Jessica Nachman

In this episode, Natan chats with Tim Adams, Tania Cameron, and Linda Flanagan about their work with youth sport programming. Tim is the founder and CEO of FreePlay Sports, an organization providing free sport programming to children and youth in Edmonton, AB. Tania is a sport coach who organizes sporting opportunities for Indigenous youth in Ontario. Linda is the author of Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports - and Why it Matters.

Much of the research on Indigenous youth’s sport has focused on the barriers that they experience in accessing opportunities for participation. What remains underexplored is the idea that nonparticipation might actually reflect Indigenous youth’s deliberate refusal of Euro-Canadian sport. In making this argument, first, we connect Indigenous theories of refusal to Indigenous youth sport participation in Canada. Second, we examine the researcher’s role in reproducing colonialism in sport studies.