Years ago I was part of a group staying in an -Aboriginal homeland community - Baniyala. The community held a welcome ceremony for us.
The men marched into the township brandishing spears and wearing body paint. They moved towards us in a menacing way with spears raised, before lowering them.
It symbolised us being foreigners on their country and them deciding if we were friend or foe. On realising we were friends, they put down their spears and welcomed us. I'm familiar with the tradition and didn't find it threatening. The non-indigenous people in the group were fascinated, while conceding they felt a little discomfort facing a group of men pointing spears at them. 
Displays of military prowess are universal traditions to show national pride, mark events and welcome foreign dignitaries. In sport, war cries are used to celebrate and show strength.
For more than a century the New Zealand rugby team has performed the haka before matches - a traditional Maori war dance performed in battle, celebration, welcome and commemoration.
The Flying Boomerangs is an AFL personal development and leadership program for indigenous teen-agers. The Boomerangs per-form a war cry based on traditional ceremony.
In AFL's 2015 Indigenous Round, Adam Goodes performed their war cry after scoring a goal. He was paying tribute to them and celebrating his goal and his culture.
What a moment for those kids to see him perform their war cry to a packed stadium.
How shattering for them it triggered a media storm.
Goodes' actions were -labelled controversial and threatening, a divisive political statement. For two years now Goodes' actions, refusing to ignore a teenager's -racial slur, discussing his conflicted feelings about Australia Day, celebrating with cultural dance, have struck a raw nerve. He's made people uncomfortable deep in their gut. And deep in our guts indigenous Australians feel it's because other Australians don't accept us. This affair has laid bare deep, unconscious beliefs and biases about racial issues within both black and white Australia.
Unconscious biases are founded in our earliest experiences and everyone has them. They're linked to our "flight or fight" responses, enabling our brains to make quick judgments.
They also make us prejudiced in ways we don't even realise. Unconscious bias -influences decisions and -actions, even contrary to our conscious viewpoints. Unconscious bias includes a tendency to empathise with people more like yourself.
Miranda Devine believes the teenager who called Adam an "ape" and was -removed by security suffered the "central injustice" of that incident. That's a subjective assessment. Her instinct says a teenager being detained by police is more painful than a black footballer being called an ape. Unlike her, I've experienced both and I disagree.
Changing your unconscious mind first requires being aware it exists. Self- examination and willingness to uncover prejudices you don't believe you have. It's hard. We'd prefer to find -rational, unbiased, motives for our attitudes such as: "I don't oppose the war cry -because it's cultural but because it's aggressive. I'd feel the same if he motioned slitting his throat." Or: "I'm not booing because of his comments on Australia's history. I just don't like how he plays." Second, you need to -expose yourself to broader diversity and experiences, -especially ones that create discomfort, like my friends experiencing the spear dance in Baniyala.
To simply label booing as "racist" is a blunt instrument that doesn't do justice to this situation's complexity. But to pretend this firestorm is colour blind ignores the charging elephant in the room.
All Kiwis embrace the haka yet Adam's expression of indigenous culture is seen as confrontational and divisive. This must change.
All Australians should be able to embrace our nation's shared 40,000-plus year history that includes the ancient past of our first nations, the British institutions we've made our own and the cultural richness from two centuries of immigration.
This furore demonstrates great misunderstanding and distrust still exists between black and white Australia.
I'd like to see Australia's national sporting teams - all players not just indigenous - perform a traditional war dance at games. Both indigenous and non-indigenous people would find this idea confronting.
That, of itself, is something we should all reflect on.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine is managing director of Nyungga Black Group