INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the number of international organizations turning to sport as a potential tool to tackle a variety of social issues has led to attention from both the United Nations (UN) and a growing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).^1,2 Sport for development (SFD), also known as sport for development and peace (SDP), is a broad term that encompasses programs that use sport in attempts to foster individual and community development by confronting a variety of social, health, and cultural issues.^2,3 SFD has gained considerable momentum and attention in recent years, despite concerns from authors such as Donnelly⁴ who argue that Eurocentric sport promotes social exclusion and dominance and may not be the best tool for development initiatives. Nevertheless, during his 2006 address at the World Economic Forum, Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General from 1997-2006, hailed sport as a “global language capable of bridging social, cultural and religious divides. It can be a powerful tool for fostering understanding, tolerance and peace” (p382).⁴ On November 3, 2003, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 58/5 titled Sport as a Means to Promote Education, Health, Development and Peace after a UN interagency taskforce determined that organized sports initiatives were cost effective tools with the potential to promote development and peace and to help the UN achieve its eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG).⁵ Resolution 58/5 led to the UN declaring 2005 the “International Year of Sport and Physical Education,” which formally recognized sport as an agent to achieve the MDGs and promoted SFD programs aimed at fostering development in marginalized communities around the globe.³ SFD programs have flourished in the wake of the UN’s support and hundreds of programs are now running internationally, varying from small community-based sports initiatives to international corporate-sponsored programs.^2,6

Right To Play, a corporate-sponsored international SFD organization, has grown exponentially since its inception in 2000 when it transitioned from an Olympic fundraising program (Olympic Aid) to an NGO focused on promoting the potential benefits of sport to youth internationally.⁷ Right To Play programs are designed to target the needs of marginalized or Third World communities across the globe including Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, and Angola.⁷ Since Aboriginal peoples are the most marginalized peoples in Canada,⁸ and according to the UN, Aboriginal peoples in Canada presently live in Third World conditions,⁹ Right To Play, in partnership with First Nations peoples and with support from the Government of Ontario, developed the Promoting Life Skills in Aboriginal Youth (PLAY) program. PLAY uses sport and recreation to attempt to improve the health and well being of northern Ontario’s First Nations youth.¹⁰ PLAY is partly self-funded by the recipient First Nations communities, while additional financing is provided by the Government of Ontario and private sponsors.

In this study, we use postcolonial theory and critical discourse analysis to investigate the ways in which non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal media sources report on PLAY. We evaluated 26 online news articles, 19 from non-Aboriginal sources and 7 from Aboriginal sources, and identified the dominant discourses at work in the articles. We then analyzed the way that articles reinforced or challenged racist views of First Nations people. In this paper, we employ the term racist to describe beliefs about and the treatment of First Nations people as “lesser than” non-First Nations Canadians. Through our literature review we show that many colonial policies and resulting actions concerning First Nations peoples were racist in nature and we demonstrate how some of these views continue to permeate non-Aboriginal media in Canada today. Our results support our literature review and indicate that there is a sharp divide between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal media sources. Non-Aboriginal sources (re)produced two deficit-based discourses about First Nations involved in the program: i) there is no hope for First Nations youth and they are thus prone to suicide and poor health, and ii) the Government of Ontario and Right To Play are responsible for the development of and financial contributions to PLAY. Conversely, Aboriginal media sources promoted two strength-based discourses concerning First Nations people: i) First Nations youth have hope and ii) First Nations people play an integral role in the development and financial support of PLAY. The findings suggest that non-Aboriginal media continues to reproduce colonial discourses concerning Aboriginal peoples while Aboriginal media challenge these discourses.

Literature Review
Though often portrayed as a recent innovation, sport for development has a long history in Aboriginal communities in Canada.¹¹ In this section, we review the historical foundations of sport for development in Aboriginal communities, outline justifications for its use, contemporary approaches to sport for development, and media portrayals of Aboriginal peoples.

