Sani Townson is standing on a platform, arms outstretched at an angle above his head. He is a wedge-tailed eagle, and the kids in front of him are too. “Five, six, five, six, seven, eight,” he says with all the instructive pizzazz of a lead choreographer tasked with teaching more than 200 school students to dance in formation.
After weeks of rehearsals, the birds are flying in unison. Next to them, another set of young dancers are slithering like snakes. Further afield, turtles are ducking and diving as one. There are also goannas and sharks and stingrays, and praying mantes and ringtail possums. They are the real-life totems of eight Brisbane Broncos NRL and NRLW players, as depicted on this year’s Indigenous round jersey.
Townson, the youth program director at Bangarra Dance Theatre, is putting his pupils through their paces. He is giving them a “dry cake”, and expects them to add the icing. “I’m a drill master,” he says. “I make sure everything is clean. They’ve gotta hit the shape.”
The big performance will happen at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night, just before the Broncos play Gold Coast Titans. Being on national TV is a big deal. But for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and teenagers involved, much of the value has come from the process. From practising at their schools in the Logan, Redlands, Ipswich and Moreton regions, and then linking up in the final week.
Key to the whole production has been Sidney Saltner who, like Townson, is a former Bangarra dancer and the director of this particular show.
“It’s also about preparing our next generations to be where we are,” says Saltner, a descendent of the Wulli Wulli and Wakka Wakka people of central Queensland. “We’re standing on our ancestors’ and our parents’ shoulders. Who’s going to be standing on our shoulders to take our culture forward?
“When we grew up there wasn’t a visible person in front of us teaching us. So that’s our biggest push, to make sure we are visible teaching our kids, and that they know they can do that also.”
That is, in a nutshell, the message from the organisation behind it. Beyond the Broncos, the club’s community arm, recruited the kids from its mentoring and girls academy programs which operate across 53 schools in Queensland and northern New South Wales.
The aim is to improve education outcomes for Indigenous students, with a focus on attendance rates and post-school employment. But while its objectives are in line with the federal government’s (its majority funder) National Agreement on Closing the Gap, it is intent on shifting the deficit narrative.
“Closing the gap is not how we look at it,” says Beyond the Broncos’ Indigenous careers programs manager, Rhi Parsons. “We are strength-based – we like to look at what our students can do. And when we measure success it’s not just about attendance but across a whole realm of things. That’s about positive participation engagement.”
What that means for Townson, a descendant of the Saibai Koedal and Samu Clans of Saibai Island, is “self-determination”.
“If they don’t like the dancing then they can do work in the backstage production side of it,” he says. “You can help with the music man or the video. We are giving them a little nudge saying, ‘maybe if this is not your thing you can do this instead’.
“When they come to us, sometimes they’ve got stuff happening in their own worlds. That’s why it’s important to respect each other and get along like a big family.”
The Broncos are not the only NRL-related organisation active in this space – Souths Cares and the Johnathan Thurston Academy are among others actively engaged with schools in their respective regions.
This weekend, at the start of National Reconciliation Week, players – First Nations and otherwise – will pay homage to those who walked before them through their jerseys and in their boots. Every club has added its own unique creative touch to the round, which the NRL has themed ‘pass back, move forward’.
Sporting organisations have, at times, been accused of tokenistic gesturing. Of prioritising public relations over substance. Bringing out the bells and whistles for one week of the year but overlooking the remaining 51. For one of the league’s most prominent Indigenous representatives, though, it does not feel reductive.
“The game’s certainly doing a lot,” says former player and Anaiwan man, Dean Widders. “We’ve definitely come a long way in terms of education, about our players, the places they come from and general Indigenous history. Now, off the back of that, we need to see more progression and action in some of these other spaces.
“We’ve got that responsibility be that lead to implement cultural stuff and make that normal business now in what we do in the game all year round – not just for specific rounds.”
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At the Broncos’ training field, an avuncular, kind-looking man is quietly watching one of the final rehearsals. Uncle Laurie is Elder in Residence at one of the schools, at which about 15% of the students are Indigenous.
“I help them with their studies and instil a bit of culture and pride within ourselves,” he says. “I work closely with the families and the community. Sometimes students might just come and have a yarn, or sit down and do some homework.
“You have your laughs, you have your cries with the kids, but at the end of the day it’s about helping them find their way through school. Seeing them grow and excel in certain areas of education, knowing that I played a small part in that makes me feel good. The best thing about the girls academy is we’re seeing more girls coming out of their shell, to do their work and share in the culture. With the culture comes respect and confidence.”
