Session Proposer: Associate Professor Rochelle Stewart-Withers

Session Contributors: Open

Session Type: Papers, presentations

Session Abstract: In May 2024 the only journal in the world dedicated to ‘Sport for Development’ published a special issue titled: Indigenous Voices Matter, with foreword written by Distinguished Professors Graham Hingangaroa Smith and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, both eminent and world-leading Indigenous scholars and activists. It is here that Smith and Smith (2024) continued their indigenising and decolonising legacies by applying it to the sport for development field. “Through their exploration of the role and relationship between sport and development across four political contexts (historically; imperialism and colonialism; neo-liberalism; Indigenising agenda), they have not just reimagined and reframed SFD in terms of Māori development but also Indigenous development more widely” (Stewart-Withers et al, 2024, p.11). In this special issue we argued the importance of the term Indigenization, (or indeed localisation) “as opposed to just decolonizing SFD, because decolonizing debates have had a tendency to center the colonizers” (Stewart-Withers et al, 2024, pp.96-97). In our view Indigenization offers more hopeful possibilities.

In this session we seek to continue the conversations of hopeful possibilities, by Indigenising thus continuing to reframe SFD. In this session we privilege SFD development theory, practice and research which centres Indigeneity and local voices. We privilege SFD which engages with non-dominant worldviews. We are interested in SFD stories about positive, hopeful, change which are building resilience and local leadership in a time of shifting landscapes of development.