The full significance of ‘s silver-medal win in the men’s discus at the was unrecognised for 45 years: Paralympics Australia thought he was a Western Australian.
Authors
Alistair Harvey
UQ Amplify Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
Gary Osmond
Associate Professor of Sport History, The University of Queensland
Murray Phillips
Professor of Sport History, Queensland Centre for Olympic and Paralympic Studies, The University of Queensland
In truth, Mosby was a Torres Strait Islander from Masig (Yorke Island), one of around 600 Islander men who worked to support his family on the Australian mainland during “” from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.
Until 1965, the controlled resident Islanders’ lives, including their wages and movements.
Mosby, who left the Strait in 1963 and lost both legs in a railway accident in the Pilbara in 1968, was among the first to leave.
Paralympics Australia not only as a Torres Strait Islander but also as the first, and only, Paralympian from the Strait.
This recognition came in 2021 following our (Phillips and Osmond) research on the , in collaboration with Paralympics Australia.
The longstanding misunderstanding about Mosby’s origins existed because he was based in Perth, rehabilitating from his accident, when he was selected to represent Australia in 1976.
A comment made in by his teammate Frank Ponta referring to Mosby as a Torres Strait Islander, led us to investigate his origins and connected us to his family on Masig.
Our experience with the Paralympics’ history project and encounter with Mosby led us to ask questions about other pioneering Indigenous Paralympians and Olympians.
Aboriginal trailblazers
The first Aboriginal Paralympian was , who competed in the inaugural Paralympics in Rome in 1960, the first of his five Paralympics.
A Wotjobaluk man from Balranald, NSW, Coombs began competing before , when Indigenous people went uncounted in the census. He was devastated to need to compete in Rome.
Those games were the ninth iteration of the , the predecessor to the Paralympics, held since 1948, yet no identified Indigenous athletes participated in those earlier events.
Historic questions
Mosby’s and Coombs’ Paralympic experiences raise questions about Indigenous participation in the Olympic Games.
Ask yourself: who were the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Olympians? Which games and sports did they compete in? How did government legislation shape their opportunities? How did they avail themselves of these opportunities? Were these athletes recognised as Indigenous at the time?
The first Aboriginal athletes to participate in the Olympics, in Tokyo 1964, were boxers and , and basketballer .
All three learned their sports under the restrictions imposed by state-based legislation governing the lives of Aboriginal people: Blair was from Cherbourg, an Aboriginal settlement in Queensland; Ah Matt grew up in Darwin, while Roberts was from Cubawee Aboriginal Reserve in NSW.
Even though these men experienced broad systemic racism like other Aboriginal people at the time, they were selected in the team for Tokyo.
Nevertheless, the Australian Olympic Federation .
This was consistent with government policies of assimilation requiring Aboriginal people to deny their cultures, languages and identities in order to “blend in” to White Australia.
Assimilation helps to explain that while we celebrate and Patty Mills, we know little about their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander predecessors.
A platform to shine
The modern Olympics began in 1896 but it took until 1964 before any athletes who were identified as Aboriginal were selected. There were outstanding athletes, however.
Yorta Yorta man was , for example, and Yiman boxer claimed the Australian middleweight crown in 1912.
But they were professionals at a time when the Olympics enforced an amateur/professional divide.
While regimes of control over Aboriginal people restricted access to amateur sports, many athletes were attracted to professional sports to escape poverty.
Aboriginal professional athletes on the world stage in this period like were ineligible for Olympic competition.
Others, like , were professional but played in .
Torres Strait Islanders had an even longer wait than Aboriginal athletes to enter the Olympic arena – , who played basketball in Moscow 1980, was the first.
Like their Aboriginal cousins seeking to escape poverty through professional sports, many Islanders sought to escape government control over .
While Mosby was one of the earliest Islander men to leave, Morseu’s generation had greater freedoms and he was able to move to Melbourne to pursue his basketball career.
Australian women first competed .
It was not until 1992, however, that an Indigenous woman competed – breaststroker .
Hockeyroo became the first Indigenous Australian woman to win a gold medal, in 1996, and in 2000 Freeman became the first Aboriginal athlete to claim .
The delayed debut of Indigenous women reflects the double fold of discrimination – gender and racism – they faced in sport.
Indigenous Australians experienced nearly two centuries of containment and control by the time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders represented Australia at the Paralympic and Olympic Games.
Paris will see more First Nations athletes in competition, adding to the and who competed between 1960 and 2021.
As we watch them perform, let’s not forget their trailblazing forebears and ensure future Indigenous Olympians and Paralympians don’t face similar challenges.
Alistair Harvey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Gary Osmond receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Murray Phillips receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