One of those girls is 17-year-old Shartia Mam, who describes Uncle Laurie as “like an actual uncle at a school that has everything you want” and also likes to talk to a Beyond the Broncos female student support officer who visits the school most days. The program is managed by Gail Stephenson, the sister of Bangarra’s renowned artistic director, Stephen Page.
Mam, who is dancing as a crocodile (“a Torres Strait Islander totem”), also performs traditional dance with her family, including her grandmother and great grandmother, and learns about the stories behind them. She also happens to be the niece of halfback Ezra Mam, who made his Broncos debut last weekend. “He’s basically like a big brother,” she says.
She says she proudly represents her lineage everywhere she goes, and says others in the program also feel that connection strongly, but also worries that “some kids really don’t know about their culture”.
“About how their ancestors grew up and that stuff,” she says. “Some have lost touch with who they are as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and don’t really show that they’re proud of it. They act like they’re ashamed of it. That gets me a lot, but I understand because of the way they grew up – their family must have not told them.
“Many kids think that because you’re a bit light-skinned then you’re not Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. So this a great opportunity to learn about it and actually to remind people that they are who they are in the inside, not what they are on the outside.”
What NRL fans generally see around this time of year are the Welcome to Country, smoking ceremonies and beautifully decorated jerseys and boots. The Melbourne Storm jersey is inspired by the Rainbow Serpent. South Sydney’s portrays the birthing tree symbolising matriarchs and acknowledging Mother Earth. St George Illawarra’s shows a whale, the totem of the Dharawal people.
Brisbane’s is the club’s most colourful yet. Bold blues and greens circulate the design of artist Casey Coolwell-Fisher, a Quandamooka-Nunukul woman who worked closely with players Kotoni Staggs (Wiradjuri – goanna and ringtail possum) and Albert Kelly (Gumbayngirr/Dunghutti – diamond python and praying mantis).
They wanted it to represent people from different nations and tribes finding one another through the navigation of the stars. “The biggest things were the colours,” says Staggs. “The blues are the rivers that run through the community and the browns with the mountains and the hills.”
Staggs has been to visit some schools for workshops. “Especially the role I play as a current player, you see all the kids smile and get up for that,” he says. On Friday night he will wear one of the 21 sets of boots painted by school students in varying designs to represent their chosen player’s story.
Widders says it is rural areas such as Staggs’s NSW home town of Wellington and his own of Armidale that need the most help.
“We’ve gotta look into the remote and rural communities where the game is struggling,” Widders says. “We need to get out there and help save the game because those kids and those communities are at risk of drugs and violence and other things that will really affect them. The game can play a part in changing that.”
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Scott Prince is serving the kids lunch. The former halfback, from the Kalkadoon people of Mount Isa, has long worked full-time for Beyond the Broncos. “It’s important for me because I see a lot of myself in these kids,” Prince says. “Especially growing up in Mount Isa, not having the opportunities.
“In some isolated places I’m sure they would see programs coming and going. But the one thing I’m really proud of is the fact we’re there every week, every month, every year. We build a relationship with somebody and we’re not gonna go away. We’re gonna be there, riding the highs and lows with them.”
Part of that, he says, is ensuring local community members see them around regularly. “We bump into them at the local cafe,” he says. “They know us, we know them – we’re not just Barry blow-ins.
“The whole purpose of this program is for kids to be empowered so they can achieve anything in life. It’s not just sport … rugby league’s a big part of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander communities, but that’s just the hook. When you look across our students, I would say a high percentage of them don’t really have a positive role model in their life. If I can be that for somebody, that’s part of my role.”
Saltner, who danced with Bangarra for more than 15 years, remembers being a kid who did not excel within the confines of a school curriculum, but said the more formal elements of his education came more naturally once he was able to express himself creatively.
“I sort of had to find some sort of avenue where I could get rid of that [rigidity], and then once I was free to learn the other stuff, the rest came easy,” he says. “Giving these kids the opportunity in the first place to express themselves is going to break down barriers.
“A lot of it is shame. If they don’t know anything they act up, and if you call them out it will be even worse. But if you try and break that barrier down and make learning fun for them. If you don’t know, ask a question – it’s OK, you’re not in trouble. Over many years of teaching this stuff we’ve learned little tricks to pull them out of that and make it exciting.”
