| Summary: | The experience of sport for First Nations peoples on missions and government settlements in Australia, and on comparable missions in other settler colonial societies, has become a growing field of scholarly study. This paper aims to build on insights from current sports historiography by examining the origins and significance of Australian Rules football to the First Nations people of the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the far northwest of South Australia. In particular, it investigates their historical engagement with the game at the Ernabella mission (now known as Pukatja). Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted on the APY Lands, this article draws on Aṉangu oral histories, and local historical materials and photographs held in the Aṟa Irititja archive to produce detailed descriptions and portrayals of Australian football at the Ernabella mission from the perspectives of those who lived, worked and played the game at the mission during the 1950s. It argues that a focus on the agency of Aṉangu at Ernabella is crucial to understanding how the game of Australian football took off and became embedded in local society and culture. © Australian Society for Sports History.
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