There are countless words that could be used when it comes to describing what makes J’Noemi Anderson most proud to be Indigenous, but it’s the simplest answer which is the most pure. “Everything”.

For Anderson, it’s difficult to put a finger on one thing exactly. It’s intangible, but ever-present; what is tangible, immensely treasured.

Toes curled under the sand, gentle sunlight reflecting off the adjacent cliff face as the waves crash on the foreshore of Half Moon Bay, you can see the glimmer in her eyes as she speaks from the heart.

“I love being Indigenous. I love my culture, I love my family and it just brings everyone together, especially just being on land,” Anderson told saints.com.au on the eve of AFLW Indigenous Round.

“It’s really just the feeling of connection… I don’t even know how to put it into words, it really is everything.”

Anderson is from the Warumungu people, growing up in the small town of Katherine in the Northern Territory as the youngest of eight siblings. In her words, it’s very small and it’s very hot. But it’s home.

The Warumungu people are a desert mob, whose lineage is proudly lived on by Anderson. The Warumungu Dreamings through stories, art or song, living off the land and the innate spirit of family are just a snippet of her ancestry, 65,000 years strong. Yet the knowledge of what she’s so proud to be a part of doesn’t extend much deeper. 

Anderson’s paternal grandfather, Jimmy, was a part of the Stolen Generation. Taken from his family when he was about five years old from Phillip Creek (less than 50km from Tennant Creek) and placed in the Retta Dixon Mission in Darwin, Jimmy was deprived of his family and heritage. He eventually discovered who his mother was many years later, but didn't ever find his father.

The ripple effects of that loss are still felt today.

Anderson and her family are continuing to discover the many aspects of their own Warumungu family, community and heritage. The more time that passes and the more she returns to Country, the more she learns about her culture, and by extension, her very identity.

“It is still quite hard to explain what it means because we are still learning… that plays a big role in it,” she says.

“It has always been a part of us, but it was just a bit hard with my Pop being part of the Stolen Generation.

“With family, we didn’t know as much about that, even who our relatives were, majority of them. We knew where we were from which is good, we had that.

“Black mob, you know, we’re family with everyone! It made it even harder, but we are learning about that and I’m learning more about my culture as well, turning back to my cousins and aunties back home who teach me.”

When the AFLW Season comes to a close later this year, Anderson will return to the Northern Territory for a little over a month to reconnect with her ancestral home. 

Hunting in the mangroves, taking the boat out to sea to fish, camping in the bush under the stars, kicking the footy with her cousins: it’s all the things she loves. Above all, being surrounded by her family is where she feels most connected to her culture. 

When she eventually returns to the tropical Top End near the close of the new year, it’s almost as if she’s a stranger to her family in some ways. But, as she reassures with a little giggle, certainly not in a serious sense.

Melbourne’s consistent fluctuations in weather and unreliable sunshine will have her returning “three different colours” to the amusement of her relatives; her bare arms from playing footy in guernseys a different colour to her face, which will be different again to the rest of her body, especially coming out of a chilly Victorian winter. 

Her cousins and aunties will have a good laugh at it, but within a day under the NT sun, she says she’ll even back out.

'Stitch', as she's known around St Kilda, is the youngest of eight siblings: Jacob, the eldest, is 18 years older, then there’s Joe, Jasmine, Jed, Jimmy, Javadd and Jacinta in-between before J’Noemi brings up the rear as the baby of the family.

There were far more than just the eight kids in the Anderson household growing up, however. Add in the friends, cousins, aunties, uncles whom parents Libby and David let into their home with open arms, there could be as many as 20 or even 30 going through the doors on any given weekend. Of her blood or otherwise, everyone was welcome. The Warumungu way. 

Although there are gaps in her understanding of her culture, that element of family is undeniable. As for the rest, Anderson sees it as her responsibility to fill them.

“We’re the oldest culture in the world, we’ve got to keep it going… make sure everyone knows about it, has the knowledge on it and even to make other people who aren’t a part of our culture to know about it.

“I feel when I go there I try and spend as much time doing the things I love… reconnecting with my family, (the memory of my late) dad and everything like that. I’ve still got to go back and learn and do my part in that.

“It’s helped me a lot and I love it and that’s one of the main reasons why I keep going back and doing the same thing over and over again.”

The binding nature of culture is undoubtedly mirrored in the way football - and sport in general - has brought her family together. Football literally brought her parents Libby and David together many moons ago, with the pair first meeting at a football function in Darwin.

Footy was “a big deal for everyone” all the way back then; now even more so with Anderson representing St Kilda as an 18-year-old in a career that is just six games into its run.

Including J’Noemi, four of the eight Anderson siblings have made it to the highest level. Jed played 99 games between Hawthorn and North Melbourne, Joe lined up for the Blues on 17 occasions, while Jasmine was part of Adelaide’s inaugural AFLW list.

“Hunting, fishing or camping, anything like that the footy would come out with us. We’d take that thing anywhere,” she recalls.

“If we didn’t want to walk down to the oval, we would go and just kick out on the road, just 10 of us kids kicking it into other people’s yards!“

Anderson may have been looking up to all her older brothers and sisters growing up in the Top End, kicking that well-worn, dust-covered footy up and down the streets for days on end until the sun went down. 

Now some years later as a proud Warumungu woman, it’s the youngest Anderson sibling that is now the one being looked up to by the next generation.

“All my nieces and nephews all have a footy now. I just had a few of my family here and they came down and supported us… you know, it’s such a big thing, especially with women’s footy,” she says.

“Hopefully one of them girls or boys gets a footy in their hands and takes it all the way like me and my older brothers and sister did.

“That would make me so proud.”