Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Daniel Gordon
Written by: Stan Grant
Produced by: Sarah Thomson, Nick Batzias, Virginia Whitwell, John Battsek
Key Interviewees: Adam Goodes, Stan Grant, Brett Goodes, John Longmire, Tracey Holmes, Nova Peris, Nathan Buckley, Nicky Winmar, Eddie McGuire, Linda Burney, Gilbert McAdam, Andrew Bolt, Paul Roos, Natalie Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin.
“I believe racism is a community issue, which we all need to address and that’s why racism stops with me” – Adam Goodes
Terra Nullius. That’s what Lt James Cook declared during his voyage around the coast of Australia in 1770: no one’s land. Empty land. A land without people.
And because of this declaration, England claimed the land without recognising the civilisation who had lived here for sixty thousand years: the oldest and longest known living civilisation in the world.
On the fringes of my understanding of Australian history, I grew up knowing the Aboriginals were here first. We were taught a little about some stories – I remember some picture books in primary school; hearing a little about the atrocities in high school; knowing of the complete genocide of Aboriginal people in Tasmania. To think that an entire population was wiped out is horrendous and perhaps why the past has been buried so deep.
The Australian Dream is a documentary about Adam Goodes, Brownlow Medallist twice (2003 & 2006) and one of the most decorated football players of all time.
But this documentary isn’t about a sporting legend, this is about a man who stood up to a country and said: racism stops with me.
The backlash against his stance filtered through even to my ears – a person who doesn’t really follow footy (but barracks for the Tigers and always will) – because the media explosion following his stance to take no more racial abuse caused a howl that’s been buried under a casual racism Australians have been a part of for hundreds of years.
Ignorance was brought into the spotlight and the people did not like the idea of an Aboriginal man standing up to a long-standing status quo.
The Australian Dream is a powerful documentary that hit me hard because it finally gives voice to a history people, Australians, don’t want to take ownership of. Not all Australians, sure. But it has to be said our history seems to be acknowledged more outside of the country than within.
It’s seeing the context of the situation that gives understanding of the heavy weight this footballer decided to take on.
And seeing the behaviour of spectators towards Indigenous players in the past, like Nicky Winmar, is shameful.
After the invasion, the lack of acknowledgement of the people already living here, the policies put in place in an attempt at trying to fix a bad situation only made it worse.
Adam himself says his upbringing was difficult, his mother doing her best, moving close to relatives only to move away because of the alcohol abuse, the violence; an environment of, ‘broken glass and mangy dogs.’
But the Aboriginal people survived despite the history of thinking the Indigenous people would just die-out while living in intense poverty, losing connection to their way of life, to the taking of their children to assimilate into the society of those who invaded their country, to make them white, to have to fight to be even recognised as people.
To be called an ape on the football field, when you’re the star.
Putting the audience into the shoes of Adam for just a moment makes the conversation of racism in Australia very hard to ignore.
Director, Daniel Gordon has a background of making films about the cultural significance of sport including, Hillsborough (the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster) and ‘9.79*’: an investigation of the infamous and controversial 1988 Seoul Olympic men’s 100m final, won by Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who was subsequently stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
And there’s a statement from Walkley award winner, journalist, Stan Grant stating, “Sport has a way of really capturing the essence of what’s happening in society.”
This is a brilliant example of a nation’s attitude brought into the spotlight, and how carrying this terrible burden, one that in 2015 caused Adam to quit playing the game he used to love, has made a change in attitude towards Indigenous people. And yes, the original people of this amazing country.
There’s some balance here, as the film shifts from the personal journey of Adam to journalists talking about the circumstances and reasoning behind the constant booing and hate from the spectators directed towards Adam on the field. Andrew Bolt from, The Bolt Report explains you call out a young girl, you call a war cry to the crowd, you’re bound to get a reaction.
As Stan Grant says, about the spectators’ response: Adam made the mistake of being an angry Aboriginal.
And he’s right. When a culture has been systematically forgotten, why should we listen.
To hear Stan tell of his time reporting overseas from places of terrorist attacks and hate, to return to the Lucky Country to hear about the racial tension surrounding Goode. He was shocked. Provoking him to write his landmark essay , The Australian Dream (QE64 – November 2016).
He states, ‘As this man retreated from the field Australia was forced to confront the darkest parts of its own history. Black and white we are all formed by this. We carry the blood of each other in our veins. Yet, we meet across a vast divide.
This wasn’t about sport; this was about our shared history and our failure to reconcile. Some sought to deny this, some to excuse it – to explain it away – but when thousands of voices booed Adam Goodes, my people knew where that came from.
To us it sounded like a howl: a howl of humiliation that echoed across two centuries of dispossession, exclusion, desegregation. It was the howl of people dead on the Australian frontier; killed in wars Australia still does not speak about. It was the howl of people locked up: a quarter of the prison population is Indigenous. It was the howl of hungry children; women beaten and men in chains.’
When put into context, how would I feel to cop racial abuse from the children of the invaders who raped, killed and stole children? Still, in living memory and from the time when my mother was young? Would I take abuse, as a person, let alone a brilliant athlete, the best in the game while playing that game?!
I think I’d retaliate with more than a war cry.
But this a powerful film because it’s a hopeful film.
Adam isn’t about retaliation. The message of the documentary is one of reconciliation.
“What we saw ultimately was the true measure of who we are. It wasn’t the booing; it was the people who stood up to the booing. It can never be too late. it can never be too late for that. Our history is a history of violence and racism and it’s a history of people over coming that. People reaching across that divide.” – Stan Grant
Aboriginal history is an oral history – to teach when people are ready to listen.
Maybe, we’re ready to listen.