What does it mean to play sport on First Nations land? Ellen van Neerven explores sovereignty and survival on the sporting field
Retrieved on:
Friday, May 5, 2023
Perfect Score, Sport, Diamond, Poetry, Face, Aborigine, Survival, Darumbal, Fire, Guilt, Identity, UQP, Recreation, Human, Flood, Hearing, Love, Reading, First Nations, Racism, Literature, Culture, Donell, McQuire, Virginia, Trauma, Football, Creative industries, Toy, Entertainment, Jewellery, Country, Indigenous peoples
This is an ugly book that was born of the ugly language I grew up hearing in this country.
Key Points:
- This is an ugly book that was born of the ugly language I grew up hearing in this country.
- This book is me scratching my way out of the scrap of the schoolyard, just trying to stay alive.
- Review: Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity – Ellen van Neerven (UQP) Weaving together race, Indigeneity, sports, sexuality, gender, class and Country, they offer something no sport historian has.
Prominent and personal Black sporting moments
- The sporting field as a site has offered many iconic moments for mob, both in victory and as victims of racial violence visited upon us – from spectators, selectors, and sporting clubs and associations.
- And with Aboriginal men’s innumerable, yet memorable, defiant stances against racism in both rugby league and Aussie rules.
- Van Neerven doesn’t visit those familiar iconic moments.
- Instead, they take us into the private moments they’ve experienced as a soccer player and as a queer non-binary Blackfulla growing up in Brisbane.
Strategising survival on the sporting field
- In reading their story, I felt perhaps I had missed something in not loving the game like they do.
- Van Neerven most powerfully demonstrates their skills – as a writer and soccer player – in the chapter titled “Skills”.
- And van Neerven honours Black theorising throughout the text, as they make sense of survival, sovereignty and sporting fields.
- With Perfect Score, van Neerven reminds us that sport, for Blackfullas – pre- and post-1788 – has never been just for recreation.