wider debate for this country.

“We know that sport unites the nation, and maybe through sport we can unite people by at least listening and gaining a better understanding of some of the issues around Indigenous Australians.”

The campaign, which is a company-wide collaboration across News Corp Australia’s newspapers, Fox Sports and Kayo, will run throughout June and will feature daily interviews, profiles and videos of Indigenous athletes telling their stories in their own words.

The launch of the campaign on the weekend coincided with the “Indigenous Round” in two major football codes, but Morrissey said News Corp’s month-long project intended to offer a sharper, prolonged focus to the intersections of sport, race and culture.

 

“A week is never really enough to focus on the stories and issues of Indigenous athletes,” he said.

“Seeing what ESPN and The Athletic (sports website) did in the US around Black History Month was the inspiration behind showcasing and celebrating our own Indigenous athletes – their contribution to sport but also the surrounding political and cultural issues around being an Indigenous athlete.

“Sport has the ability to amplify the positives but also the ability to amplify the negatives and it allows us to take a really hard look at ourselves.

“I’m hoping that Indigenous Sport Month will give the athletes a safe platform to be able to express their views.”

Two Indigenous journalists from Fox Sports, Jake Duke and Hannah Hollis, have been heavily involved with the project since the development stage earlier this year.

Duke, a Kamilaroi man born in Moree in northern NSW, has been a journalist for a decade and says that while he has seen improvements in the way Indigenous athletes are treated by the public and the media, the relationships are still “a work in progress”.

“(NRL player) Latrell Mitchell has talked about really young kids abusing him on social media and that’s obviously learned behaviour from their parents,” Duke said.

“So there’s still a long way to go, but it’s good that more of their stories are being told by mainstream media and hopefully we’re making some kind of difference.”

All the major sporting codes in Australia – AFL, NRL, cricket and basketball – have signed up to be a part of the inaugural Indigenous Sport Month, which will become an annual feature of News Corp’s sports coverage henceforth. Most of the content related to Indigenous Sport Month will be in front of the paywall of News Corp’s websites.