Witnessing Painful Pasts: Understanding Images of Sports at Canadian Indian Residential Schools

Abstract

Images are powerful tools for shaping perceptions of the past. In the context of sport at Canadian Indian residential schools, photographic images were consciously constructed and carefully selected and have been subsequently recirculated by contemporary media. Images of smiling, happy children at play at Canadian Indian residential schools have been used to lend credence to notions of sport as an unquestionable force for good without considering the context in which the images were created. In this paper, we explore how media, including online public repositories and newspapers, have taken up images of sport, specifically hockey, at Indian residential schools and how they evoke ideas about the nation and Indigenous–settler relations in Canada. We argue that photographs of residential school sports reinforce colonial narratives that lend ideological weight to settler colonial rule.

“This Year Book...has been entirely produced by staff and students”: Indigenous Youth, Indian Schooling, and Historical Production in the Northwest Territories, 1959-71

“…At the same time, "students valued these activities, which provided them with a refuge in a world that was, for many, harsh and alienating." 35 Writing on recreation at residential and day schools is a small but growing historical sub-field, though one that is primarily focused on sport and physical activity. 36 Our project takes a broader view; we understand recreation to include a variety of creative, physical, social, and intellectual activities including, but not limited to, music, the arts, sports, games, crafts, reading, and Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.…”

Indigenizing Sport Research: Analyzing Protective Factors of Exercising Sovereignty in North America

“…However, as Indigenous athletes aim to compete in sports with other societies who do not share their hair practices, or worse, seek to privilege western practices, they have been the targets of horrific taunts that in some instances have led to physical assault and young people's hair being cut in schools. These contemporary forms of bigotry ripple from the legacy of past U.S. and Canadian assimilation policies carried out in residential/boarding schools where Indigenous children upon arrival were stripped of all of their belongings and had their hair cut (McKee & Forsyth, 2019;Tardif, 2021). Therefore, Indigenous athletes today who dare to wear their hair in a braid or bun are not only practicing cultural teachings but are active in processes of reclamation, revitalization, and reconciliation for harms done to their ancestors.…”