Making Settler Colonialism Visible: An Inquiry of Indigenous Games in “Canada 150”

Abstract

This dissertation highlights the value for researchers to visibilize settler colonialism as an important social structure and context in sport management by exploring the implication of two international Indigenous sport events, both hosted in Canada during the country’s celebration of its 150th anniversary in 2017. Foregrounding the ongoing settler colonial processes in North America that deeply impacts all peoples – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – at material and epistemic levels, the dissertation sheds some light on the opportunities that these events offer for non-Indigenous media, volunteers, and sport managers in building more responsible and accountable relations with Indigenous communities as well as identifying the challenges therein, through three studies. First, focusing on the historical complicity of mainstream media in the “othering” of Indigenous Peoples as well as the platform it presents for marginalized stakeholders to voice dissent in sport events in recent decades, I conducted a critical discourse analysis of Canadian mainstream media’s coverage on the two events and summarized both opportunities and limitations for mainstream media to represent Indigenous events. Next, in an autoethnography, I critically reflected on my own experience as a settler volunteer at the events. Contrasting my initial, naïve impression of Canada with my gradual understanding of settler colonialism, it reveals some uneasy learning moments, which I consider as valuable for not only sport management researchers and practitioners but also immigrants and people of color to interrogate their relations to Indigenous communities. The third project is a qualitative inquiry into the experience of non-Indigenous volunteers at the World Indigenous Nations Games (WIN Games). It reveals the complex experiences that non-Indigenous individuals had in volunteering at Indigenous Games - highly rewarding yet sometimes uncertain and uncomfortable – and encourages settlers to use uncertainty and frustration as “springboard” to actions in engaging responsibly with Indigenous communities.