Historical Foundations

Despite the purported benefits of sport in Canada, researchers such as Paraschak¹² and Forsyth¹³ have documented the extent to which sport has been used to control, suppress, and assimilate Aboriginal populations. The Indian Act (1867) afforded the Government of Canada the power to control First Nations peoples’ ways of life,¹⁴ including participation in sport. Government officials dictated who could participate in sport, what sports could be played, and the level of competition available to First Nations teams and individuals.¹³

Indeed, the Government of Canada has a long history of using sport initiatives to influence First Nations communities, seldom to the benefit of the recipient community. Paraschak¹⁵ argued, “although few articles identify sport as a racist institution, the historical record supports this contention implicitly” (p60). Following the Indian Act of 1876,¹⁴ First Nations populations were forced onto reserves and into residential schools that used Euro-Canadian sport as a means of oppression and control.¹³ Donnelly⁴ explained that competitive Eurocentric sports are based on principles of social exclusion, dominance, and aggression, and reinforce concepts of patriarchy and capitalism. At the time of colonization, imperial powers, and later the Government of Canada, deemed Euro-Canadian social values to be civilized and necessary for First Nations people to acquire in order to integrate successfully within Canadian culture;¹⁴ thus, First Nations peoples were exposed to Eurocentric sports and inundated with Euro-Canadian social values on their reserves and in residential schools. According to Forsyth,¹³ First Nations peoples were encouraged to engage in Euro-Canadian sports to fill the void left when traditional physical and cultural practices were banned by government legislation.

The residential school system was one of the Government of Canada’s most aggressive attempts to “civilize” First Nations peoples.¹³ First Nations youth were removed from their communities and forced to attend the Christianized schools where First Nations cultural practices were banned and youth were obliged to adhere to Euro-Canadian values and ways of life.¹³ Sport was used to bring about fundamental changes in the values and behaviours of the First Nations students, most notably to break down communal values and foster an individual competitive spirit.^8,13,16

Aboriginal Health

Sport for development initiatives are often premised on the need to improve Aboriginal peoples’ poor health. It is well-accepted that regular physical activity can contribute to the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle and decrease the incidence of preventable diseases such as coronary heart disease, type II diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.¹⁷ SFD programs often target youth populations because physical activity during their adolescence may improve adult health status by creating positive attitudes towards physical activity and contributing to maintaining an active lifestyle into adulthood.¹⁷ Beyond the physical health benefits, internationally, SFD programs have reportedly capitalized on the power of sport to foster individual and community development by attempting to improve the physical, emotional, economic, cultural, and social health of programs’ recipients.^5,7 The focus on the use of sport for development to achieve good health in First Nations communities in Canada may be, however, somewhat limited, as it fails to acknowledge the chronic underfunding of health care, education, and housing in First Nations communities as well as the long-term damage that colonial systems have and continue to bring about.¹⁸

Contemporary Sport for Development in Aboriginal Communities

Since 2010, the Government of Canada has reportedly looked to the power of sport through structured SFD programs to assist in the development of Aboriginal communities in Canada.¹⁰ The Government of Canada recognizes that Aboriginal people are the most marginalized people in Canada⁸ and that they experience major health disparities when compared to non-Aboriginal Canadians.^8,19,20 The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)²⁰ stated that First Nations and Métis people have higher incidences of type II and gestational diabetes than non-Aboriginal peoples. Furthermore, Aboriginal individuals are generally diagnosed with diabetes at a younger age than non-Aboriginal populations.²⁰ Compared to non-Aboriginal populations, First Nations and Inuit peoples also have higher incidence of acute myocardial infarction, stroke, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, infant mortality, suicide and unintentional injuries resulting in death.^19,20 There are also socio-cultural and economic disparities between Aboriginal populations and the rest of Canada including increased prevalence of family violence and substance abuse, increased time spent incarcerated, decreased employment and education rates, and dilapidated living conditions.⁸ Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health discrepancies in Canada have been linked to colonialism, dispossession of land, loss of traditional health practices, discrimination, food insecurity, lack of adequate housing, and unequal education systems and access to health care.^18,21 Sport for development is used as a means to try to address the health inequities that result from these issues.

