AFLW star Daisy Pearce has backed in the league’s decision to scrap a minute of silence for Queen Elizabeth II during Indigenous Round.
The minute of silence was initially observed for the opening match of the round, but it was removed for all remaining matches after being considered culturally insensitive to Australia’s Indigenous population.
Pearce said she supported the decision by the league, deeming the crossover inappropriate.
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“To me, Indigenous Round is a time not just for celebrating colourful jumpers, as awesome as they are, and not just for celebrating Indigenous players, but about educating ourselves and concerning ourselves with the facts in this country’s history that aren’t well told and giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a platform for telling their stories,” she said on SEN’s Whateley.
“What I’ve learnt through going through that process with a number of Indigenous rounds is that for First Nations people colonialism is not something that’s universally celebrated.
“It represents the genocide of their people, the theft of their land, the erasure of their culture and way of life, the loss of their wealth, their basic human rights and their children.”
Pearce welcomed twins into the world in February 2019, with life as a parent informing her opinions on the subject.
“The stolen generation forever has been awful, but now as a parent, to think of the idea of someone turning up at your door and taking your children and scattering them around so that they’re almost untraceable, I just can’t fathom that,” she said.
“There was legislation in this country that remained for decades in some states as recently as the 1970s, this isn’t some ancient barbaric history that happened way back when, this happened in our lifetimes.
“The trauma and pain associated with that didn’t end with the removal of that legislation, it endures now, and it has a very real effect on people and families and identities right now.”
While the Melbourne star acknowledged the significant story that is the Queen’s passing, she said it didn’t mean the monarchy should necessarily be celebrated.
“While for many Australians and people around the world the Queen represents a long remarkable reign marked by goodwill, grace, leadership, family and service, for a group of very significant Australians, the first owners of this land, it doesn’t,” she said.
“I understand that the Queen inherited her role at a very young age and was not directly to blame for all these past atrocities and that she did an enormous amount of good. But for Indigenous people she leaves a 70-year legacy as the figurehead of colonialism.
“What I’m hearing, reading and learning through what I get to learn in Indigenous round is that for a lot of First Nations people she represents pain and trauma and ongoing oppression that they don’t want to celebrate.”
