Michael Gordon looks at the high-profile indigenous presence at the
2000 Olympics and ponders the Cathy Freeman effect.

By MICHAEL GORDON
11:04AM, Oct 13

My Olympic experience began in Melbourne in early September at the
Prime Minister's Olympic Dinner, a gala black-tie event with a guest
list of 2,000,
including many of Australia's greatest sporting heroes and highest
achievers in business, politics and the arts. John Howard remarked in
his keynote
address that there was something marvellously symbolic in the venue,
the Royal Exhibition Building - the place where the Federal Parliament
sat for the
first time on May 9, 1901. And there was.

"Here we are, back in Melbourne, the first Australian city to host
the Olympic Games," the Prime Minister said, adding that it was also the
city where
Edwin Flack, "our only representative in 1896" grew up and was
educated.

It was a feel-good night drenched in sporting nostalgia, with
Olympic highlights replayed in slow-motion to evocative music on a giant
screen and
cameo appearances by living legends like Dawn Fraser and Murray
Rose. It wasn't until shortly after they toasted "the Queen and the
people of
Australia" that I sensed something was missing. Where was the
indigenous presence?

It wasn't that the organisers intended this oversight. Far from it.
It was just that the life experience of most of those present and the
golden sporting era
they celebrated reflected a time when things were different, a time
when most of Australia was blissfully unaware that Australia was a
country
incomplete, when institutional discrimination, profound
disadvantage, geography and racism consigned much of indigenous
Australia to the fringe.

The Melbourne Olympics became known as the Friendly Games for all
the right reasons. But they weren't particularly friendly times for
indigenous
Australia. For a start, there was not a single Aborigine in the
Australian team. Less than a year after they were held, Cathy Freeman's
great-uncle,
Sonny Sibley, was arrested for being one of the leaders of a strike
against the two-pound-a-week wages paid to Aboriginal workers on Palm
Island,
where Freeman's maternal grandmother was taken as an eight-year-old.

How symbolic was it, then, that Freeman, one of 11 Aborigines in
Australia's team for these Games, should be given the honour of lighting
the Olympic
cauldron six days later in Sydney? That the underlying theme of such
a wonderful opening ceremony should be inclusion? And that, having
confirmed
her athletic greatness on the track, Freeman should run that joyous
victory lap after the 400 metres carrying two flags tied together, the
Australian and
the Aboriginal?

If the Melbourne Games were a reflection of the country as it was
then - a good-natured contradiction, egalitarian but blind - the Sydney
Games
amounted to a statement of how much Australia has changed in the
intervening years, and a declaration of where the nation would like to
go. If the
criterion is potential for an enduring impact, these were the
Reconciliation Games and Cathy Freeman was their personification.

But how do you begin to assess that potential? You start by looking
at the faces of those in the crowd at the Olympic stadium. George Brown,
a
17-year-old from the Wreck Bay Aboriginal community on the NSW south
coast, was one of them and his standout memory is the aftermath of
Freeman's emphatic victory in the 400 metres.

There have been many occasions when the nation has watched as one in
nervous anticipation as an Australian team or individual attempted to
make
sporting history, but few that generated the kind of collective knot
in the stomach that accompanied Freeman as she settled into the blocks.
And few
that generated such unbridled euphoria after the moment of triumph.

"I couldn't believe how many non-indigenous people were holding up
Aboriginal flags, and the Australian flag with the Union Jack cut out
and replaced
by the Aboriginal flag - and how many Australians stood up for Cathy
and cried when she went over to her mum," recalls Brown, a schoolboy
athlete
who wants to be a lawyer. "That was amazing."

Brown and his younger brother, Jackson, were among those who danced
in the 11-minute "Awakening" segment of the opening ceremony, an event
that represented a watershed in reconciliation for black Australia -
the first time so many groups danced as one before such a huge domestic
and
international audience.

"It was blackfellas reconciling in their own backyard," says Stephen
Page, the artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, who shared
responsibility for the segment with Rhoda Roberts. Apart from being
a source of pride and inspiration for those who took part and those who
watched
from the stands or on television, the event will have practical
consequences, exposing hundreds of urban Aborigines to their cultural
inheritance. Says
Page: "All these Koori kids from different schools are going to do
exchanges with the kids from Arnhem Land, so we're building our own
bridge. We're
not waiting for one little old fart to say sorry anymore. We can't
give our energy to that anymore."

For Page, aged 34, the most emotional moment was a private one, when
he was invited into the converted car park that served as the dressing
room
for the women from the Central Desert, to hear a hymn of thanks by
those who had spent six hours preparing for the shortest, but one of the
most
significant, corroborees in history. "To have close to 400 Central
Desert women stand around you with their costumes on, ready to go onto
the field,
and all they want to do is say thank you, is pretty special."

Then there is the question of what impact Freeman's example of
athletic excellence and unaffected generosity of spirit will have on
young Australians,
particularly those in indigenous communities which have had all too
little to celebrate. Communities like Palm Island, the place established
as a penal
colony for "troublesome Aborigines".

The Sibley clan includes Jack, 80, the brother of the late Sonny and
George, Freeman's maternal grandfather. They watched the 400 metres on
television and wept in almost disbelieving joy.

"It meant a lot to me because she's Aboriginal and proud to be
Aboriginal," said Cecelia Sibley, Cathy's aunt. "It's also going to
encourage the young kids
here to think that they can do it, too."

Tollivar Fisher, the brother of Cathy's late father, watched her on
television from his home in Cairns. He wept, too, but he also did
something he has
never done before: he stood for the national anthem when Cathy
received her gold medal.

And what will it mean for non-indigenous Australia? Ric Birch, the
principal architect of the opening and closing ceremonies, insists the
reconciliation
theme was the unconscious product of an attempt by himself and David
Atkins, the ceremonies' artistic director, to deliver a message of
inclusion.

"A defining moment in Australian history? I'd love to think that the
ceremonies will make Australia a better place for the forces of
reconciliation, for all the
forces of good in society. I'd love to think that would happen. But
it's very much up to the audience and, ultimately, ceremonies probably
reflect society
rather than necessarily create history. What I hope is that it will
inspire the people who watched it to move on."

This aspiration is shared by young George Brown. "We're hopefully
taking the long road to reconciliation, but we're not necessarily half
way yet. We're
gradually getting there. We just need a bit more effort from the
whole of Australia, not just half."

One signpost of progress will be the make-up of future Prime
Minister's Olympic Dinners. One certainty is that when the sporting
legends of past and
present are acknowledged and applauded, Cathy Freeman will forever
be among them.