5 Chapter Four: Decolonizing Sport
Kelly McGuire and kimberleymcgrath
These are difficult stories. We bear witness in this chapter to the role of sport in furthering the settler colonial projects throughout Turtle Island. Here are some supports to access in the community and from a distance:
First Peoples House of Learning Cultural Support & Counselling
Niijkiwendidaa Anishnaabekwag Services Circle (Counselling & Healing Services for Indigenous Women & their Families) – 1-800-663-2696
Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre (705) 775-0387
Peterborough Community Counselling Resource Centre: (705) 742-4258
Hope for Wellness – Indigenous help line (online chat also available) – 1-855-242-3310
LGBT Youthline: askus@youthline.ca or text (647)694-4275
National Indian Residential School Crisis Line – 1-866-925-4419
Talk4Healing (a culturally-grounded helpline for Indigenous women):1-855-5544-HEAL
Section One: History
A) The Residential School System
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
We are asked to honour these stories with open hearts and open minds.
Which part of the chapter stood out to you? What were your feelings as you read it? (50 words)
| What stood out to me is how the Residential School System used sports and recreational activities to play the denial game of the truth about the physical and emotional abuse and what was actually happening to the Indigenous children at these government and church run schools.
The principals and other authorities at the residential schools assumed they were introducing sporting activities as something new to the Indigenous children. Meanwhile the intention was a disruption of the established Indigenous sport that was integral to their culture. What stands out is how the colonizers used a rigid gender coding of sport at the residential schools. Also, how sport and physical activity was used to uphold the patriarchal and sexist attitudes of settler colonialism. |
B) Keywords
Exercise 2: Notebook Prompt
Briefly define (point form is fine) one of the keywords in the padlet (may be one that you added yourself).
| Muscular Christianity – This term was used as a label/philosophy to describe a commitment to both health and manliness as an expression of your religious values. A man could posses both spiritual and physical strength. The concept of Muscular Christianity was particular to being of British character and quality. Sport was reserved for those with physical strength and manliness and not appropriate for women.
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C) Settler Colonialism
Exercise 3: Complete the Activities
Exercise 4: Notebook Prompt
Although we have discussed in this module how the colonial project sought to suppress Indigenous cultures, it is important to note that it also appropriates and adapts Indigenous cultures and “body movement practices” (75) as part of a larger endeavour to “make settlers Indigenous” (75).
What does this look like? (write 2 or 3 sentences)
| To make settler colonizers the Indigenous people requires the eradiation of the Indigenous culture and then insert the European culture. The goal was to completely eradicate the Indigenous people of Turtle Island as never existing. To assimilate the culture of the Indigenous people into the European culture.
The colonial project uses mythology to appropriate and adapt repeated false narratives of sport being a British export while excluding the strong interweaving of sport in colonial dominance. A myth was created that the Indigenous people had no sport of their own and the the colonizers could use sport to help civilize the wild savages. Sport was used as an instrument of control and erasure of the Indigenous body and culture. The colonizers would need to eradicate all forms of Indigenous body movement in their own sport, dance and leisure activities and claim these sports as their own. The total elimination of Indigenous body movement would erase all aspects of Indigenous culture and situate the settler colonizers as Indigenous.
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D) The Colonial Archive
Exercise 5: Complete the Activities
Section Two: Reconciliation
A) Reconciliation?
Exercise 6: Activity and Notebook Prompt
Visit the story called “The Skate” for an in-depth exploration of sport in the residential school system. At the bottom of the page you will see four questions to which you may respond by tweet, facebook message, or email:
How much freedom did you have to play as a child?
What values do we learn from different sports and games?
When residential staff took photos, what impression did they try to create?
Answer one of these questions (drawing on what you have learned in section one of this module or prior reading) and record it in your Notebook.
| The photos taken by residential school staff were used as propaganda. These photos were manipulated to fool and persuade the Canadian public that residential schools were a positive experience for the Indigenous children. This enabled a comfortable blindness to the reality of the physical and psychological abuse suffered by the Indigenous students. The facade was in the photos that the children were well fed and loved and it is such a privilege for them to have the opportunity to participate in sport. All in the act of denialism.
The photos were important in the justification of settler colonialism. They created a construct of residential school as beneficial well beyond what the picture presents. |
B) Redefining Sport
B) Sport as Medicine
Exercise 7: Notebook Prompt
Make note of the many ways sport is considered medicine by the people interviewed in this video.
| Sport is and was a medicine for the Indigenous people. Sport helped the young Indigenous children survive the trauma of residential schools. However, before residential schools various sports and in particular lacrosse was part of the Indigenous culture. Sport acted as a survivor tactic for the Indigenous children as when they were playing sports the children could speak their own language to each other on the playing field. This gave them medicine in the form of pride. Self respect and dignity stemmed from their language, culture and heritage. Sport was medicine, this was clear from the many participants in the video as they stated that when they were playing sports it was the happiest time at the residential school. Today, sport as medicine helps to connect and reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
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C) Sport For development
Exercise 7: Notebook Prompt
What does Waneek Horn-Miller mean when she says that the government is “trying but still approaching Indigenous sport development in a very colonial way”?
| I believe that Waneek Horn-Miller is addressing the elitist attitude of the governments because they are not involving the Indigenous people in understanding how to work with the Indigenous communities. Government is acting in a very colonial way by not examining what is best for Indigenous communities and grant them the autonomy to come together and develop their own approach to sport. |
Exercise 8: Padlet Prompt
Add an image or brief comment reflecting some of “binding cultural symbols that constitute Canadian hockey discourse in Canada.” Record your responses in your Notebook as well.
| Hockey is a source of national identity and pride for Canadians. For example, the pride and excitement felt by Canadians when Canada won the game against the USA in the Four Nations Cup. Hockey in Canada is imbued with elitism, whiteness and masculinity. This is the problem with the binding cultural symbols of hockey discourse in Canada.
There are varying experiences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the binding cultural symbols of hockey in Canada. While there is a strong connection in the binding cultural symbol of hockey and childhood, The ropes that bind national pride of hockey are different for many, especially those who survived residential school.
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Section Three: Decolonization
Please see the major assignment for this half of the term in the final section of this chapter.
