NEW YORK -- Not satisfied with breaking a 37-year AFL premiership drought last September, the Richmond Football Club is blazing a trail in bridging the gap between Australian Rules Football and Indigenous issues.
Last week, Richmond became the first sporting club to present at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The Tigers' delegation, in partnership with the Korin Gamadji Institute and its director, Aaron Clark, spoke to the UN about their program and the state of Indigenous affairs in Australia.
Clark said the reaction inside the UN to his group's message was "amazing."
"I think we're the first sporting club that's been able to facilitate young people's voices in this type of forum," Clark told ESPN in New York. "The Richmond Football Club is committed to reconciliation, and this is part of the journey.
"Football can bring a sense of hope, a line of sight. It brings role models. It can talk about leadership, about resilience, about teamwork and achieving things together. They're the sort of things that sport can send out to the community, and in particular us at the Korin Gamadji Institute, and then here to the UN."
Aaron Clark, director of the Korin Gamadji Institute based at Punt Road Oval, tells ESPN what it means for the Richmond Football Club to be the first sporting club to present at the United Nations in New York.
The Tigers' journey to the UN from Australia had its genesis when they became the first sporting club signatory to a National Congress of Australia's First Peoples Accord late last year. That congress was established in 2010 and is a national voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The co-chair of the Congress, Dr. Jackie Huggins, told ESPN that they helped facilitate the appearance at the UN.
"We reached out to them [the Tigers] through one of our staff who's a huge Richmond fan and thought it would be a good idea if we started doing accords with sporting clubs," she told ESPN. "This is the very first sporting club that we have from national congress point of view. It's been great to hear us talk on the floor of the UN. Not many people get that opportunity, so people were interested."
Richmond have been pioneers in helping celebrate Indigenous culture in the Australian sporting landscape for many years now. Alongside the Essendon Football Club, the Tigers established the "Dreamtime at the G" match in 2005. Now in its 12th year, the game, held at the MCG, has become the flagship of an entire round dedicated to acknowledging the impact Indigenous Australians have had on the country's biggest sporting code.
"Dreamtime at the G" regularly draws a crowd of more than 80,000 fans. In addition, Richmond was one of the first clubs to design a special jumper using Aboriginal artwork.
"It's a finals-like atmosphere," Richmond's Indigenous veteran, Shane Edwards, told ESPN of the Dreamtime clash. "It really highlights all the past and present Indigenous players who have made the game what it is today and that have had a huge impact on the game.
"It's something special that makes you feel pretty proud, especially now at our club, we have got six Indigenous kids [players]. A few years [ago], I was the only one, and I felt a little bit lonely out there, but now we've got a lot of Indigenous talent."
Indigenous Australians make up 3 percent of Australia's population, but roughly 10 percent of the AFL player pool is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. As a result, Richmond's efforts to continue spreading the message and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will continue.
"The work Richmond Football Club does celebrating Indigenous culture, supporting Indigenous youth and educating the broader community is an authentic part of what we stand for, and it makes us a better club," Richmond's general manager of communications Simon Matthews told ESPN.
"Football is our core business, but we want to play to a higher purpose, and this trip to the United Nations fits with that ambition. Australian Rules Football is the number one code in the country on almost any measure, and with that comes a responsibility to use that platform to support social change. We aren't the experts, and we don't always get it right, but we must use our reach in partnership to benefit the community where we can."
With the Tigers presenting to the UN some 16,000 kilometers from their home base in Melbourne, Edwards said he was immensely proud of his club.
"It's pretty amazing. Seeing it start from the ground up ... I've seen it all happen from very humble beginnings," he said.
"There's no surprise in how much it has grown with the amount of good people putting in a lot of time and care. It's pretty amazing that I've been lucky enough to be drafted to Richmond, who are the only club in the AFL and, obviously, the world, to have a connection with an institution like the KGI, and I'm really grateful to help out and be there every day.
"I'm very proud. We [Richmond] are easily the leaders in the AFL on this side of things. I'm really proud to be a part of a club that gives so much back, especially to our Indigenous youth in the country -- not just Victoria but the whole country. I'm able to play a part in that ... and it's given me a huge insight that I probably never would have had anywhere else."