While sport may offer a means to improve Aboriginal peoples’ physical health, sport initiatives need to be culturally sensitive and reflect Aboriginal cultural practices and values rather than those of Euro-Canadian origin.^22,24 Drawing on existing literature, Sport Canada²⁵ explained that sport focused on holistic well-being and survival techniques have historically played a significant role in the lives of Aboriginal youth by reinforcing Aboriginal cultural and social teachings and connecting youth to their family and community; holistic sport “strengthens emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of Aboriginal life”(p4). Sport Canada²⁵ highlighted the need to integrate sports centred on appropriate cultural principles that parallel community beliefs and value systems into the lives of Aboriginal youth. Culturally appropriate sport can teach youth to balance mental, physical, emotional, cultural, and spiritual aspects of Aboriginal life and will also aid in the maintenance of holistic health.²⁵ It is, however, important that cultural aspects of sport not be limited to static interpretations of culture. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples⁸ warned that Aboriginal people are not prisoners of the past; instead, they borrow ideas and adapt cultural traits in ways that they find appealing, similar to other cultures in Canada. Giles²² further explained that “tradition” and “traditional games” in Aboriginal communities in Canada should be viewed as constantly changing: sport and physical activity should reflect the fluidity of culture and adapt to changing cultural ideals. SFD initiatives, such as PLAY, are developed in collaboration with First Nations people to ensure that sport programs are culturally sensitive and meet the specific needs of First Nations youth.

In June 2010, Right To Play partnered with the Government of Ontario and two Northern Ontario First Nations communities, Sandy Lake and Moose Cree, to initiate PLAY. PLAY was designed as a culturally sensitive SFD initiative that targets the specific needs of First Nations community youth. PLAY purports to use sport and play as a means to foster individual and community development.¹⁰ The program encourages the holistic development of Aboriginal youth using the Experience-Reflect-Connect-Apply approach that engages youth in conversation about the sports they play, the lessons learned through sport, and helps youth connect sports lessons to real-life situations.¹⁰ The PLAY program aims to be inclusive and respect the rights of First Nations youth and their cultures by involving community leaders, elders, parents and youth in the design and implementation process of the program to ensure that each component is tailored specifically to the needs of the community.¹⁰

SFD programs such as PLAY demonstrate the potential for provincial governments to partner with First Nations communities to implement SFD programs aimed at improving the health of First Nations youth. Notably, it is the Government of Ontario and not the federal government that is funding PLAY, even though Aboriginal peoples are a federal responsibility. Hawkes²⁶ likened the confusion between provincial and federal responsibility for Aboriginal people to “the most appalling ‘political football’” (p374), explaining that the lines of responsibility are blurring and provincial governments are becoming more responsible for Aboriginal affairs. Hayhurst and Giles (in press) argued that this change may reflect the current conservative government’s neo-liberal mandate and the continued retreat of the welfare state.¹¹ While the federal government continues to fund some Aboriginal sports programs such as Motivate Canada and the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity’s (CAAWS) Team Spirit program, provincial governments across Canada have taken increased funding responsibility for Aboriginal SFD programs including the Aboriginal Youth Sport Legacy Fund in British Columbia, Alberta’s Future Leaders Program in Alberta, the Aboriginal Sport Development initiative in Saskatchewan and PLAY in Ontario.

Although the UN and various NGOs support the use of sport in development initiatives internationally, authors such as Donnelly⁴ have warned of the potential confusion of using sport to foster development. Competitive sport is often based on principals of social exclusion, ideological conformation, nationalism, militarism, and discriminatory attitudes toward gender and disability.^4,27 Darnell²⁷ stressed the paradox inherent in sport: sport is used to improve social skills and promote development, but can foster dominance and antisocial behaviour in participants. Donnelly⁴ also argued that SFD programs may perpetuate underdevelopment and inequalities in marginalized communities by focusing on “modernizing” the community and “improving” conduct, rather than challenging the power relations that caused this marginalization. Harding²⁸ stated, “white Canadians have historically enjoyed and continue to hold decisive advantages over Aboriginal people in all forms of institutional power” (p205). These power relations have rendered Aboriginal peoples the most marginalized in Canada.^3,8 By perpetuating assimilation processes that reinforce Eurocentric values and marginalize Aboriginal values, SFD programs that promote Euro-Canadian sport within First Nations communities may be contributing to further racism instead of challenging power relations.^4,27 Although Right To Play designed PLAY as a culturally sensitive SFD program,¹⁰ media reporting on PLAY may still be reinforcing racist, colonial discourses concerning First Nations people in Canada. Since media plays an integral role in constructing our social realities,²⁹ negative discourses presented in mainstream media may contribute to perpetuating racism and promoting colonial views of First Nations people.

