Aboriginal Peoples and Sport in Canada uses sport as a lens through which to examine issues such as individual and community health, gender and race relations, culture and colonialism, and self-determination and agency. In this groundbreaking volume, leading scholars offer a multidisciplinary perspective on how unequal power relations influence the ability of Aboriginal people in Canada to implement their own visions for sport. The diverse analyses illuminate how Aboriginal people employ sport as a venue through which to assert their cultural identities and find a positive space for themselves and upcoming generations in contemporary Canadian society.

Reclaiming Tom Longboat recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown-Indigenous relations. Drawing on a rich and varied set of oral and textual sources, including interviews with award recipients and Jan Eisenhardt, the creator of the Awards himself, Janice Forsyth critically assesses the state's role in policing Indigenous bodies and identities through sport, from the assimilationist sporting regulations of residential schools to the present-day exclusion of Indigenous activities from mainstream sports. This work recognizes the role of sport as a tool for colonization in Canada, while also acknowledging its potential to become a tool for decolonization and self-determination. "Through considering the Awards in the broader context of ongoing colonial relations in Canada, and bringing to light the voices of the recipients, this study extends well beyond the Tom Longboat Awards history to encompass the complicated place of sport in the Indigenous experience." --Robert Kossuth, Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Lethbridge

This exciting, accessible introduction to the field of Sports Studies is the most comprehensive guide yet to the relationships between sport, culture and society. Taking an international perspective, Sport, Culture and Society provides students with the insight they need to think critically about the nature of sport, and includes: a clear and comprehensive structure unrivalled coverage of the history, culture, media, sociology, politics and anthropology of sport coverage of core topics and emerging areas extensive original research and new case study material. The book offers a full range of features to help guide students and lecturers, including essay topics, seminar questions, key definitions, extracts from primary sources, extensive case studies, and guides to further reading. Sport, Culture and Society represents both an important course resource for students of sport and also sets a new agenda for the social scientific study of sport.

Serving as a foundation for critical discussion about the importance of the past, Sport and Recreation in Canadian History covers the historical events, people, and moments that shape Canadian sport in the present and future. While this text focuses on sport and recreation practices on these lands now claimed by Canada, it is set within a larger historical context of interconnecting social and cultural practices to speak to the sustained tensions, complexities, and contradictions prevalent in Canadian society. The editor, Dr. Carly Adams, and her 17 contributing experts from across Canada bring the latest research in all areas of Canadian sport history to life and present a thorough look at the nation’s past events. The text challenges the dominant narratives and encourages students to think critically about Canadian sport history. It examines how gender, ethnicity, race, religion, ability, class, and other systems of oppression and privilege have shaped sport and recreation practices, with Canadian sporting culture reproducing many of the same oppressive systems that exist on the larger scale. Sport and Recreation in Canadian History separates itself from its competitors by providing an abundance of pedagogical aids. Sidebars highlighting prominent people provide glimpses of figures who made a significant impact on Canadian sport history. Transformative Moment sidebars focus on significant events as they relate to specific themes, such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or ability. A comprehensive timeline showcases where important events fell in relation to one another, while the text acknowledges the problem of presenting history in a linear way and provides a more nuanced discussion of time. Descriptions of primary source documents—such as newspaper articles, photographs, and historical documents—are accompanied by explanations of how sport historians work with these documents. Sport and Recreation in Canadian History asks readers to think differently about the history of Canadian sport, and it examines how past people, moments, and events continue to shape 21st-century sport.

Decolonizing Sport tells the stories of sport colonizing Indigenous Peoples and of Indigenous Peoples using sport to decolonize. Spanning several lands — Turtle Island, the US, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Kenya — the authors demonstrate the two sharp edges of sport in the history of colonialism. Colonizers used sport, their own and Indigenous recreational activities they appropriated, as part of the process of dispossession of land and culture. Indigenous mascots and team names, hockey at residential schools, lacrosse and many other examples show the subjugating force of sport. Yet, Indigenous Peoples used sport, playing their own games and those of the colonizers, including hockey, horse racing and fishing, and subverting colonial sport rules as liberation from colonialism. This collection stands apart from recent publications in the area of sport with its focus on Indigenous Peoples, sport and decolonization, as well as in imagining a new way forward.

This exciting, accessible introduction to the field of Sports Studies is the most comprehensive guide yet to the relationships between sport, culture and society. Taking an international perspective, Sport, Culture and Society provides students with the insight they need to think critically about the nature of sport, and includes: a clear and comprehensive structure unrivalled coverage of the history, culture, media, sociology, politics and anthropology of sport coverage of core topics and emerging areas extensive original research and new case study material. The book offers a full range of features to help guide students and lecturers, including essay topics, seminar questions, key definitions, extracts from primary sources, extensive case studies, and guides to further reading. Sport, Culture and Society represents both an important course resource for students of sport and also sets a new agenda for the social scientific study of sport.