In the fall of 2009, the faculties of physical education and native studies will jointly launch the first courses in a brand new degree program in Aboriginal sport, recreation, tourism and health.
The degree program will be designed to serve the growing needs of Aboriginal students in this field and address the burgeoning demand for a clearer understanding of these areas from Aboriginal perspectives.
Dr. Janice Forsyth is a leading Aboriginal scholar in the socio-cultural studies of sport and leisure. She holds a joint appointment in the faculties of physical education and recreation and native studies and will shortly begin work with a team of academics from both faculties to develop the curriculum.
"We are trying to attract both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students into a program of study that is going to have theoretical and practical relevance to Aboriginal people in sport, recreation, tourism and health," says Forsyth, who was recently recruited to the U of A from the University of Manitoba.
The task of shaping the new degree program begins this year and another scholar will be hired next year to teach the courses in the new program with Forsyth and contribute to research in the area.
Forsyth is clear on the goal of the program. "If this program is going to mean something to Aboriginal people across this country and attract world-wide attention, we need to do something that will have meaning on the ground," she says.
Forsyth is eminently qualified to be the architect of the new program. The former high performance track and field athlete and regional winner of the prestigious Tom Longboat Award for sporting achievement in 2003, is a well-respected scholar and voice in Aboriginal sport circles. Earlier this year, she and colleague Vicki Paraschak of the University of Windsor led a group of 12 prominent Aboriginal women: coaches, athletes, organisers from the mainstream, Aboriginal, and traditional sport settings to share their views and life experiences about how the country's sport system enabled or constrained their participation in sport and recreation.
The resulting paper titled Moving Forward: A National Roundtable on Aboriginal Women in Sport was presented by Forsyth at the education symposium prior to the North American Indigenous Games in Cowichan this month.
One of the most important findings, says Forsyth, "is that delegates identified 'support and capacity' as the most important strength, as well as leading barrier. This speaks to the fact that Aboriginal women have been very good at finding informal ways of supporting one another, but because they have very few opportunities to organise formally as women, it is extremely difficult and sometimes professionally risky to address issues that are important to them in terms of access to career development opportunities…" Furthermore, Forsyth notes, "We determined that all of the issues are interconnected and should be viewed in a holistic way, and that issues of 'support and capacity' are tied to issues of sexism, patriarchy and nepotism evident in Aboriginal sport."
Forsyth hopes to share the paper with Canada's sport and recreation decision-makers in the near future with the goal of helping to make the current systems more aware, welcoming and inclusive of Aboriginal women's participation.
In addition, Forsyth hopes to further her research into the Tom Longboat Awards, Canada's premier award for Aboriginal high-performance athletes. Forsyth, who looked at the history of the awards for her doctoral dissertation, says, "We want to collect the histories of athletes who have won this award and understand their experiences." Forsyth and colleagues, Audrey Giles from the University of Ottawa and Michael Heine from the University of Western Ontario, will look at 60 of the 250 athletes - just 14 were women - who won the award from its inception in 1951 to 1998.
"These are athletes you don't typically hear about in the traditional narratives on Canadian sport, though they have outstanding credentials and rank among the best," she says. "There are several Olympians among them and others who competed at major international games such as the Commonwealth Games or the Pan Am Games."
"We want to talk to those athletes and reinterpret or re-imagine Canadian sport based on their experiences. We want to know what the limitations are in the Canadian sport system for Aboriginal athletes. We'll be collecting qualitative data to assess how opportunities within the sport system can be expanded so that Aboriginal athletes feel more welcome within that system."
Clearly, there's a pressing need for this information and changes to the sport systems: Just one Aboriginal athlete, Monica Pinette, is on the Canadian Olympic team in Beijing. She was also the lone Aboriginal athlete representing Canada in Athens.