The way I was targeted for simply mentioning Ali's significance to me was yet another example of how the culture attacks black identity. 'Just dealing with the stresses of being an AFL footballer is enough. Lumumba, however, returned fire at the laid-back response delivered by McGuire following the report's findings. Seven months earlier, during the AFL's Indigenous round, a 13-year-old Collingwood supporter had labelled Sydney's Indigenous champion Adam Goodes an "ape", sparking a national furore that was exacerbated when McGuire made his immortally offensive joke, likening Goodes to King Kong. In his travels through the African diaspora and continent. It meant all things 'team': solidarity, fraternity, supporting your mate. From day one, he was also among Collingwood's greatest marketing assets photographed as often as any other Pie, front and centre in advertising campaigns, hosting club videos and commanding the 'Harry's World' section of the Collingwood website. When Lumumba arrived on the AFL scene at the end of 2004, much was made of his Brazilian nationality but little of his African ethnicity. Reclaiming it punctuated the year in which everything changed. [19] This has led to calls for The Project, and hosts Waleed Aly and Peter Helliar, to apologise on-air. Out of desperation to end the media barrage and unwilling to further inflame the story by placing the blame on Collingwood, he fronted the press and revealed "significant personal demons". Harry O'Brien was not my name, and it was a constant reminder that white Australian culture had colonised my identity. On 15 October 2014, after issues with the club and management, Lumumba and Collingwood agreed to part ways and he joined the Melbourne Football Club in a three-club deal with Mitch Clark going to Geelong and Travis Varcoe joining Collingwood. In another time, the man achieved fame as a sporting champion in a foreign land an All-Australian footballer, a premiership hero of the Collingwood Football Club. He was an "infectious character", a "role model", "a leader", and that highest of compliments in the Melbourne footy world: a "great bloke". The United States of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor is no African-American's idea of utopia. They're proud to pronounce it. In Fair Game, he explained Collingwood's reaction when he called out McGuire: "Employees, decision-makers identified that I had gone away from the club's virtue of 'side by side'.". But Lumumba, who retired from the AFL in 2016 after two seasons with Melbourne, says he is . At the worst possible time for Lumumba, Collingwood's form nose-dived and the club's atmosphere darkened. On-field, Lumumba confirmed his rise to star status in 2010, when was named an All-Australian and Collingwood broke through for its first premiership in 20 years. After the McGuire incident in May, Lumumba says Collingwood didn't see fit to further educate its players. Since his debut in 2005, he achieved All-Australian honours and won an AFL premiership, playing mostly as a half back. Theres always next week. The resultant front page article seemed like something quirky on a slow news day all the better with news from AFL headquarters that chief executive Andrew Demetriou had escalated the request to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. It got to a point where it made me shudder to hear and read.". Lumumba says there was a sting in the tail: he was removed from the leadership group. After Fair Game aired, McLachlan was on the front foot. For years. And it showed how censorious the footy media is, and how quickly theyll turn on you. When Fair Game was released in 2017, The Age ran an article portraying a culture of fragile egos and moral cowardice. "LU-MUM-BA. [17] Former Melbourne coach Paul Roos also confirmed hearing Lumumba's account and was "shocked" when Lumumba told him of the culture at Collingwood and what he had endured. n football, the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. One journalist invented provocative quotes and attributed them to Lumumba, used damaging information he'd shared off the record, then ignored Lumumba's phone calls when he wanted to discuss the misinformation and the subsequent fallout that enveloped him. 'Despite the nickname being overtly racist, unfortunately, it was not the worst facet of the interpersonal racism that I encountered during my 10 years at CFC.'. Two hundred metres away, a 33-year-old man and his wife anxiously peered out their window, their one-year-old son playing with a toy truck. Dusted.". I hope this provokes conversation tonight in every household, in all of your workplaces,' he said. In his football, support and mentorship came from the likes of Paul Licuria, James Clement, Marty Girvan, Scott Watters and David Buttifant. Read about our approach to external linking. Support, instead, flocked to the president. Its easy to cancel the memberships of some knucklehead. From that position, Lumumba could easily tune out and switch off. "You can't turn back from this moment. [5], Lumumba made his Melbourne debut in round 1, 2015, against Gold Coast, in what was also his 200th AFL game. He played in numbers 43, 30 and his final number 8. The club is bigger than the individual. It also featured in Buckley's conditional support amid the "Lez" furore, after Lumumba's impromptu press conference: "We are a 'side by side' club that provides for all individuals so long as those individuals are prepared to be side by side with the club," Buckley told reporters. Hritier Lumumba. Many players say they no longer have a relationship with him. One thing that I have learned in my journey that I will hold to my heart for the rest of my life is that I know what side of history I stand on.". [Lumumba's] capacity to speak his mind with stunning clarity is so rare in football that it struggles to deal with it.". "No-one spoke to me in relation to this article," Pendlebury tweeted in response. For years, Collingwood hoped, or assumed, that Hritier Lumumba would simply go away. It was how I got away from the suffocation of the world I was in.". 