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NICCs 'spark conversations' for Palawa people

Tasmania assistant coach explains how the National Indigenous Cricket Championships are helping young Tasmanians better understand their heritage

Follow all the action from the National Indigenous Championships here

On the way to a match at the National Indigenous Cricket Championships in Alice Springs last week, the Tasmania team passed a building that had the Northern Territory flag flying above it.

One of the players, 14-year-old Eli Bellinger from Smithton in Tasmania's far north-west, asked if it was the Torres Strait Islander flag.

"I told him it wasn't," says Guy 'Chalky' Grey, a veteran of the NICCs and the team's self-styled 'cultural attache'.

"But I'd seen a school beforehand that had the Territory flag, Aboriginal flag and Torres Strait Islander flag, so I turned back around and showed him.

"Eli knows now what that flag looks like and, while it might not sound like a big thing, one of our players, Will Dau, is Torres Strait Islander. So now Eli understands a bit about Willy's heritage and what the symbols on his flag represent."

Image Id: 4B6B6D3244A145459897A4ED21C41E99 Image Caption: Tasmania's Will Dau is a Torres Strait Islander // Getty

The NICCs are officially a cricket tournament – now in their fifth year after being formerly known as the Imparja Cup – but it's the lessons in identity, culture and belonging that are among its greatest gifts.

Bellinger's story is common to many Tasmanians with Indigenous heritage. The lineage is through his mother's side of the family and, while she was strong on acknowledging her background, Eli's father was less inclined to incorporate that legacy into their everyday life.

"They're a strong cricketing family from a small farming community," Grey says. "Where they live, back in the day, it was Aboriginal land that was taken and sold to settlers.

"Over the years there became this stigma that, if you had any Aboriginal heritage in your family, it was sort of tucked away and not spoken about."

Recently, the unexpected death of Eli's grandmother changed things for the Bellingers.

"Before Nan passed away, I hadn't really identified myself as an Aboriginal," Eli says.

"I knew I had some Indigenous background, but it wasn't part of my life. But when she passed away, we started to look through our history and we found out a bit more.

"I was pretty excited when I found out about my background. It opened up a lot of things for me, such as being able to join in with different things, like this tournament."

Image Id: FD57E44355444E5AB880CB849BAE4C28 Image Caption: Traeger Park in Alice Springs is hosting the NICC // Getty

Across the opening days of the NICCs, apart from the cricket, the players – male and female – have taken part in Culture Days, where they've learned lessons such as how to perform a Welcome to Country, smoking ceremonies, what the symbols on their shirts mean, how to create traditional art and how to make boomerangs and tools the traditional way.

"I've got a few mates at school who are Aboriginal but, like I was, aren't fully identified as it," Eli says.

"I'll tell them what I've learnt here and I reckon they'll be pretty excited and hopefully they'll be keen to learn a bit more themselves."

Grey says it's not Eli's fault he didn't know these skills.

Apart from the lack of recognition in his family, there aren't many teachers like Grey, who works as an Aboriginal Education Officer in local schools and communities.

"When Eli goes home, he won't get the same sort of education he's getting here," he says.

"But my aim is to have these blokes not only become better cricketers, but become more understanding of who they are, where they come from.

"And by learning what he is here, he'll be able to bring it back to his family and his school. He's learnt how to do some of these things and he now knows he's got the right to it.

"There's 10,000-year-old petroglyphs (rock carvings) 20 minutes' drive from where Eli lives, but he's never known that. This is the sort of thing that he can learn about now and feel connected to.

"This tournament sparks conversation, it gets people interested in their family history and that's a very important thing."

It's especially true for Tasmania's Indigenous people, who generally look different to Indigenous Australians elsewhere and whose culture and traditions were all-but wiped out over generations.

"Most of the locals here in Alice Springs didn't think any Tasmanian Aboriginals existed because we don't look like the guys from Tennant Creek or Katherine or other places," Grey says.

"Even back in the 1970s, when my mother and my uncle were institutionalised, they'd gone to school and been scrubbed with brushes because their skin was dark. You have to understand, you're not going to put your hand up and say 'I'm a blackfella' when that's going on.

"A lot of our history was lost because people hid their identity."

Grey concedes the damage can never be completely repaired. However, he says: "The important thing is, if one of our players is walking around here and they get asked 'Who's your mob?', they now know. They know they're the Palawa people. To me, that’s progress.

"Our people were around for 60,000 years, so let's teach these kids about their connections, let's let them express themselves and understand their culture.

"Sport is a really great way to go about it, to make it happen."

Follow all the action from the National Indigenous Championships here