Adelaide's Indigenous leader Wayne Milera says it took time to again be comfortable around Taylor Walker after the star forward's racism ban.
Walker was suspended by the AFL for six games last August for making a racist comment when he was a spectator at a state league game.
"Obviously it was pretty tough and it was very disappointing from my end, a senior figure at the club doing that, someone you look up to," Milera told reporters on Monday.
Milera, a Narungga nation, Gunditjmara and Jardwadjali man, and the Crows' most experienced Indigenous player, said repairing the relationship with Walker wasn't simple.
"It was always going to take time," he said.
"You take a long time to build a relationship and when something like that happens, it damages that relationship, so it's not going to be fixed all of a sudden.
"He's done his apology and said sorry to us and said sorry to the club.
"It's just about him now acting on what actions he is going to do going forward and we have seen that.
"I am comfortable with him at the club. I can't tell you how long exactly it took but it definitely took some time to be comfortable."
Milera described Walker's racism furore as "a pretty full-on time, pretty stressful".
"But just to voice your feelings to him and sort of voice the feelings of the community, that was pressure from my end just to put that on him," Milera said.
"He got the feeling of how we were feeling."
