Sport is healing

by MPP Sol Mamakwa

MPP Sol Mamakwa wrote this article as an adaptation of a video he created and posted to his Youtube channel in March of 2024.

Last spring, I attended the Northern Bands Hockey Tournament in Dryden, Ontario. Max Kakepetum has run the tournament for 37 years and witnessed it grow from 4 to 44 teams.

As the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the riding of Kiiwetinoong in Northwestern Ontario, I try to attend it every year (although I don’t compete in it anymore). At this year’s tournament, I was invited to be on the bench for the Kingfisher Lake Flyers. Spending a week with the players and their families at the Dryden Memorial Arena, I was reminded of how important sports are for First Nations in Northern Ontario.

Many Ontarians in other parts of the province cannot imagine living in a community without an arena or organized hockey league nearby. But in most of the places in Kiiwetinoong, organized hockey leagues don’t exist. Many teams do not have artificial ice to play on, and some First Nations only have outdoor rinks. Teams in the North must travel long distances to play hockey.

Despite the barriers First Nations people living in Northern Ontario face just for the opportunity to play hockey, it still serves as more than just a sport. It is a lifeline.

In June of this year, the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority (SLFNHA) released a report which they titled Anishininiiwug Ajimoowin Animisewiinan, an Anishininiimowin (Oji-Cree) phrase for which one translation is ‘Stories About the Bad State We’re In.’ The report highlights mental health and substance use crises in the Northern First Nations served by SLFNHA. Referring to the choice of title in the front matter of the report, Christian Quequish notes that “To move closer to mino bimadiziwin, the good life, we need to be able to talk about animisiwiinan, the hard things in life”(2).

There is a mental health crisis. There is a suicide crisis. It impacts the First Nations youth in the North. Many people are struggling with their mental health and addictions. It’s difficult to hear when a twelve-year-old has died by suicide. The challenges faced by First Nations people are a direct result of the intergenerational traumas caused by the Indian Residential School system and the Sixties’ Scoop. These colonial policies result in the overrepresentation of First Nations people in the child welfare system and the prison system.

The SLFNA report tells us with data what many First Nations people already know through their experiences. For example, the report shows that ambulatory visits and hospitalization related to mental health and substance use increased substantially for Sioux Lookout area First Nations in the ten years between 2011 to 2021 (Anishininiiwug Ajimoowin Animisewiinan, 32). The rate of unnatural deaths was over three times the provincial average (33). Among the reports’ recommendations includes the need to adopt a wholistic approach to health, in which mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being are understood to be interconnected (36).

With that backdrop, it is so beautiful to see people from First Nations in Kiiwetinoong gather every year for tournaments like the Northern Bands Hockey Tournament, the Little Bands, the Little NHL, and the Tournament of Hope. When I attend Northern Bands, I see a reunion of friends and families from different First Nations in the North. And when I see people from Kiiwetinoong playing hockey together—or broomball, or volleyball, or baseball—I see suicide prevention in action. Sport is mental health.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted by the Canadian government in 2016, affirms in Article 31 that “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop […] sports and traditional games” and that “States shall take effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights” (22-23). In Canada, sport is also a necessary aspect of justice and reconciliation. This was acknowledged by 5 of 94 Calls to Action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report in 2015 (numbers 87 to 91) which address the role of sport in Canada’s path towards reconciliation.

The 87th call recognizes that Indigenous athletes deserve to have their accomplishments celebrated and stories remembered (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 10). The 88th calls for long term support for Indigenous athletes, and greater funding relating to the North American Indigenous Games (10). The 89th and 90th recommendations call for the federal government to shape policies to affirm the role of physical activity in health, to reduce barriers to participation, and build capacity to make sports more inclusive for Indigenous peoples (10). This entails funding and implementing a range of culturally relevant and anti-racist programming for athletes, coaches, and other sporting officials. As well as calling for the establishment of an elite athlete development program for Indigenous athletes, the Commission also called for “community sports programs that reflect the diverse cultures and traditional sporting activities of Aboriginal peoples” (10). Finally, the 91st calls for the planning of International Sporting Events to respect the territorial authority of First Nations, and for engagement at all levels of the events’ planning and implementation (10).

Through their Field of Dreams program, the Jays Care Foundation has provided grants to fund the refurbishment and building of new baseball fields to several First Nations in Northern Ontario, one of which is at the Pelican Falls First Nation High School near Sioux Lookout (Bonello). In the fall of 2019, the Pelican Falls First Nations High School and Jays Care Foundation held a tournament together to unveil the new field. While these initiatives have important impacts, First Nations should not need to rely on philanthropy to have adequate sports facilities that are taken for granted in most of the rest of the province.
We need to see the federal and provincial governments make greater investments in sport facilities in First Nations so that the opportunity to lace up skates and play sports is no longer a rarity for so many First Nations people in the North. Decades ago already, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s (NAN) 1993 Intervention Report to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples identified that organized sports and recreation in NAN member First Nations rely on Band Council support for programming, the existence of facilities, and the organizing of competitions and games between First Nations. Even if two of those recommendations can be achieved more easily, many First Nations are still under-resourced when it comes to sporting facilities.

In a report for the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, Julie Sutherland identifies some of the barriers to physical activity for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples as including environment, socio-economic, and political factors (which also includes the unavailability of facilities in many First Nations), racism, sexism, and for youth specifically, culturally irrelevant programming (13-15).

Teachers and education workers in Ontario schools have a responsibility to support the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, including those which are specifically related to education, as well as others, such as those relating to sport. I call on Ontario’s educators to ensure that the histories and contributions of Indigenous peoples in sports and in other fields are highlighted and celebrated in your lessons wherever possible, and to encourage those students who appear to be struggling to get involved in sports that bring them joy. Sport is healing.

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Sol Mamakwa
Member of Provincial Parliament for Kiiwetinoong

WORKS CITED:
Anishininiiwug Ajimoowin Animisewiinan: Mental Health and Substance Use Report. Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority, June 2024. https://www.slfnha.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/MWSU_Report_WEB_v12.pdf
Bonello, J. “PFFNHS, Jays Care Foundation unveil new baseball field.” The Sioux Lookout Bulletin, 8 October 2019, https://www.siouxbulletin.com/pffnhs-jays-care-foundation-unveil-new-baseball-field
Intervention Report: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, September 1993. https://data2.archives.ca/rcap/pdf/rcap-598.pdf
Sutherland, J. Indigenous Sports and Recreation Programs and Partnerships Across Canada: A Literature Review and Environmental Scan. National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, 2021. https://www.nccih.ca/Publications/lists/Publications/Attachments/ISR/Indigenous_Sports_and_Recreation_EN_Web_2022-01-27.pdf
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action. 2015. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. United Nations, 2007. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf