Nicky Winmar - Racial Vilification and Photograph

Racial Vilification and Photograph

Winmar was involved in a number of controversial incidents involving alleged acts of racial vilification against him by other players and staff during his career. In 1998, after Winmar's outburst against Carlton, former Hawthorn player Dermott Brereton publicly apologised to Winmar and Russell Jeffrey for abusing them in a game in 1990. In March 1999, ex-footballer and television presenter and ex-footballer Sam Newman appeared on the The Footy Show in blackface after Winmar cancelled an appearance on the show in favour of appearing on a rival network. Newman was later forced to apologise for the incident, subsequently breaking a confidentiality agreement that had been signed during mediation for the incident. Winmar suappeared on The Footy Show the following week as part of a pre-taped segment.

In a match for St Kilda against Collingwood in round four of the 1993 season, Winmar was racially abused by members of the Collingwood cheersquad, who called on him to "go and sniff some petrol" and "go walkabout where you came from". At the conclusion of the game, which St Kilda won by 22 points, Winmar lifted up his jumper and, facing to the crowd, pointed to his skin. The following day, a photograph (pictured right) of Winmar's gesture, taken by Wayne Ludbey, was published in the Sunday Herald Sun under the headline "Winmar: I'm black and proud of it", with the Sunday Age publishing a similar photograph under the caption "I've got guts". Winmar's gesture, described as a "powerful statement", an "anti-racist symbol", and one of the "most poignant" images in Australian sport, has been credited as a catalyst for the movement against racism in Australian football, and compared to the black power salute performed by American athletes at the 1968 Summer Olympics in terms of impact. A reproduction of the photograph was also featured in The Game That Made Australia, a mural painted by Jamie Cooper and commissioned by the AFL in 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the origins of Australian rules football.

Winmar donated the jumper he was wearing in the photograph to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 1998. Prior to the commission's disbanding in 2005, Geoff Clark, the chairman of ATSIC at the time, removed the framed jumper from the commission's offices in Canberra to his home in Warrnambool, Victoria. Clark was forced to return the jumper to Winmar, which was later donated to the National Museum of Australia, where it featured in Off the Walls, an exhibit of Indigenous Australian art. In May 2012, the jumper was auctioned by Sotheby's, but was passed in after the bidding reached A$95,000. In September of the same year, Museum Victoria purchased the jumper for $100,000, with the intention to display it at the First Peoples exhibition at Melbourne Museum in July 2013. However, the authenticity of the jumper has been questioned, with the St Kilda Football Club published a statement in March 2005 suggesting that the jumper given to ATSIC may not have been the actual jumper worn during the game, citing differences between sponsors' logos present on the jumper. Similar questions were raised prior to the jumper's auction in 2012.