DESIGNING Brisbane's Indigenous Round guernsey has given forward Dakota Davidson an opportunity to investigate her own family history.
Davidson's mob is the Gunditjmara people from south-west Victoria, but her dad was adopted at a young age and moved to Queensland.
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"He only found his dad – my grandfather – when he was 30. They reconnected and sooner rather than later we all did. They live in Ballarat and Mildura and Bendigo," Davidson told Credit to the Girls podcast.
"We were lucky enough in 2016 to visit and go and see them all. It was quite an experience to visit people who are related to you, but you've never heard anything about.
"I didn't know their names, I didn't know how old they were, who was who, who was my cousin, who was my aunty, we're all intertwined. It was amazing, it was incredible.
"I felt closure. I had always known Dad to be an only child, or with a step-brother, and that was all I knew until later on in my life. It was definitely the closure I needed in my life.
"I knew there would have to have been another side to Dad and how he grew up. He's Indigenous, so I started to look into Indigenous mobs and that and it came together. It was astonishing, it's hard to say, but it really gave me a sense of family."
Having only got to know her family recently, Davidson knew very little about the history of the Gundmitjmarra people, so designing the club's jumper prodded her to dig a little deeper.
She was also able to incorporate Ally Anderson's story, with the family of the proud Ghungalu woman living in central Queensland near the Dawson River.
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"The Lions have guided me in the right direction of finding out a lot more about my culture. I had to find out my totem, my people, what we did, where we're from, all that sort of stuff. I was very out of my depth in that situation," Davidson said.
"I found out my mob's the very first to have aquaculture in Australia, we developed fishing mechanisms to catch fish and sell at markets and barter. My strip on the guernsey is blue, representing the water and aquaculture.
"It's got black swan footprints (her totem), it's got eels, the Murray cod running through the river, because that's how my mob survived."
EPISODE GUIDE
1.00 - The Hosking twins and Jess Fitzgerald caught our eye in round four
3.00 – The Agenda: the 2018 NAB AFL Women's Draft classes are graduating quickly
7.00 – Compare and contrast: Bri Davey or Jasmine Garner?
10.00 - Brisbane star Dakota Davidson joins the show
11.30 – How did Dakota design Brisbane's Indigenous Round guernsey?
14.00 – Dakota dives into her family history
17.24 – Where did the Crows beat the Lions?
22.00 - Breaking down all the round four games and taking a look at what's to come
28.08 – Fremantle's strengths: It's not just Kiara Bowers
32.29 – Collingwood v Melbourne, one of the matches of the round
36.55 – "Scora" Staunton
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