Abstract

As a former gym teacher and Indigenous person who began his teaching career in a mid- northern Anishnabé school in the 1980’s, I noticed certain peculiarities about my students when playing sports that weren’t noticeable in the south. Even though I was from an Indigenous background, the fact that I was from a more urbanized area meant in order to play organized team sports I had to comply with the values of the majority culture, a win at all cost attitude that had sometimes prevented me from participating in team sports. Teams were chosen not based on ones potential to learn a sport, but rather on what was sometimes referred to as natural ability. This meant teams in the majority non-Indigenous culture were built on whether one could contribute to a team’s performance and if you were perceived as not been adequate to a teams needs because of lack of ability, then you were discarded from the team. Your only chance was to hope there was a lower league to play in that would take you. In the end I stayed closer to individual sports than team sports because I knew I was going to be disappointed if I tried out for a team in the city.