ANALYSIS: On a dark day for the AFL, the full impact of Australia's history weighs heavy
Former Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson said he "refutes any allegation of wrongdoing or misconduct" but will delay his start as North Melbourne coach while the AFL investigates. Hawthorn described the families' stories as "extremely disturbing allegations" and confirmed it received a report two weeks ago and immediately handed it to the AFL.
These allegations may well force a reckoning inside one of the country's most powerful institutions. But there is already a long list of inquiries and reviews which leave First Nations people feeling hollow. One commentator said the families' stories might expose a "dark underbelly" of AFL culture. Perhaps. It's more likely, though, that the stories reveal the sinister ways in which structural racism has always worked against Indigenous people across Australia. What makes these accounts so acutely troubling to First Nations families is that similar stories have been told over and over again, built into the fabric of our nation. Most Indigenous families across Australia have been impacted by the Stolen Generations and the separation from culture, land, language and family. Our wider Australian society — and its institutions — has for centuries demonised loving, decent Indigenous people who are told by the state they are not fit to be parents.There is a long history of Aboriginal mothers being forced to give up their babies and terminate their pregnancies in this country. The seminal Bringing Them Home report in 1997 said those widespread human rights abuses "contributed directly to the alienation of Indigenous societies today". "The actions of the past resonate in the present and will continue to do so in the future," the commissioners said. The past never leaves us as Indigenous people, but it rarely informs the actions of majority-white workplaces and institutions which profess to be culturally safe and inclusive. We have now heard from too many AFL players that the racism they faced on the field and in their workplace has ruined their lives, dredging up deep intergenerational trauma. We must not shy away from the allegations made by these families, and what they could reveal to us about the degradation of black women going back generations.
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