Organized sport is commonly positioned as a treatment for the various health issues that Indigenous Peoples face. While there are numerous advantages to sports participation, overstating those advantages risks obscuring the systemic problems they endure in attempting to create their very own visions for health.
While research indicates that encouraging youth to be engaged in sport and physical activity is important for improving health outcomes, the connection between sport participation and health in Indigenous communities will not be so easy.
For instance, a recent literature review by the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health calls attention to a big policy problem: Indigenous youth are more physically energetic than non-Indigenous youth, and yet they self-report poorer health outcomes.
This illustrates why using sport participation as a policymaking lodestar for affecting positive health outcomes is troublesome. Sport has historically failed to handle the systemic issues that burden Indigenous Peoples and their communities. To address these deep-seated issues, a more comprehensive and culturally grounded approach to sport policy is required.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jesse Johnston
National sport policies
National sport policies are necessary because they function a guide for a way and why the federal government will put money into sport. Canada’s first sport policy, An Act to Encourage Fitness and Amateur Sportdates back to 1961. It mostly featured cost-sharing agreements with the provinces and territories to get people involved in sport for fitness and competition.
After that, the federal government began to focus increasingly on high performance sport. Since the Seventies, billions of dollars have been invested in athletes to win gold, silver and bronze medals, as if their accolades would stimulate greater physical activity amongst residents.
The overall orientation of those policies is captured by the expression “from playground to podium” — a fitting summary of the reach and ambition of most of them.
Now, a brand new national sport policy is on the immediate horizon, and with it’ll come a renewed discussion regarding the connection between health and sport in Canada. The consultation report that forms the idea for the brand new policy refers to sport as an “integral component of health and culture in Canada,” with quotes throughout that describe it as a type of health care.
Sport and health
The relationship between sport participation and federal policymaking is longstanding and rooted in the traditional wisdom that encouraging youth to be engaged in sport reliably leads to raised health outcomes.
For instance, the primary goal of the 2002 Canada Sport Policy aimed to significantly increase the variety of Canadians participating in sportsaying sports participation “contributes to healthier, longer, and more productive lives.”
The 2012 Canadian Sport Policy continued to focus on the positive health advantages of sports participation, saying it “strengthens their personal development, provides enjoyment and rest, reduces stress, improves physical and mental health, physical fitness and general well-being, and enables them to live more productive and rewarding lives.”
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Clearly the 2012 policy meant health in a large sense. These were grand claims, considering only 34 per cent of Canadians participated in some type of organized sport in 2012. By 2023, that number rose to almost 50 per centdue largely to return-to-play initiatives after the COVID-19 pandemic — a trend which may be in reverse resulting from the rising cost of living.
For Indigenous Peoples, there may be no official survey that tracks Indigenous participation in sport in Canada. This means assumptions about sport being a driver for Indigenous health is probably not relevant for a lot of segments of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit populations. It also means sport policy may exacerbate their existing health inequities, as a substitute of addressing them.
Social determinants of Indigenous health
Although sport is a very important and valued aspect of Canadian life, the relative impact it may well have on the general health of a community is tempered by many external aspects — a degree illustrated by the federal government’s public health resources.
Approaching sport from a social determinants of Indigenous health perspective would make clear why and the way this happens. The Canadian government currently uses the 12 social determinants of health and health inequalities to guide its policies.
The social determinants of Indigenous health transcend the federal government’s current approach to incorporate assessments of other negative aspects like settler colonialism, in addition to positive aspects like Indigenous culture and spirituality.
Likewise, Call to Action 89 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission urges decision-makers to embrace a broader perspective of sport that engages health. It states:
“We call upon the federal government to amend the Physical Activity and Sport Act to support reconciliation by ensuring that policies to advertise physical activity as a fundamental element of health and well-being, reduce barriers to sports participation, increase the pursuit of excellence in sport, and construct capability within the Canadian sport system, are inclusive of Aboriginal peoples.”
Dangers of sport evangelism
Without critically considering how we frame sport’s role in Canadian life, any recent policy risks the hazards of sport evangelism: the false belief that sport alone can provide a miraculous fix for social and structural issues.
The long list that makes up the social determinants of Indigenous health is a visual reminder of the necessity to know sport in that complex matrix.
In each mainstream and Indigenous communities across Canada, sport is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, it’s a tool that should be used responsibly. This requires us to acknowledge each its potential and limitations for enriching the lives of its participants, especially those that we all know face health inequities, as Indigenous Peoples do.