Aboriginal Peoples and the Media

Harding²⁸ contended that racist, colonial attitudes and discourses about Aboriginal peoples continue to be present in mainstream media. Harding²⁸ explained that the active racism that appeared in the news in colonial times has been replaced by a passive “ethnocentrism characterized by a creed of ‘identical treatment,’ which emphasizes equality of opportunity and cultural pluralism while denying the existence of contemporary racist practices, attitudes and outcomes” (p206). Today, Aboriginal peoples are included in mainstream media reports, but Knopf³⁰ explained that contemporary media attention given to Aboriginal peoples often references poor living conditions and poor health without discussing the colonial history that led to these conditions. This sustains stereotypes “of the lazy Indians on welfare and the Indians as victims to be blamed for their state”³⁰ (p91).

Portrayals of Aboriginal athletes can fall into this trope. Tom Longboat was an exceptional runner who dominated the international professional running scene in the decades before World War I. He also maintained ties to his home reserve and culture throughout his career and into his retirement.² He broke countless records during his professional career while struggling to overcome racism, skepticism, and media slander at the hands of the Canadian public and his own manager.²

According to Paraschak,¹⁵ research into the history of Aboriginal involvement in sports in Canada demonstrates that Aboriginal athletes suffered from the distortion of their sport experiences due to the “ethnic chauvinism of the chronicler” (p58). Longboat’s career was no exception as the media used reports on Longboat to reinforce negative discourses about Aboriginal peoples, namely that all Aboriginal people were inferior to white men, impulsive, prone to drunkenness and lazy.²

Certainly, mass media play an integral role in constructing our social realities;²⁹ thus, deficit-based discourses concerning Aboriginal people that are reinforced in the media have the power to negatively influence the general public’s understanding of Aboriginal people. As such, Aboriginal peoples in Canada have created their own media sources and have taken the responsibility of representing their culture in the media into their own hands.³⁰ Yet, it must be recognized that even Aboriginal media in Canada today are not free from the effects of colonization with Aboriginal media often producing content infused with both Indigenous and Western values and philosophies.³⁰

Our research addresses the question of how media reports on PLAY reinforce or challenge racist, colonial discourses concerning First Nations people. In short, we examine the varying roles that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal media sources play in reproducing or challenging these discourses.

Theoretical Framework: Postcolonialism
In general, postcolonial theory is used to understand colonialism’s ongoing impacts after independence from colonial powers.³¹ Postcolonial perspectives examine the impact of colonial practices on the construction of power relations that privilege the dominant race, class, or gender while rendering the dominated invisible.³² Since imperial Britain and France colonized Aboriginal peoples’ lands, the Aboriginal ways of life and cultural practices have been oppressed.^13,14 Throughout the colonization process and in the years that followed, damaging Eurocentric discourses intertwined with formal legislature like the Indian Act of 1876 left Aboriginal communities isolated and oppressed by dominant Euro-Canadian culture.

The strength of postcolonial theory is that it allows for the examination of the power relations and colonial values that render Aboriginal peoples invisible and allow for continued oppression by the dominant, non-Aboriginal, Canadian society. Postcolonial theory allows for the subjugated knowledge of the dominated group to challenge the notions of inferiority,³ potentially “disrupt[ing] the colonialist mainstream discourses”³³ (p13).

According to Hayhurst,³² “sport has been inextricably linked to colonialism” (p24). Despite Canada’s 2010 (late) affirmation of support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,³⁴ which states, “indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health… and social programmes affecting them and, as far as possible, to administer such programmes through their own institutions”,³⁵ there remains a trend of unequal power distribution regarding Aboriginal SFD initiatives in Canada. Aboriginal peoples have limited input into SFD policy, despite the fact that they are often the intended recipients of such programs.³ Sports programs of the past were often oppressive for Aboriginal peoples because they were often developed and implemented by non-Aboriginal Canada with the intention of developing and civilizing First Nations people.³⁶ Discourses today still promote a need for non-Aboriginal (dominant) cultures to develop SFD programs for marginalized Aboriginal communities.¹¹

