INDIGENOUS VOICES MATTER: GRAHAM AND LINDA’S LEGACY, ‘STILL PROPPING UP THE SKY,’ IS NOW LIFTING TO ANOTHER LEVEL!

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.

In continuing their indigenising and decolonising legacies and elevating their work by applying it to a different field (SFD), Smith and Smith open up the space for light to be shone upon this Special Issue. Through their exploration of the role and relationship between sport and development across four political contexts (historically; imperialism and colonialism; neo-liberalism; Indigenising agenda), they have not just reimagined and reframed SFD in terms of Māori development but also Indigenous development more widely. As Guest Editors, we cannot thank them enough for their time and work in not just “propping up the sky” for light to be let in, but also for lifting the SFD game to another level. No reira, ko tenei te mihi nui ki a kōrua – many thanks and appreciation.

As the guest editors for this Special Issue, we feel very privileged to have collaborated on this project with the authors who have all worked through a difficult time in history (e.g., a global pandemic and the injustices that led to the Black Lives Matter movement) to share their insights – theoretically, empirically, and as practitioners. We are also incredibly humbled to have enjoyed the support for this idea, from the outset, from Distinguished Professors Graham Hingangaroa Smith and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, both eminent and world-leading Indigenous scholars and activists.

This Special Issue is made up of seven articles. Forde, Giles, Nachman, Fabian, Giancarlo, Hayhurst, Rynne, and Henhawk’s commentary opens by highlighting that sport and reconciliation research for the most part has seen reconciliation narrowly and problematically defined. Reconciliation has been predominantly understood not as an ongoing process, but as something to achieve within broader attempts at peace building in post-conflict settings. Instead, an understanding of sport for reconciliation that accounts for settler colonialism and foregrounds Indigenous self-determination would allow for more critical engagements with how sport has been and continues to be understood and mobilized within Indigenous communities for truth-telling, relationship building, cultural resurgence, and expressions of sovereignty and self-determination.

Sheppard, Rynne, and Willis’s original research from the Australian context explores sport as a site of resistance against state hegemony, examining Indigenous ways of using sport to culturally offset the effects of colonization from Indigenous perspectives. Insights are expolored related to the elements that encompass Indigenous resistance: racial injustice, the enactment of a sometimes-negative oppositional culture, cultural maintenance, the reformulation of a positive Indigenous identity, the development of Indigenous political movements, and resistance to sport as a weapon in the arsenal of colonization.

Fabian and Giles’ discourse analysis builds on the concern that Indigenous games are rarely discussed within the SFD realm. Instead, even when SFD interventions are aimed at Indigenous youth, the focus is typically on the use of “modern” (European-derived) sport. Similar discourses are produced about traditional games in mainstream, and also Indigenous media sources. Problematically, Western-centric sports journalism approaches to coverage of traditional games illuminated a strong SFD ideology within the discourses, despite traditional Indigenous games largely rejecting the logic of Western sport.

In their article, Panqueba and Carreón use a transdisciplinary approach to trace the history of Mayan ball games and how they have been transferred from generation to generation. Building on the first author’s experience as a player, the authors also examine contemporary players’ experiences with and understandings of the game, which is a part of the recovery of an Indigenous worldview that offers a balance between humans and the natural world.  The documenting of a sport genealogy and knowledge transfer systems is Indigenous development.

Seiler and Chepyator-Thomson’s commentary draws upon their own culture and ethnic backgrounds, as Oglala Sioux and Kenyan-Kalenjin-Keiyo, enculturated into a Eurocentric pedagogy to examine literature on SFD. Their contribution offers Indigenous-oriented pedagogical strategies and practices to scaffold into SFD programs and policy. They suggest that these types of pedagogical strategies and practices accomplish two objectives: 1. adding to the growing corpus of literature on community-oriented praxis; and 2. providing recommendations for strategic implementation of Indigenous knowledge to facilitate structuring Indigenous pedagogies in program development.

Phillips and Jackson’s article is concerned with the issue that in Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori have disproportionately high rates of drowning. While scholarship has begun to examine Maori (and Indigenous) understandings of water safety, Indigenous approaches to water safety continues to be an underdeveloped area, particularly in a SFD context. Participants in this study identified the role of waka (ancestral canoes) as fundamental to learning Indigenous Māori water safety in a New Zealand context. Thus, they argue that the waka provides a (literal and metaphorical) vehicle for educating future aquatic educators about Māori water safety, and offers more meaningful initiatives which focus on drowning prevention for all New Zealanders.

In the final piece, which is again from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Nelson, Jackson, Phillips, Poa, and Skelton’s article explores how Otago Māori Rugby incorporated Māori cultural values to enhance Māori identity and wellbeing. The article makes an important contribution to this Special Issue in light of the fact that they used an Indigenous research methodology (i.e., Kaupapa Māori methodology; Smith, 2015) and theory, alongside the fact that the findings make an important contribution to understanding Māori cultural values, identity, and wellbeing within Indigenous sport.