Kyah Simon has always been proud.
It was one of the first lessons she learned from her fierce mother, Pam, an Anaiwan woman from northern New South Wales, and her dad, Gordon, a Biripi and Kamilaroi man from Newcastle.
Like many First Nations people, Pam and Gordon's own pride was forged in hardship; suffering was layered throughout their lives like sediment, strengthening them both over time.
Pam was one of 13 children. Her own mother, Betty, was ripped from her family as a girl to work as a maid. She escaped when she was 14, her country calling her back home.
At some point, Betty met Reg – a white man. He was quickly shunned by his own family, and the two of them moved to Sydney. Pam had been born by now, along with some of her siblings. The family lived simply, stretching a single loaf of bread as far as they could, cooking on an old portable gas stove in the single bedroom they all shared.
Betty, Reg, and the kids ended up in Sydney's south-west. One afternoon, Pam and her teenage brother Neil passed a white man on the street who spat racist insults at them: calling them "a black-this" and "a black-that." Neil confronted him, defending himself and his sister. The man attacked, beating the boy until he almost passed out. Pam dragged the man off her brother, punching and slapping and scratching him; the pain and rage of generations coursing through her veins.
Trauma trickled down on Kyah's dad's side, too. Gordon was surrounded by violence growing up. He and his cousins would sometimes jump the fence at the Newcastle Show, too poor to afford tickets, and head straight for Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent. They'd fight each other and collect the coins thrown at them by white punters.
Gordon's father and uncles had joined the army during World War II. They were not even Australian citizens back then; it would take another two decades for a referendum to decide that. Nonetheless, the four teenage boys signed up to fight for the country they loved — their country, the one they never ceded.
They all turned to drink when they returned; ancient wounds buried beneath modern scars. Gordon remembers seeing his mother with a black eye, remembers pulling pieces of glass from his dad's wristwatch out of her bloodied head. She died when he was 12. His sister followed a few years later – a drug overdose – leaving behind two young children.
These were stories Kyah only learned about as she got older. Pam and Gordon shielded her and her three siblings Aaron, Sarah, and Wesley from the brutal realities of their family's past. They wanted to wait until their kids were old enough to understand why it all happened and what it all meant.
It wasn't until 2017, when Kyah Simon was 26, that her mum sat her down and told her what had been left unsaid.
She learned about Betty and Reg, about the loaf of bread, about Neil being beaten half to death for defending the colour of his skin. She learned about Gordon's dad, about Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent, about the war and the alcohol and the wristwatch.
Kyah sat quietly, listening as her mother back-filled her own story, adding angles and depths to her own identity. She had always been proud, but as she learned more about where she had come from – the sacrifices, the suffering – her pride turned into something else, something stronger, something with power and direction.
"[Pride] is something that I carried with me from a very young age," Simon told ABC.
"Growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney with mum and dad and my three siblings, something that really stayed true to us growing up was our parents enforcing that it's OK to be who you are, to believe in yourself, but also to be proud of who you are: be proud of the colour of your skin and your background.
"I still [am] to this day. My parents faced a lot of discrimination and racism, and my siblings and I have had our fair share, but we've never shied away from the fact of who we are and being proud of that.
"I'm very proud to be Indigenous, as is the rest of my family. But that doesn't shy away from the fact that there have been challenges throughout my life, my siblings' life, my parents' life. You have to have thick skin when it comes to these kinds of topics."
Sport, especially football, helped. Even though she grew up in a rugby league family, supporting Penrith and Cronulla (she lived close to the Fifita boys), it was football that captured her, catapulting her into who she is.
"It enabled me to show my true identity and made me the person I am today," she said.
"That's the beautiful thing about football, to be honest. Because it's the world game – because there's so many different cultures and countries and backgrounds that play it – when you play football, you have a common ground with a lot of people.
"Your culture doesn't really come into it that much: people just play because they want to play and you share that like-minded approach. We're all doing it because we love the game and it's fun. There's no discrimination. I think [football] definitely gave me an out with that.
"Through my sport, I've been able to express myself and be really proud of who I am. It's my identity; it's in my blood. I think sport – and football – has definitely helped me have the confidence to speak up and be proud and wear my heart on my sleeve and be proud of my culture."
It feels fated, in some ways, that Simon went on to become a professional athlete given sport has become one of the most powerful platforms to address issues of racism and discrimination in recent years. This wider momentum, in addition to learning more about her own history, has given Simon the confidence to use her own voice in ways she may have hesitated to in the past.
"For me, there's been a bit of a movement going on," she said. "In our own backyard and across the world, in terms of that acceptance of who people are – and obviously the Black Lives Matter movement – [there are] more voices not feeling like a minority when it comes to these kinds of topics.
"There's obviously other athletes that have paved the way and spoken up and maybe received a lot of backlash, [like] in previous times Adam Goodes and the stance that he took. There's been several athletes that have taken a stance just to be proud of who they are.
"It is something just to be proud of; it's not something about being controversial. I think half of it is to share our background, share the knowledge that we have in terms of what it means to be Aboriginal.
"Now, with a little bit of help from social media – but also just with more and more people supporting great causes – it has definitely helped change that conversation and open people's eyes to get different perspectives, which we've never really been able to do before with just obeying the mainstream media and not many other viewpoints."
One of Simon's most recent acts was during the Tokyo Olympics. In the first group game against New Zealand, instead of kneeling in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, like the Football Ferns did, the Matildas did something different – something unique and meaningful to them. They held up an Aboriginal flag.
"Obviously, as a team, we're all in support of taking a knee [and] we're all in support of Black Lives Matter," she said. "But [with] that originating in America, we wanted to do something a little bit closer to home. So we threw some ideas around. And I thought, 'What about if we hold the Aboriginal flag up in front of a team photo for our first game?'
"A lot of our inspiration came from Cathy Freeman at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Mine did, especially, so it kind of [came] full-circle; that was probably the first time a lot of us saw the Aboriginal flag at an Olympic Games before. So I think that was something really powerful.
"It has many different meanings, but I think the main thing was for us to just show that we're in support of our Indigenous people. The flag should be shown; it's not really shown at many major sporting events unless my family's holding it up in the crowd. So the team were all in full support of that.
"Now we have an Aboriginal flag up in the change-room for every game; it just stays in the kit now. It created a lot of positive conversation – more positive than negative – when we did do that. I know from speaking to my family, and their extended family and friends, that a lot of them said that was the highlight of the Games for them."
Simon, who currently plays for Tottenham Hotspur in England, is now embracing her new-found voice, joining Football Australia's inaugural National Indigenous Advisory Group to guide football's engagement with First Nations communities. She wants to ensure that the pride she was taught to have, and the opportunities she was given, are things she can pass on to all those who come after her.
"To play my part and be included in the advisory group is a huge honour for me, and I think it's definitely been a long time coming," she said. "It's going to help make important decisions in terms of our people and including more Indigenous people within our beautiful game.
"I know that other codes have done a lot of work in this space, and football is almost new to the party a little bit with it, but I think it's only going to give us positives: having more Indigenous players involved, volunteers, people in administration roles.
"It also just gives inspiration for so many of our young Indigenous kids across the country that can see people they relate to, like I did with Cathy [Freeman] when I was growing up. So I think it's only going to encourage more and more Indigenous people to get involved in the game."