In Canada, it remains all too clear that the damaging effects of colonization persist, particularly in relation to the treatment of Aboriginal peoples. The Indian Act (1867) today continues to dictate First Nations’ use of land and resources, outline First Nations’ government and education structures, and make First Nations peoples and their lands “a subject for government regulation, like mines or roads”⁸ (p14). First Nations peoples have been subjected to uneven power relations with Euro-Canadian people since the start of colonization; thus, analysis of SFD initiatives that target First Nations populations in Canada must consider the history of colonization and the colonial constructs that have reinforced and legitimized these power relations and continue to maintain such relations today. To analyze these relations of power, we turn to discourse analysis.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse can be defined as ideas and knowledge, interrelated to texts, which are used to define the social realities that legitimize power advantages for some and disadvantage others.^1,37,38 Following the work of Michel Foucault, discourse analysis has come to reflect “a theoretical skepticism”¹ (p564) of social “truths” that enable uneven exercises of power. Discourse analysts explore how socially produced ideas were created in the first place and how these social truths, which are bounded up in the dynamics of power, reinforce themselves over time.³⁷ It is within discourse that power relations are reinforced or challenged.³

In this study, we engage with critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the role that media play in sustaining or challenging unequal power relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations in Canada. Harding²⁸ argued that CDA is “particularly well suited to studying the treatment of people of colour and other minority populations in the press” (p207) because of its ability to analyze subtle manipulations and variations in meanings that reproduce or challenge dominant discourses.²⁹ According to Phillips and Hardy,³⁷ language is constructive, constitutive, and social. Language enacts identity, has power, is active, and is political.³⁸ Essentially, language is used to mean something and do something, and both of these are linked to the socio-political, cultural, and historical context of use.³⁸ Thus, CDA is employed to examine the role that the media’s use of language plays in constructing social meanings,^37,38 particularly how this language defines what it means to be a First Nations individual in Canada and the power relations carried over from colonialism associated with this constructed identity. Discourses reinforcing the necessity of SFD programs to “fix” First Nations communities reflect relations of power that legitimize and privilege Euro-Canadian sport and their inherent ideologies over those of the First Nations people.

In this study, we focused on Canadian media that reported on Right To Play’s PLAY program from 2009 to 2012. We examined news reports including online newspapers, online news forums, and online magazines from local, provincial, and national Canadian news sources, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal in origin. We also included official press releases from government organizations and Right To Play. We reviewed 26 articles in total: seven from Aboriginal news sources and 19 from non-Aboriginal sources. The articles are outlined in Tables 1 and 2. The imbalance between the numbers of articles in each category reflects the much larger numbers of non-Aboriginal media sources in Canada. Articles were retrieved from Internet search engines and the Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies database accessed from the University of Ottawa library’s website. Example search terms included “Right To Play PLAY program”, “PLAY”, “Promoting Life-Skills in Aboriginal Youth”, “PLAY Sandy Lake and Moose Cree”, “First Nations sport Ontario”, and “Right To Play in northern Ontario”. We identified thirty articles in our preliminary search, after which we eliminated four articles; two articles were identical to those from other news sources and two articles did not specifically discuss the PLAY program.

We then used CDA to analyze the articles by identifying discourses regarding First Nations people, especially how these discourses constructed First Nations people in Canada, and the way in which the language of each article was used to reinforce or challenge the dominant discourses about First Nations peoples. According to Willig,³⁹ the first step of CDA involves identifying the ways in which a discourse is constructed within a particular text – in our case, the articles. In order to identify discursive constructions, Fairclough⁴⁰ suggests an approach that focuses on a problem, such as the ways in which First Nations peoples are represented in text. Because discourses and their meanings are generated by the relationships between words, focusing only on a search for particular words will not yield a strong understanding of the discourses at work. As a result, Willig³⁹ suggested examining both implicit and explicit meanings in segments of text, as well as what is and is not being said in relation to the discursive object’s construction. In the next stage of discourse analysis, one examines the broader discursive contexts in which discursive constructions are embedded. In this case, the context is the larger socio-politico-historico situation in which Aboriginal-settler relations and associated relations of power are embedded. It is of key importance to examine power and issues of dominance, since social life and social realities are produced by text and talk.⁴⁰ In the final stage of discourse analysis, one identifies the impact(s) that discourses have on individuals and the ways in which these individuals reproduce or challenge these discourses.

Both authors completed the identification of discourses and then categorized the discourses into two broader categories. Four prominent discourses arose from the analysis; all discourses are presented in the results. Finally, we compared the difference in language and discourses between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal sources and examined how the language of the collective articles in each category legitimized or challenged dominant relations of power between First Nations and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada.