Round 12 is a special point in the NRL calendar, as Eels utility Will Smith knows too well.
It’s Indigenous Round.
“It just makes me very proud to be an Indigenous man. It’s one of those weekends where we get to celebrate our culture,” he said.
The Parramatta Eels will play the Bulldogs wearing specially designed jerseys by Aboriginal artist Danielle Mate Sullivan, with input from Will.
“The artwork is called connection so it’s about a connection between the past and the present,” Danielle said.
“I’m absolutely rapt with it. The colours are so intense and there’s so much to look at on it.”
Eels' "pride" in 2020 Indigenous Jersey
One of the more special features on the jersey is on the back.
“My favourite (part) would be just down the back there, there’s four hands. Two of the hands are my two kids of two of the hands are Fergo’s two kids. I think it’s just a great touch, they’ll love that,” Will said.
“My kids are very proud to be Indigenous. My daughter goes to a school here in Parramatta and she is the only Indigenous kid at the whole school and she is very proud to tell everyone at the school that she is Indigenous,” he said.
The large circle on the front of the jersey represents the meeting place for the players/warriors of the game, while the line to the top is a journey line to the players’ homelands.
The smaller circles are a nod to communities the Eels visit and work with.
“The past is represented by the warrior and the Parramatta River. The Burramattagal people, who are a clan of the Darug, have a connection to this river where they first settled and caught fish, eels and other sources of food,” Danielle said.
Colours from the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Flags feature on the sides of the jersey.
“I can’t wait to see all the players with the jersey on run out onto the field ... That will be a really proud moment,” Danielle said.
Blake hopes the Round will not only bring Indigenous culture to the forefront, but also prompt important conversations.
“Everyone’s equal, everyone bleeds the same, so just hopefully we can get that across the board and get that local knowledge into everyone about elders past, present and future. There are conversations to be had,” he said.
You can purchase the 2020 Eels Indigenous Jersey here and see more of Danielle Mate Sullivan's work at her website
Replies
I know Frank, I was just playing along with Snake. He's says dickhead stuff that gets people to react, I'm doing the same.
To be fair, I didn't say it about the ANZAC's I said it as a tongue in cheek reply about Snake wanting an Anglo jersey. Seeing that most Australians of Anglo heratige respect and revere ANZAC day as almost a sacred occasional in Australian culture, the shoe seemed to fit.
None of those who fought, served, were maimed or killed ( My relies included) where to blame for starting the conflicts, ergo no smear on the average joe veteran.
When I say "White" it was a reference to British, French, German, Belgium, Spainish, Portuguese colonialism in the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries, American expansionism in the 20th and into the 21st, hell throw in Russia....
None of which is meant to imply that any of these actions are implicit because the perpetrators where " White ", just that overwhelming over the last 3 centruries European peoples have been at the forefront of global conquest of others lands.
The ANZAC's were fighting against genocide mate. It's as simple as that.
And it's not just "most Australians of Anglo heritage" that revere the ANZAC as a sacred occassion in Australian (and New Zealand) culture - not to mention Turkey and the Allies.
Probably just dug deeper below pop :)
Come on Kram, you know that's not true. Dachau was set up in 1933, the 1st executions began in the late 1930's. No one in Europe, particularly in Govt. circles really gave a fuck because lots of Europeans were anti-semitic themselves.
We went to war because, to quote Menzies " is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war."
The US keep out of the "European war" until they got popped in Pearl Harbour.
The plight of the Jewish population in Europe was certainly not well publicised to the Australian public at the time, no one was rushing to enlist because they objected to the way they were treated.
There's fairly compelling evidence that the high ups in the Allied military and Govts. knew what was happening in the concentration camps, including requests from Jewish organisations to bomb the camps themselves to destroy the infrastructure of genocide and allow some prisoners to escape, but they didn't act.
They had no problem fire bombing Dresden and other civilian populations centres, or dropping nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but wasting ordnance on the concentration camps was off the table.
In regards to Gallipoli, I'd suggest the Turks remember and commemorate that fiasco in a different way than our national mythology makes us believe.
Magpie, there is a book by Broadbent, where he got permission to access the Turkish archives in Ankara. I think it's called Gallipoli: The Turkish story. His book shows how the Turks viewed Gallipoli - some Turkish name o cannot recall - as a place where about 70,000 martyrs defended Turkish independence. Nowadays Turks celebrate the event as the birth of modern Turkey from the Ottamon empire
I don't need a history lesson from you, thanks. What you have just written is so full of holes and lacking in common sense and rational perspective it's ridiculous.
So you don't respect the ANZACs and think it's all a myth - good for you.
I don't think we have too much in common mate . . . . I think I'll just leave it at that.
Krambo, If you could point out the holes it would be much appreciated. Historical record isn't subject to "common sense" and " rational perspective " it is what it is.
I'll start and finish with your paragraph four. Of course the enlisted were not "educated" to the plight of the Jewish population. The very large majority (I'd say about 100%) didn't have access to the internet or 24hr news cycle. That doesn't mean that they weren't or wouldn't have been wholly empathetic to their plight had they been versed in same.
These kids were incredibly brave and just as incredibly terrified. They're worthy heroes in my book.
Of course historical record is subject to common sense and rational perspective. Everything is.
Kram, just because soldiers signing up for war are brave (they are), that does not mean you get to be revisionist about why the signed up. I think that's one of Magpie's points and it's being avoided by the bludgeon technique of "don't take their memory in vain".
After conscription referendums were defeated around WWI, the Australian armed forces were under-manned and their weapons out-dated come WWII. Menzies took Australia to war because we were a good little colony of the UK. Remember, Menzies had returned from visiting Germany in 1938 to praise the Nazis for having abandoned individual liberty. Their sense of the collective was magnificent, he said. Obviously everyone makes mistakes. But with war in 1939, Australian troops could not legally be deployed outside the Pacific. And it took almost 6 months to raise the standing army to the promised 20,000 (in WWI it took 2 weeks). Only when Germany swept Europe in 1940 and Japan looked set to invade in 1941, did public support for large scale trip recruitment increase, so much so that Curtin and Labor removed their long standing opposition to conscription and enacted in 1942 (but also because the US had said it would not protect Australia in the Pacific unless Australia raised more troops).
None of this is consistent with widespread u see standing or the true Nazi threat. It's revisionist to read our knowledge of their genicidal acroons back into public conscience. It's not even worth asking why troops signed up, such as was it jobs or patriotism or hearing of atrocities etc. Simple fact is conscription came in due to immanent threat.
Thus, when Magpie says knowledge of Nazi genicide was not public knowledge enough to explain troop recruitment in WWII, it does not work to cite what was later known as cause. That's not history.
I think it better just to say that many women and men signed up for service. This was brave. Their service helped defeat Nazis in WWII. Everyone should be thankful. But we should not rewrite the reasons for signing up, for one very good reason. Such revisionism can make wars more clean and acceptable than any war has ever actually been. Every war ever has resulted in ordinary men and women dying while political leaders sat in offices or just say somewhere far from the killing fields. Propaganda and war go hand in hand. Sometimes the good team wins. But part of glorifying war is to rewrite the causes, often making them more morally pure than they were. My grandfather, a WWII naval gunner, once said to me after I'd asked him abouf his service, I was in high school, that he never met a single Japanese sailor that he'd killed and so he never really knew if he'd killed a bad person.
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