Our new partnership with Hawthorn Football Club

wukalina Walk is proud to have formalised a partnership with the Hawks that will see our two organisations work together to further instil cultural awareness and deepen the understanding of palawa culture. The club is working collaboratively with wukalina Walk to build a partnership that delivers strong outcomes for both Hawthorn and the Walk.

An informal partnership and mutual appreciation have existed between wukalina Walk and Hawthorn Football Club for a couple of year, but in mid-May 2021 it became official. This move also provides a formal opportunity for the club to meaningfully give back to the palawa/pakana community of lutruwita/Tasmania, where they play and conduct business. 

Back in 2019, Hawthorn team members Chad Wingard, Jarman Impey, Mathew Walker and Harry Pepper along with CEO Justin Reeves and GM of football Graham Wright spent time on our homelands, in the North East, with some of our Elders, guides and staff. 

As part of the targets set out in its Reconciliation Action Plan, Hawthorn Football Club has been working towards building a partnership with wukalina Walk that will include cultural awareness training as well as a business mentoring program between the two organisations. 

In mid-May this year a select group of Hawks players and staff members once again spent time at the Elders Council in Launceston. “Today we acknowledge our two cultures coming together in a strong bond,” Elder Graham Gardner of the ALCT announced at the initial ceremony at the Elders Council. 

Together we then walked on Trawlwoolway Country. The event was covered by Nightly News 7 Tasmania.

After returning home from their time with us, Korin Gamadji Institute made special mention through their social media networks of the leadership qualities shown by our guide, proud pakana woman Carleeta Thomas. (Korin Gamadji means ‘grow and emerge’ in Woiwurrung, the language of the Wurundjeri.) 

“We’re really proud of our connection to Tasmania and we are lucky to spend a lot of time in the region,” said the club’s acting CEO Ashley Klein. “It is important to the club that we are authentically connected across all communities in Tasmania and Indigenous culture is a really important part of Tasmania’s past, present and future.”

“We’re excited to see what the future of a partnership with wukalina Walk holds… to learn the history of the palawa and experience magnificent food and hospitality along the way. We look forward to having more of our players, coaches and staff participate in the walk to build their understanding of and connection to the First Nations history and culture of Tasmania.”

Player Chad Wingard reflects on his experience on the Walk: “To actually witness them telling the stories and be really hands-on and actually go through a part of the Walk and be invited in, it was pretty special. For people to keep their culture really strong and be able to have the option to share it and be very proud of their culture, for that region, was pretty special to be a part of.”

“Being an Indigenous person doesn’t mean I know everything,” says Wingard, “and it doesn’t mean I know this part or that part of Australia. So to go through the Smoking Ceremony, be welcomed, that whole process of coming onto the native land is a special moment to go through that, and with the other brothers, it was pretty awesome to experience that”.

“To see the beaches, to walk along the coastline, walking up the path to the first campsite and having that meal and having some really important Hawthorn people there, like the CEO. These guys who are very well-known and very well-respected amongst the family of Hawthorn, to share that with them you definitely feel you’re very valued at the club as people and they value one of the main pillars which is Indigenous culture. And they lived and breathed that, which is something we’re very proud of not just as Aboriginal people but non-Aboriginal people that are in this club as well.”     

The multifaceted partnership will see Hawthorn and the Walk work together to deepen the club’s cultural awareness training program, the development of a mentoring model whereby the club invests in building the capacity of the Walk across its commercial and administrative practices while also working together to drive awareness of the Walk and amplification of its message through the Hawthorn network.

Team member Chad Wingard reflects here in this video on his cultural experience on wukalina Walk.