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Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley concedes he reinforced the pain and trauma of Heritier Lumumba by dismissing claims of racism at the club.
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley admits he inadvertently became a part of the systemic racism at the club when he dismissed the complaints of former Magpie Heritier Lumumba in 2017.
The damning 'Do Better' report that was leaked to the media earlier this year painted a picture of systemic racism at Collingwood across many years.
Lumumba's personal allegations of racism was a key driver to the investigation being launched, with former Indigenous Magpies Leon Davis and Andrew Krakouer coming forward in recent days to detail their own experiences of racism at the club.
Buckley, who was a star player at Collingwood from 1994-2007 before becoming coach in 2012, regrets the comments he made in 2017 after the release of the Fair Game documentary that focused on Lumumba's fight to call out racism at the club.
Buckley said his comments were "dismissive" and that he needed to be "better than that".
"What I now understand is that is a form of systemic racism," Buckley told the AFL website when asked whether it was hard to look back at those comments and what he would do differently now.
"The dismissing and denial of experience is not a direct act but in many ways it reinforces the pain and trauma that Heritier felt and that Andrew and Leon have spoken about.
"It's feeling like they don't have a voice or they don't have somewhere to go, and that's the systemic aspect of it.
"Our internal environment has improved but clearly there's still work to do and as I said, it's not about my experience, it's not about anyone's experience from a white privileged background, it's actually about hearing the experiences of people who feel like they're not being honoured the way they should be."
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire resigned last month shortly after a train wreck of a press conference in which he labelled the release of the 'Do Better' report as a "historic and proud day for the club".
