When 65,000 Years of Living Culture Met the NFL in Melbourne

On 11 September, 100,021 people packed the Melbourne Cricket Ground for Australia’s first regular-season NFL game. The matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams drew the seventh-largest regular-season crowd in NFL history.

Before kick-off, Senior Wurundjeri Elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin delivered a powerful Welcome to Country alongside the Djirri Djirri dancers. Broadcast by the NFL and Netflix, the ceremony brought a thriving, intergenerational expression of Wurundjeri culture to a global audience.

For Stacie Piper, a proud Wurundjeri, Dja Dja Wurrung and Ngurai Illum-Wurrung woman and Djirri Djirri dancer, the performance was the culmination of cultural guidance, family coordination and work behind the scenes.

Three months earlier, Lewis Brown, Manager of First Peoples Tourism at Visit Victoria, had approached Djirri Djirri and the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation to help shape the opening.

“For us, as Wurundjeri people, we are always bringing our culture into the new world because we’re still here,” Piper said.

“We don’t have to be frozen in time. We can evolve, and that’s sovereign.”

Formed in 2013, Djirri Djirri grew from cultural practices carried through the Wurundjeri family clans across generations. Its work has included reawakening Murrum Turrukurruk, a Wurundjeri women’s coming-of-age ceremony that had not been practised for more than 185 years, as well as creating dances, singing in Woi Wurrung language and passing cultural knowledge between generations.

That continuity between old and new became especially meaningful at the MCG. Piper said the dancers were excited by the scale of the opportunity, often looking at one another with grateful disbelief. But performing before an international audience also brought a responsibility to represent Wurundjeri culture on their own terms.

Piper stressed that the American-style pre-game production and formal Welcome to Country were separate events. Djirri Djirri created the choreography specifically for the pre-game show; it was not presented as a sacred ceremony, and the priority was providing the youth with that stage to showcase the continued evolution of culture on the grand stage of the MCG.

Piper believes some criticism following the event emerged because those two moments were treated as though they were the same.

“We don’t like calling it entertainment. We like to call it ceremony, but this was a pre-game show. The Welcome to Country was Aunty Joy before kick-off.”

The dancers were surrounded by Elders and family. Six Elders stood on podiums representing six family groups, alongside a Torres Strait Islander delegation. “We felt good as dancers because we weren’t there alone,” Piper said. “We had them there supporting us.”

Piper and Aunty Joy had to advocate for performer and rehearsal payments, meals, parking, tickets, arrangements for young dancers, and the accessibility and comfort of Elders. Piper noted that the NFL responded positively, providing tickets, supporting Elders’ requirements and incorporating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags into the staging.

The audience response was overwhelmingly positive on the ground, with spectators stopping Piper afterwards to praise the performance, with some saying it made them feel united and grounded at the event before the game.

Amid the global broadcast, enormous production and the roar of 100,000 spectators, Djirri Djirri remained grounded in who they were, carrying Wurundjeri culture, pride and youthful talent from Narrm to halfway across the globe. “We were just staying true to ourselves,” Piper said.

The NFL’s Melbourne debut will be remembered as a landmark Australian sporting event. It also showed what becomes possible when First Nations communities are properly resourced and trusted to lead how their culture is represented.

Our sincere thanks to Stacie Piper for sitting down with us to share her insights and experience. We are honoured to highlight these stories and moments of sovereign First Nations culture.