Speaker
Description
In this presentation, the distribution of state funds to Indigenous communities in Canada and NZ is discussed within the context of being a ‘good governor’.
In 2017, the Aboriginal Sport Circle (ASC), an Indigenous-led organization and authority for sport, was provided with $800,000 from the Government of Canada who claimed it would make a “real difference in the lives of Indigenous people by supporting self-determination through reconciliation” (2017). However, in the “Reconciliation” section of the 2018 federal budget, the government announced it would provide $47.5 million to Right To Play (an international, non-Indigenous NGO that engages in sport-for-development) essentially, ignoring the ASC’s history of delivering similar programs. This was a decision that the state later retracted (Giles & van Luijk, 2018).
Similarly, in 2020, the NZ Government’s sport agency (Sport NZ) announced a $265m ‘relief package’ for the sport sector, to mitigate disruptions caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Sport NZ’s framework distributed these funds aiming to: ‘reset and rebuild’ community and elite-level sport ($82.6 million); ‘strengthen and adapt’ the sector ($104 million); do things ‘different and better’ ($78 million). A fraction of this ($7million) was ‘tagged’ for a specific ‘Kaupapa Māori Response Plan’. Initially, the 10 ‘recognis=zed’ Māori National Sport Organizations were only allocated $350,000 in attempt to “build meaningful relationships in these communities” (Sport NZ, 2020). This was later ‘topped-up’ to $1.2million.
In our presentation we critically discuss these examples of resource allocation, exploring the myriad tensions, including colonial paternalism and woeful underfunding, alongside opportunities to ‘govern better’.
