Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua – “I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past” is a whakataukī (proverb) that illuminates Māori (Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand) conceptualisation of time, “where the past, the present and the future are viewed as intertwined, and life as a continuous cosmic process. Within this continuous cosmic movement, time has no restrictions – it is both past and present” (Rameka, 2017, p. 387). Thus, as we write this closing piece for the Special Issue: Indigenous Voices Matter to Sport for Development (SFD), it makes sense to return full circle to reflect on where the seeds were first planted for this work. In doing so, we are better able to consider the challenges faced, take note of the opportunities that have presented themselves, and be better guided for the future by those who have come before us.

This foreword brings together the theoretical analyses of Kaupapa Māori (Smith, 1997) and Decolonising Methodologies (Smith, 2021) alongside an extensive practice-based knowledge of Indigenous sport and Indigenous development in Māori contexts in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). We critically examine changing contexts and understandings of both sport and development and how those concepts have been applied to and for Māori in Aotearoa NZ. We argue that many of the taken for granted ideas about sport and development need decolonising, disrupting, and reframing within an Indigenous frame we refer to as Kaupapa Māori. This is necessary if we are to fully appreciate and understand how sport and development might work relationally for the well-being of any Indigenous communities and collectives. We explore the role and relationship between sport and development through four political contexts: (a) a historic context and the role of sport as an organized physical activity in an Indigenous society that held its own sovereignty, (b) an Imperial and colonial context in which sport as conceived and introduced by British colonisation was wielded as an instrument of colonisation, (c) a neo-liberal context in which sport as an activity of market forces, competition and privatisation reshaped the organisation of sport and development as a form of economic neoliberalism, and (d) a decolonising and Kaupapa Māori context in which sport has been reimagined and reframed in terms of Indigenous Māori development. The first two political contexts will be covered less extensively because more is known of these two periods, however, there are threads of important ideas that we wish to draw upon that inform Māori concepts of sports and development in the current context.

Over 30 years ago, Graham Hingangaroa Smith (1992) presented a paper titled “Tane-nui-a-Rangi’s Legacy: Propping up the Sky” at the joint New Zealand Association for Research in Education and Australian Association for Research in Education conference in Geelong, Australia. In this paper Smith argued that “resistance strategies developed by Māori people, ought to be carefully studied in order to identify the potential intervention factors” (1992, p. 4) inherent within a (Indigenous) Kaupapa Māori approach. In particular, Smith reinforced the need to learn from innovations with a view to the wider application of success indicators embedded within Indigenous responses. Such “radical action,” he argued, was necessary to intervene in the “educational crisis” that Māori then faced, trapped within a narrow range of existing mainstream schooling options. Three decades on, similar criticisms could be attributed to sport for development (SFD) initiatives with/for Indigenous communities. Indeed, our plea is for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers operating in the SFD space to take notice of the results and recommendations from the articles in this Special Issue.