Speakers
Description
To date, sport for reconciliation (SFR) research has mostly focused on post-conflict settings or settings in which conflict is ongoing: Northern Ireland (Mitchell, Sommerville, Hargie, 2016), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Gasser & Levinsen, 2004), Israel/Palestine (Spacey & Sugden, 2015;), and Kosovo (Krasniqi & Krasniqi, 2019), to name a few. Amongst these studies, the concept of reconciliation has often been undefined or narrowly defined as bringing people together, likely because this research has been grounded in theories developed from peace studies (Alport, 1954; Lederarch, 2005). SFR has thus primarily been understood as something to achieve within broader attempts at peace building, and not as contributing to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, which are key to Indigenous-settler reconciliation in settler states. In our presentation, we examine SFR in three settler states: Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). These countries share many similarities. In attempts to reckon with their brutal histories, each country has undertaken a process of reconciliation, often with explicit and implicit connections to sport. Professional sport organizations in all three countries have also engaged in activities that they have framed as facilitating reconciliation, including ceremonial “puck drops” by Indigenous leaders and Residential School survivors at National Hockey League games in Canada (Warren, 2019) and “Indigenous rounds” in cricket and rugby in Australia and Aotearoa NZ. In this paper, we trace the emergence of SFR in each of these countries and outline the tensions at work in attempts to achieve Indigenous-settler reconciliation through sport.