'The report clearly states that during Eddie's tenure as CFC president, the club's racism resulted in ''profound and enduring harm'' to many individuals, families, & communities. We make mistakes. 'It was not systemic racism, as such, we just didn't have the processes to deal with it that we do now. Consider Lumumba's status in Collingwood's pecking order. During a Collingwood press conference on Monday, Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, 56, denied there was any 'systemic racism' at the team, and said that on his watch they 'built a fantastic club'. The player slammed Buckley's claims that he didn't mind the nickname when he was winning, calling the argument 'flimsy' and using a 'reductionist framework to evaluate how racism manifests for individuals'. In December 2013, he changed his surname back to "Lumumba" and discontinued the use of the nickname "Harry", citing his journey of decolonisation as the reason for the change. In the 2012 post-season, Lumumba had travelled to Brazil again, seeking the counsel of his Jongueiro elders. Many naturally wondered: would those have been the same players who kept voting Lumumba into the club's leadership group? Then he adopted words of advice from a mentor, the African-American academic Professor Lucius Outlaw Jr: "The lessons of histories of encounters between white folks and folks African and of African descent have taught us that it is not in our best interests to leave the education of white children and young people solely up to white people. "See ya later," chortled Tony Shaw on Fox Footy. "Hritier Lumumba gave permission for Scott Pendlebury to call him 'Chimp' while at Collingwood," read a Fox Sports headline in August. It has a powerful vibration. Read Australias most-read columnist, the cartoons of the newspaper that bears our countrys name, or wade through social media for five minutes and tell me this is just a football problem. He'd devoured Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, and been struck by his and Obama's common experiences. Privately, the pair were pressured into playing, as Krakouer later admitted: "I was urged by the coaches to fly to Brisbane and play against my wishes, because I was told it would be seen as a statement against Eddie and the club.". He is portrayed as an outcast.". In reality, he says it was his only option to shield himself against significant personal attacks. His response to the hyper-masculinity and white monoculture informing Collingwood's playing group was to disappear in the off-season and travel through the Americas, the Caribbean and the African continent, connecting with their people and cultures, forever wanting more. "When you have Africa inside of you, and you carry and own its power, it's common for people to become intimidated or uncomfortable. The standouts were SBS journalist Ahmed Yussuf, who could empathise from his own experiences as an African-Australian; Jo Chandler, for her sincerity and for not coming from the sports world; and the late Trevor Grant, by then an ex-football journalist. This needs to be urgently addressed within the AFL industry.". His 2013 pre-season training regime had been intense, but now he pushed his body to higher levels. He said Collingwood's failure to address issues had a 'severe impact' on his wellbeing. "There were tens of millions of people around the world who were mourning the death of Muhammad Ali," Lumumba says. One headline read: Too Precious. There was a time when he told himself it wasn't his job to educate people. It had darker undertones too. During an event for Brazil's 'black consciousness' week, he was performing a traditional Kongolese dance. In those early years, his escapes were the company of Melbourne's Afro-Brazilian community, and a pastime of which few at Collingwood were aware: he was a percussionist in two samba bands, forging deep connections with his culture. Living with it too is the AFL. On the 2011 Pert incident, Lumumba claims the CEO got "heavily intoxicated" in Sydney and made "inappropriate comments" in front of players' wives and partners that "referenced their sex lives, which made the partners uncomfortable". McGuire has since admitted he 'got it wrong' in his response and said he had used the term 'pride' 'under the pressure of the day'. An investigation would in any case have required the cooperation of Lumumba and those who were at Collingwood in his time but have since left; Lumumba, among others, would not consent to an interview. Only once could he coax a group of teammates down Smith Street, with its hodgepodge of dive bars and art galleries. "I read the words 'BLACK LIVES MATTER', surrounding me at every angle imaginable, and my mind turned to my family in the Democratic Republic of Congo," Hritier Lumumba says. "What that did was make me very much about following orders and instructions. "Side by side they stick together, to uphold the Magpies name" goes the team song. It came at considerable cost. In 2005, before he'd even established himself as a player, Lumumba became the AFL's inaugural multicultural ambassador, tackling with gusto his duty to broaden the game's appeal to migrant communities. "I was able to freely express myself through dance, percussion and singing without the overbearing presence of the white gaze. In 2006 he showed more improvement and was elevated to the senior list again during the year, this time due to the absence of Sean Rusling, playing a total of nine games. He called the culture at Collingwood a "boys' club for racist and sexist jokes"[10] and stated that his teammates nicknamed him "chimp", a term with a strong history of connotations as a racial slur against black people. "The wharf where they first touched down is known as Cais do Valongo, about 50 metres from the hospital. Perhaps you imagine the years 2030, 2040 and 2050, when 21 old footballers a little greyer, perhaps a little wider will dust off their AFL premiership medals and reunite, reminding themselves of the things they did and didn't do in the name of the Collingwood Football Club. We can learn. In many ways and its an indictment on the rest of the country football has led the way on this issue. A lot of the criticism came with a sneering tone. Theres always a new hero, a new villain, a new outrage. Sport, religion and family: Who is incoming AFL boss Andrew Dillon? The report found the Collingwood Football Club guilty of systemic racism. Then a small drum is placed before him and his palms connect with its weathered surface, moving in time with those of the elders. Recent documentaries on Aboriginal player Adam Goodes - a two-time AFL best-and-fairest winner who retired after persistent abuse - have prompted calls for the sport to improve. It means something to people here. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. In documents filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Mr Lumumba alleged the league and his former club had failed in their duty of care to provide players with a safe environment. "We grew up as black children who were outsiders in isolated capital cities; our fathers African; Barack was whitewashed to Barry, Hritier to Harry. He was taunted by fans and targeted with physical attacks by opposition players. To be unable to express oneself naturally is excruciatingly painful. Lumumba had a year to run on his Collingwood contract at that point. Riot police arrived with rubber bullets, batons and tear gas. Grant pressed a copy of Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America into Lumumba's hands and later wrote in The Age: "The highly paid image-makers project the AFL as a broad, enlightened church, free of the bigotry of the past. He was instrumental in Collingwood's 2010 grand final replay win over St Kilda and kicked a long goal from the boundary line late in the game. "Players past and present privately threaten retribution. That changed in late 2020, when the ABC published an in-depth interview, the results of months of research. I will do better. Collingwood premiership player Heritier Lumumba says he will not release further recordings, the day after sharing audio of what are claimed to be conversations with his former coach Nathan Buckley. A former executive producer at Network 10 stated, "What 'The Project' should do right now is show a bit of that clip, have Waleed and Pete sit there and talk about it and the lessons they've learned and what they'll do going forward. And the media has gone on being receptive. Trouble, however, was brewing. Another bought a black dog and named it after Lumumba. Heritier Lumumba and ex-Collingwood teammate get into heated online dispute | Daily Mail Online AFL star who blew the whistle on Collingwood 'racism' gets into heated online dispute with Magpies. Lies appeared about everything from his holiday plans and mental health to his confrontation of issues as serious as suicide and sexual abuse. Former Collingwood player Hritier Lumumba used to be known as Harry O'Brien. Happily distant from the AFL world, he now lives in a city where his name is a byword for moral conviction and strength indeed, one that boasts a mural of Patrice Lumumba. "I want to meet Obama too," said a reader letter in the Herald Sun. By day eight of the saga, Lumumba was weighed down by the club's betrayals and the media's relentless character assassinations. 12:52 BST 07 Feb 2021 Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. Maintaining the connection to traditions is one defence against the ongoing genocide that is being waged against Afro-Brazilians as a whole.". Too much hard work. If I was being honest, it really wasnt too far removed from my own perception of him. When Lumumba complained, he says the club did nothing. "[13] Lumumba felt that he was undermined by Aly and claimed that Aly was indifferent to racism. I feel empowered knowing that my name can connect them to their indigenous tongue's natural intonation. The senior staff now distanced themselves from their approval. 0:00 / 8:55 ABC is an Australian public broadcast service. In the AFL arenas where Lumumba was heckled and abused. Consider the burden on a black teenager within a powerful white institution. I know that if the Collingwood Football Club is to go to the next level as a football club, it must stand on the right side of history. Certain layers of context are essential to understanding how Lumumba's confrontation of McGuire led to his exile from Collingwood and estrangement from the game. When Lumumba was 23, Malthouse labelled him a "future captain". Mr McGuire later apologised for his comments. 'It affected me in a myriad of ways, whether it was physically, mentally and spiritually,' he said. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. [24] He supported the Essendon Bombers as a child, with his family owning a pet dog named Sheedy after the long-time Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy. On one hand, it begged the question as to what faults Behrendt was expected to find. Lumumba blew the whistle on Collingwood for 'systemic' racism, sparking an investigation and subsequent allegations of racial discrimination within the club. He later spoke out about his experience of racism at Collingwood, which he said included being given a nickname that is a racial slur for black people. The scathing report was made public, finding the club's attempts to deal with allegations of racism were either 'ineffective' or 'exacerbated' the situation. Former Magpies player Simon Buckley said Brazilian-born Heritier Lumumba never complained about his nickname 'Chimp' when he was 'winning flags and getting a kick himself'. The club comes first." "Given the club's inability to come clean, and the way it has attempted to publicly and privately attack my reputation, I cannot accept this 'integrity' process has been proposed in good faith.". He developed anxiety, struggling to sleep; a three-day Gaia retreat during Collingwood's mid-season bye didn't halt his spiral. Lumumba is now less consumed by the bitterness of the world he once inhibited than he is by the richness of the one he returned to. This stain on Collingwood's reputation was first revealed in Jeff Daniels's 2017 documentary, Fair Game. In football, the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. But as far as I'm concerned, it's clear what the club's position is.

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