Diversity Is Strength Conversations: Indigenous representation in sport

CFL.ca Staff

TORONTO — Ryan Francis explained it best with a football analogy.

Francis, a policy analyst and the co-founder of the Indigenous Girls’ Hockey Program, was discussing barriers that exist in sport and how they can impact First Nation’s people, as part of the CFL’s latest instalment of its Diversity Is Strength Conversations series.

Hosted by Donnovan Bennett, Francis joined Claudia Jimerson, an inductee to the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame and the director of talent acquisition and development for Seneca Resorts and Casinos. Jimerson is a member of the Cayuga Nation in the Bear Clan. Samantha Big Swallow rounded out the panel. Big Swallow is the head coach of the Women’s under-18 Indigenous tackle football team and a member of the Kanai Nation within the Blackfoot Confederacy.

“A lot of work that’s being done sort of feels like you’re trying to go long on the first-and-10, but it needs to be steady, gradual progress,” said Francis.

“And so as you line up at first-and-10, you’re going to have a certain play. Then when you’re at second-and-six, how are we marching down the field in a way that’s strategic and thoughtful, but isn’t, I guess, overstepping what the steps need to be in order for sustainable, long term and meaningful change to take place?

“That begins with building relationships that matter. It starts with listening and it starts with…recognizing what our roles and responsibilities in the sector actually look like. That’s going to make people uncomfortable or vulnerable because they have held positions of power or see sport in one way. But we have to recognize that it isn’t the only way. As we can further diversify the voices that help lead that change, we’ll begin to see not only change tomorrow, but for our generations to come.”

Bennett mentioned the saying, ‘nothing about us without us’ to Jimerson, who simply wants the benefits of sport more readily available to youth who stand to benefit from it.

“It really is creating visibility,” she said.

“It really helps us use our voices. I can’t say it enough. Having sport…especially if you’re good at it. We all know what happens if you’re good at it.” Jimerson said, referencing the LeBron James-produced movie Rez Ball as an example of how sport can heal and uniquely give people what they need.

“The concept of the game of lacrosse is to play for people who can’t play, to play for healing. People who…are done playing. I feel like a lot of (sport) is to help (athletes) and have that healing,” she continued.

“A lot of that is tied to our trauma. A lot of that is tied to things that had happened before we even got here, that still resonate with us today.

“Even giving that encouragement of sport: you can do it. You can be what you want to be. You work hard, all that stuff. A lot of the great grandparents and beyond didn’t get that because they were told, ‘You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.’

“So it’s really changing the narrative with that. Sport provides that, getting people in a space where you can talk about mental health and you can really change a holistic vision of the athlete.”

After taking the under-18 women’s Indigenous team through the national championship tournament this summer, Big Swallow said showing the country Indigenous people in positions of leadership carried a lot of weight; something that doesn’t get seen enough.

“I think one of the major things, or the importance of it, is seeing Indigenous individuals whether male or female in leadership roles and youth seeing women — not just women — but Indigenous leadership taking up space in places that it’s not normally recognized or seen,” she said.

“As a coach and mentor I think it gave me the chance to mentor young Indigenous girls who may not have had strong female Indigenous role models in sports before. As a coach and mentor I’ve seen how my presence on the sidelines impacted how these girls view themselves and their future.

“The experience of being a coach, it allowed me to tell to let the girls, ‘You’ve played the sport and then there’s going to come a time in your life where you may not be able to play any more or you want to kind of tone it down a bit. There’s so much more to being an athlete than being an athlete, because there’s so much background stuff that happens to fostering a team, creating a team.

“There’s those different leadership roles as a coach or a positional coach or even being a referee. There’s so much opportunity out there in sports where it’s not just as a player, but those different roles that I have mentioned.”

Big Swallow felt it was important for others to see her on the sidelines this past summer and that it can let other Indigenous people know that they can do similar things.

“I have really long hair and I take pride in how long my hair is because my ancestors weren’t allowed to have long hair and that was part of our identity. It was stripped from them, taken from them,” she said.

“So having my hair be a part of my healing and representation through braiding it, through letting it down…just having someone on the sidelines for viewers and even young Indigenous females to be like, ‘Oh, she looks like me.’ Just having that representation wearing beaded earrings, trying to incorporate a little bit of my culture into my identity on the sidelines, letting the girls know that, ‘Yes, I look like you. You look like me. I grew up on a reservation. You grew up on a reservation. Although we had all of these barriers put in our way, you can get to these leadership roles.'”

Big Swallow said that at their tournament in the summer, the team took a knee for three different topics: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and girls across the country; the importance of clean drinking water across the country, and the Every Child Matters movement, in raising awareness of the impact of residential schools.

“Just being able to showcase a little bit of who we are in this sports world or that sports setting, it really helped the girls feel prideful in who they are,” she said.

“Letting them understand that through sport, you can somewhat change the world a little bit, even if that message just got out to like five people. Well, that’s five more people than it was yesterday or earlier in that day. Five more people that are looking to educate themselves or have those discussions.”

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