Reclaiming Tom Longboat: Indigenous Self-Determination in Canadian Sport

Oskana Poetry & Poetics #6

by Janice Forsyth

Analyzes sport in Canada as a tool for both colonization and Indigenous self-determination

Reclaiming Tom Longboat recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown-Indigenous relations. Drawing on a rich and varied set of oral and textual sources, including interviews with award recipients and Jan Eisenhardt, the creator of the Awards himself, Janice Forsyth critically assesses the state’s role in policing Indigenous bodies and identities through sport, from the assimilationist sporting regulations of residential schools to the present-day exclusion of Indigenous activities from mainstream sports. This work recognizes the role of sport as a tool for colonization in Canada, while also acknowledging its potential to become a tool for decolonization and self-determination.

241 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2020

Reviews

[Dasha]

This is an informative and short book that illuminates how Canada's sports heritage is intimately bound up in the settler-colonization process and how Indigenous communities and organizations understand, adapt, and resist that process. The last chapter is the most interesting as it is based on interviews with Tom Longboat recipients. I wish Forsyth had really let the interviews speak for themselves instead of including parts of quotes followed by lengthy analyses.

[McKenna Murray]

This was a book that had been assigned for class, I am very much so not a non-fiction reader, but I whole heartedly enjoyed this book.

The writing style was fast paced and fluent in a way that was both academic and would be easy for anyone to understand.

This account of Tom Longboat, the Tom Longboat Awards, and the inclusion of personal accounts by some past award winners was truly well done. The whole picture and all sides of the coin were explored in this book. I don’t believe I fully understood the weight of the implications and decisions made in the first 4 chapters until I had begun reading the personal accounts and interviews in chapter 5.

This is a book I think everyone needs to read, it’s not only an account of Canadian sport history, it’s an account of Indigenous mistreatment, sporting history, and the ease to which government organizations are able to strip away humanity from people and allow them to become political pawns.

[Sarah]

I really enjoyed this book and the insights into sports and indigenous peoples. I did find it hard at times to keep track of the all the acronyms. 😊

[Jbondandrews]

I did hope this book would have had more about Tom Longboat, who I'd never heard of but I know I want to read about. Using almost any method the Federal Government could to force the First Nations to assimilate and knowing they failed is satisfying but the Government still has not done enough to atone for the suffering of the Indigenious peoples.

[Sherry Seymour]

I had never really thought deeply into why awards were created. Learning about the Tom Longboat award enlightened me. There is still much I need to learn about truth, reconciliation, and sport.

[Malcolm]

(**Winner for the North American Society for Sports History book prize, 2021**)

I reviewed of this for Idrottsforum.