When Zartisha Davis sat down to design Super Netball's 2026 First Nations Round artwork, the brief she set for herself was older than netball. The Kabi Kabi woman was drawing on shell middens — the ancient layered deposits along the Kabi Kabi coastline that record millennia of gathering, fishing, food preparation and community life — and on the imagery of kangaroos and emus that has carried forward in her family for generations.
The finished work is titled 'Giv'ir Wun'bumba'. In Kabi Kabi the phrase translates as 'believe'. It will appear on every Super Netball dress, match ball and centre circle through Rounds 11 and 12 of the 2026 season as the league rolls out its First Nations Round across two weekends.
"It's such an amazing opportunity for any Indigenous person to be able to showcase their art on such a high level," Davis said. "It inspires the next generation, which is what it's all about — getting them to be interested in art and storytelling."
For Davis, the work is not decorative. It is documentary. "Sharing stories that have been possed down by my family, especially with the shell middens," she said. "It's community, it's gathering, it's sharing."
Shell middens carry a heavier connotation in Australian heritage debates than the casual viewer of a netball telecast might know. The deposits, formed over thousands of years from accumulated shell, ash and food remains, are among the most important physical records of pre-contact Indigenous life on the country's eastern coast. A number have been damaged or destroyed by development. Davis's choice to centre them in the artwork is, in part, a record of what has been lost and what remains.
The kangaroo and emu imagery in the design carries a national-symbol resonance that needs no explanation in Australia — the two animals appear on the coat of arms partly for the same reason Davis chose them, that neither species walks backwards. The choice fits the round's theme of forward movement and the 'All In' framing the league has used to signal that reconciliation work is shared.
The artwork rolls out across the round at every visible touchpoint. Custom playing dresses for all eight Super Netball clubs. The round's match ball with the design printed. Court centre circles. Broadcast graphics. Digital assets. The league's investment in the visual presentation of First Nations Round has grown steadily over the editions and 'Giv'ir Wun'bumba' is the most thoroughly applied design in the league's history.
For Davis, who has built a portfolio of public-facing work across other Australian sports and cultural institutions over recent years, the Super Netball commission is a significant national-platform moment. Her closing observation on the day of launch, about young Indigenous people finding the work and reading themselves into its story, was the kind of line that pre-empted the obvious follow-up question. The next generation is not an abstraction. They are watching Saturday's broadcast.
The round tips off May 23. Davis's design will be on every dress, every ball and every court.
