05/09/2024
Four Indigenous athletes are competing for Australia in the 2024 Paralympics now underway in Paris, representing the equal highest number of Indigenous athletes to feature in an Australian Paralympic Team since 1992, according to SBS.
They are: Walpiri teenager Telaya Blacksmith, who is pictured above (athletics), ( Noting our recent Telaya CTG post attracted over 6,000 ❤️ likes ) Wakawaka and Gubbi Gubbi woman Samantha Schmidt (athletics), Wiradjuri woman Ruby Storm (swimming) and Wemba Wemba and Guring-gai woman Amanda Reid (cycling).
Reid was the first Indigenous Australian to win Paralympic gold in Tokyo in 2021 and this week backed that up to win her second gold; Storm won silver in the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay S14 and Blacksmith will tomorrow (Wednesday) be the first Australian woman to contest the 400m T20 at the Paralympic Games.
They have joined the ranks of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander champions who have represented Australia at the Paralympics over past decades.
However, University of Queensland researchers Alistair Harvey, Associate Professor Gary Osmond and Professor Murray Phillips say the history of Indigenous representation at the Paralympics tells us much about the colonial history of control, racism and assimilation.
Their article, below, was first published at The Conversation under the heading ‘What a ‘forgotten’ Torres Strait Island Paralympian teaches us about representation, achievement and history’.
Alistair Harvey, Gary Osmond and Murray Phillips write:
The full significance of Harry Mosby’s silver-medal win in the men’s discus at the 1976 Paralympic Games in Canada was unrecognised for 45 years: Paralympics Australia thought he was a Western Australian.
In truth, Mosby was a Torres Strait Islander from Masig (Yorke Island), one of around 600 Islander men who worked to support his family on the Australian mainland during “railway time” from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.
Until 1965, the Queensland Torres Strait Islander Act controlled resident Islanders’ lives, including their wages and movements.
Mosby, who left the Strait in 1963 and lost both legs in a railway accident in the Pilbara in 1968, was among the first to leave.
Paralympics Australia now recognises Mosby not only as a Torres Strait Islander but also as the first, and only, Paralympian from the Strait.
Read full article via Croakey - Informed, engaged communities for health
https://www.croakey.org/what-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-paralympians-have-taught-us-about-representation-and-history/
