Indigenous Australians have opened up about the harsh personal toll racism has taken on them, as debate rages over the booing of AFL star Adam Goodes.

The chairman of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, revealed on The Drum that he is in therapy because of racism.

"Can I share with you a very personal thing at the moment? The personal thing for me is I am in therapy because of racial taunts and attacks that happened," he said.

"I am considered a very strong, upstanding Aboriginal man. A strong Australian. I am a great believer in Australia as a nation. But you just only can take so much of this stuff and it wears you down and after 58 years of hearing this stuff all the time, it just really guts you."

Goodes has taken indefinite leave from the Sydney Swans and it is rumoured he is considering his playing future after months of being relentlessly booed by crowds at matches.

The debate over whether the booing is racist or not prompted award-winning Aboriginal journalist Stan Grant to write about what it is like to be an Indigenous Australian.

In the piece in The Guardian, Grant said he knew what Goodes was feeling because "every Indigenous Australian has felt it".

"Estranged in the land of our ancestors, marooned by the tides of history on the fringes of one of the richest and demonstrably most peaceful, secure and cohesive nations on earth," he wrote.

The article has been shared almost 60,000 times, it has more than 1,100 comments — many of them thanking Grant — and it has struck a chord even with conservative commentators like News Corporation's Chris Kenny, who described it as "courageous, confronting and upsetting".

Grant told Lateline Australia is at a moment when it could have a "real conversation about how Indigenous people feel".

"I would like to think that in a civilised society, that if someone says to you, 'That hurts. This has gone beyond just mere booing. This is hurting me, it is hurting Indigenous people. It has racial overtones', we stop," he said.

"And in a civilised society I would have thought that is the least we could ask."

He said the country should be held to great account.

"Does it diminish Australia, does it diminish the greatness of Australia, the tolerance of Australia, the extraordinarily cohesive society that Australia is, does it diminish any of that to say yes, there are people who suffer and that Indigenous people still suffer in Australia today?" he said.

"You know, Australia likes to celebrate its greatness, so let's hold Australia to great account as well."

Grant said there was no question that there was a racial element to the booing of Goodes, tracing it back to when he confronted a 13-year-old girl who called him an "ape" during the AFL's Indigenous round in 2013.

"From that moment on there was a cleavage in the relationship that Adam had with the AFL and AFL fans and that has grown and widened," he said.

"So let's not imagine for a moment that there is not a racial element here."

Aboriginal ABC sports commentator Charlie King has also warned of the consequences for young Indigenous people if their role models like Adam Goodes are continuously cut down in public.

"If we start attacking the Indigenous community's heroes, that sends a very negative message out to young people and particularly young Indigenous people," he said.

"If we just start cutting down those role models then the kids think 'well then what hope is there for me?'"