Collingwood's Nathan Buckley admits response to Lumumba racism complaints was 'dismissive'
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley admits he inadvertently became a part of the systemic racism at the club when he dismissed the complaints of former Magpies player Héritier Lumumba in 2017.
The damning Do Better report painted a picture of systemic racism at Collingwood across many years. Lumumba’s personal allegations of racism was a key driver to the investigation being launched, with Indigenous former Magpies Leon Davis and Andrew Krakouer coming forward recently to detail their own experiences of racism at the club.
Buckley, who was a star player at Collingwood from 1994-2007 before becoming coach in 2012, regrets the comments he made in 2017 after the release of the Fair Game documentary that focused on Lumumba’s fight to call out racism at the club. He said his comments were “dismissive” and that he
needed to be “better than that”.
“What I now understand is that is a
form of systemic racism,” Buckley told the AFL website when asked whether it was hard to look back at those comments and what he would do differently now. “The dismissing and denial of experience is not a direct act but in many ways it reinforces the pain and trauma that Héritier felt and that Andrew and Leon have spoken about.
“It’s feeling like they don’t have a voice or they don’t have somewhere to go, and that’s the systemic aspect of it. Our internal environment has improved but clearly there’s still work to do and as I said, it’s not about my experience, it’s not about anyone’s experience from a white privileged background, it’s actually about hearing the experiences of people who feel like they’re not being honoured the way they should be.”
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire resigned last month shortly after a train wreck of a press conference in which he labelled the release of the Do Better report as a “historic and proud day for the club”.