Howitt’s notes point to an important matrilineal focus common to the area, particularly regarding totems and the complex social rules governing interrelationships. The side which kicks it oftenest and furthest gains the game. Here is the ultimate logic of the denials of marngrook, the rejection of the essence of indigeneity—its agency, history, identity and memory. Second, and in terms of the arguments over the influence of marngrook most significantly, rugby was not simply adopted wholesale. That land was the land of the Mukjarrawaint people and a meeting place for local communities where corroborees were held and games were played. The local Indigenous people were Tom Wills’ childhood friends, he spoke their language, knew their customs, and he was close enough to them for young and old to pine for him when he went away to school. With the incursions of European settlers the Mukjarrawaint and their patterns of life, land and community developed over centuries were shattered and, just as quickly, became lost to history.In this way a unique Indigenous game has been expropriated by and into the colonial present as nothing more than a mimic of the European game, in a modern variant of the silencing of Indigenous history. Connolly’s description of the two sides in Indigenous football as replicating these totemic divisions suggests that the game was important not only as amusement and skill development, but also as a means of reinforcing these political kin relationships.
The Sydney Swans and Carlton will battle for the annual Mark Grook Trophy at the SCG on Friday night. The game has different names in different Koorie languages, but is now generally referred to as Marngrook. The earliest record for marn grook is a quote from settler William Thomas (1793–1867), who, beginning 1841, watched the Aborigines play the game on more than one occasion. Marngrook was played across the Western District, including the area Tom Wills lived in as a child from the age of four.
The Indigenous game of marngrook and its claimed connection to Australian rules football has provoked unusually intense debate. In this, the historiographic response is as interesting as the history itself. The game was subject to strict behavioural protocols and for instance all players had to be matched for size, gender and In the debates over the marngrook connection, these reports of Indigenous football in the western region have been disputed, at times on the slightest, almost whimsical, grounds. The game, which is somewhat similar to the white man's game of football, is very rough...While playing as a child with Aboriginal children in this area [Moyston] he [Tom Wills] developed a game which he later utilised in the formation of Australian Football.If Tom Wills had have said "Hey, we should have a game of our own more like the football the black fellas play" it would have killed it stone dead before it was even born. With Johnny Connolly’s testimony, a critical component in the denial of that link has crumbled.These demands for documentation and evidence also preclude the possibility that these accounts are there, to be found among the papers, reports and records of the colonial authorities and early settlers. The sport is concluded with a shout of applause, and the best player is complimented on his skill. What is the Aboriginal game of Marngrook and what are Its links to the origin of Australian Rules Football? And like Aussie Rules it's a contact sport between two teams that fight for possession of a ball with kicks and catches. ‘Pioneer’ records, diaries, correspondence, personal papers, and the exhaustive reports from the Aboriginal Protectorate in Port Phillip, reveal far more than this demand for documents suggests. Thomas writes that after a day corroboree ‘about 35 fine young men of various tribes have a fine game of ball’. In his 1844 journal he writes of a ‘great body’ of people coming into the settlement of Melbourne from the north-west. Marngrook 'Marngrook' is a word from the language of Gunditjmara people and means ‘game ball.’ It is the name of a game played by Aboriginal people across South Eastern Australia. Hibbins’ definitive view of Australian football as ‘derived solely from a colonial dependence’ links it irrevocably and absolutely to British football, despite the marked differences between them in which the influence of marngrook might be found.By these repeated calls for ‘evidence’ are meant documentary, text-based evidence, a notion and a form familiar to the British colonisers whose documentation of the penal settlement was superlative, but not one that would readily engage with Indigenous history.
Video Transcript Marngrook was a … Marngrook is the Gunditjmara word for 'Game Ball'.