Jake Duke champions Indigenous resilience

May 2024 · 3 minute read

The resilience doughnut is thrown around regularly in sporting circles to help budding athletes transition into professional sport.

It’s an inner circle representing the individual and an outer circle representing seven different areas of a person’s life that offer internal messages of hope.

Research has found that the seven factors: partner, skill, family, education, friends, community and work, repeatedly showed up in the lives of resilient people.

For Fox Sports rugby league commentator Jake Duke there has been no greater show of resilience than those of the First Nations People in Australia.

To sustain and develop Indigenous cultural integrity while absorbing the pressures of contemporary life is testament to this, he says.

It’s a journey that Duke himself admits he is relatively new to but at the core of this is cultural knowledge, values and practice.

Here, he offers his advice:

THINK OF PRACTICAL CHANGES

“Looking around mainstream newsrooms or sports desks – there aren’t many dark faces ... and I still hear people say we don’t have the problem of racism here in Australia,” Duke says.

“When people started talking about Black Lives Matter, I thought it shouldn’t take an almost American Civil War to have this discussion.

“We might not be on the same grand scale but there are still plenty of issues that need addressing.

“And I felt a responsibility to do something.

“Take changing the date for Australia Day ... it disheartens me that people don’t understand why we want the date changed.

“Symbolically this says, as a country, we are listening – that we are willing to acknowledge what happened and we are willing to make people feel more inclusive.

“Bridging the gap takes all forms of support but it starts with having open and honest conversation about Australia’s history.

“But what is great is that we are starting to have these conversations and big companies, like News Corp, are getting involved.”

TACKLE IN SPORTING CIRCLES

Using sport as a springboard, Duke says he is encouraged to see Australia’s best indigenous athletes start lending – and leading – with their voice.

“Our most powerful Indigenous people, or rather the people with the biggest platforms, are our athletes,” Duke says.

“That’s why it’s important to see the likes of league players Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell speak up. These guys are lightning rods for change.

“They are no longer just willing to shut up and play.

“Aboriginal people have been silenced for a long part of Australia’s history ... I feel a sense of pride for what we have endured and how we have turned our pain into progress.”

REFUSE TO LOSE

The 28-year-old, who hosts a podcast with his brother Rhys called Refuse to Lose, belongs to the Kamilaroi people of Moree but grew up in Bundjalung Country, on the Gold Coast. “We moved to the Goldie when we were kids ... Dad made the decision that if we stay in Moree – his kids would have to choose to be black or white.

“He had grown up in Moree ... where he wasn’t allowed to swim in the local pool because that was for whites.

“His oldest brother was born in a tent on a mission – and our Grandma had to apply for a certificate of exemption to leave the mission.

“These were the things we heard about growing up. Mum is non Indigenous so we made the decision to live with mum’s family up north ... a lot of kids don’t get that opportunity.

“But, finally, it feels like as a country we are trying to move in the same direction – and to sit down together with the willingness of understanding each other.”

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