In 2021, St Mary's College Year 12 students Heather F and Abby C chose to be part of the annual Iga Warta Immersion trip. They experienced the Adnyamathanha culture more deeply and learned about their history and story.
This experience inspired them to share what they had learnt as they sought to build this into their school sport, especially the St Mary's College Netball Academy program. In June, Heather and Abby expressed a desire to develop a netball dress for Indigenous Netball Round.
At the beginning of 2022, the students researched and spoke with Ms Amanda Shattock (Netball Coach) and Mr Robert Napoli (Past Director of Mission) about their desire to design an Indigenous-inspired netball uniform, to continue to build our understanding and connection with First Nations peoples, and show our support for Reconciliation as a College.
Mr Napoli connected Aboriginal artist David Booth with Miss Shattock and the Netball Leadership team of Abby, Heather, Lucy and Jasmine.
David is from the Warumugu people near Tenant Creek and has links to the Yuggera people in Brisbane.
St Mary's connection with David stemmed from 2007 when he led our Year 10 Retreat cultural workshops. David has been an integral part of leading this retreat every year since then and has led various cultural activities across the college for many years.
David ran multiple sessions with our two senior teams, teaching them about Indigenous stories and how art is one form of telling a story. The students workshopped their own story using Indigenous symbols and then worked on a St Mary's Netball Story.
David's final session with our students was a collaborative session bringing their vision to life on the board. They contributed and discussed what they wanted to include and what was essential to the St Mary's College Story. David then took inspiration from each of these student works, creating one large piece of artwork. This artwork then formed the Netball dress design. Ms Shattock and the students are incredibly grateful for David's time and think the dress captures the values of the netball program. They are honoured to wear the uniform during the Indigenous Round as a team.
