Decolonizing ‘Canada’s Game’

My experiences in hockey have guided my approach to life. Through the sport, I have learned the virtues of hard work, determination, teamwork, community, and perseverance. Through the game, I was also given the opportunity to play for Team British Columbia's women's team at the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships (NAHC) from the ages of 13-17, where I was exposed to Aboriginal practices for the first time. The NAHC is an annual, week-long tournament that brings together the best Indigenous players aged 13-17 across Canada and placed into male and female divisions to compete against each other at an elite level. At the same time, the NAHC sets itself apart as a 'dual-track' cultural event (Forsyth, 2021) that includes traditional practices such as smudging, broadcasts in the Cree language, traditional dances and drum circles at opening ceremonies. The NAHC also encourages Indigenous, community-based team structures such as mentorship between coaches and older players with younger players and acknowledgement of the 'bigger picture' of the tournament— celebrating Indigenous excellence and culture in sport. While sport is usually separated into 'sport for development' (recreation sport that focuses on social development) and 'sport development' (competitive sport that focuses on individual skill development), the NAHC is a unique mix of both but also something more.

Self-Location

I was raised in Campbell River, British Columbia. However, through this tournament, I became interested in and began growing into my identity as a member of Enoch Cree Nation, a member of Treaty 6 situated just outside of Edmonton, Alberta. I grew up off-reserve and without a connection to my heritage. I only understood my Indigeneity from my status card and my mother's periodical reminders, but I never gave it much thought— for better or worse, I never really had to. In 2013, I attended my first NAHC in Kahnawake, Quebec. From tryouts to our plane ride home, I was immersed in Indigenous community and culture for the first time, and it is where I can pinpoint where I felt that connection and belonging, where I first felt pride in my reconnected identity. Throughout the tournament, many of my fellow teammates were also exposed to Aboriginal practices for the first time, and many of them I still keep in contact with today, where we share laughs and memories of this tournament and always with a tone of gratitude toward the organizers and founders. Without this tournament, I am not sure if I would have ever had this moment of reconciliation with my own culture and heritage. It is the long-term cultural effects of my NAHC experience that led me to my master's-level thesis project.

Building on these experiences, my thesis is built on working alongside Indigenous women, whom I refer to as my co-researchers, who have formerly participated in NAHC events to explore the long-term cultural effects of the tournament on their lives through their own media archives. In other words, I employ photovoice and photo elicitation with former female NAHC athletes' personal photos as an extension of memory (McLuhan, 1964; Sharma & Singh, 2022) to allow them to share their own stories of Indigeneity and gender through hockey and how the NAHC affects their identity formation. In doing so, I aim to create an evidence base for the long-term cultural importance of the event, which will support the tournament organizer's funding applications and overall representation of the tournament and work toward the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action #87-91 (external link)  to protect Indigenous athletes and sport. In my preliminary meetings, I share my story of finding identity through the NAHC to encourage a conversational tone. This relational approach has been an incredible success, where my willingness to share and self-locate effectively 'breaks the ice.' It encourages the participants to feel comfortable in sharing their own stories. Many conversations have gone from light and humorous to emotionally charged, some even bringing tears to both myself and the participant. In all conversations, a shared sentiment emerges where we both understand that at its heart, the NAHC is an important site of decolonization and personal cultural reconciliation through hockey that does not stop when the final buzzer sounds.

‘Canada’s Game’?

While I emphasize the positives of hockey, it is important to understand and highlight the dark undercurrents and past of Canada's national winter sport. Although lauded as 'Canada's Game' and as the pinnacle of Canada's national identity, mainstream hockey still struggles with its past as a settler colonial assimilative tool, where the sport was encouraged at residential schools to integrate Indigenous children into 'being Canadian', and its current problematic culture of
anti-Indigenous racism, homophobia, racism, and sexual violence. With hockey seemingly naturally coming out of Canada's natural landscapes, hockey scholars have long found that white settler Canada extends their notions of colonial land domination with their 'natural' ownership over hockey, thus resulting in the majority white, male, hypermasculine culture that still exists in the sport today (Szto, 2020). Colonialism, then, is at the heart of Canada's national winter sport. However, this culture is not without resistance and challenge, as we can see within the NAHC and other Indigenous hockey spaces. In terms of the NAHC, the complex relationship with Indigeneity, Canada, and hockey is heightened, exemplified in that while the tournament creates space for moments of decolonization within players' identities, the tournament is still organized within colonial ideas of Indigeneity and sport. For instance, players must hold documentation or status cards, a colonial practice from the Indian Act that dictates who is and is not 'Indigenous.'

In working alongside former Indigenous female hockey players, I aim to share their voices and stories of navigating these Indigenous hockey spaces, how we can better support them and how we can understand them as complex sites toward the decolonization of 'Canada's Game.'

About the author: Jaydlin Spooner studies decolonial theory, Indigenous studies, media, and sport. Her work focuses on how Indigenous female athletes are portrayed in mainstream media, with the goal of improving support and representation for these athletes.

Insights & Ideas is a ComCult blog series showcasing the research and expertise of ComCult students. Designed to engage a broad audience, the series features op-ed-style posts that connect academic insights to real-world issues, making complex ideas accessible and relevant. Each entry highlights the unique perspectives and innovative thinking within the ComCult program. We invite you to explore more stories that amplify research and inspire ideas! (News and Events Archives)

Resources

Forsyth, J., McKee, T., & Benson, A. (2021). Data, development discourse, and decolonization: developing an Indigenous evaluation model for Indigenous youth hockey in Canada.

Canadian Ethnic Studies 53 (3), 121-140. https://doi.org/10.1353/ces.2021.0022.

McLuhan, M. (1964/2013). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Critical ed.). Gingko Press. (Original work published 1964).

Sharma, S., & Singh, R. (2022). Re-understanding media: Feminist extensions of Marshall McLuhan. Duke University Press.

Szto, C. (2020). Myth Busting: Hockey, Multiculturalism, and Canada. In Changing on the Fly (pp. 14–36). Rutger University Press.