ABSTRACT
Or a big truck! —NWT’s Swim Team Cheer at the 2002 North American
Indigenous Games
In this chapter we investigate youth involvement in sporting activities in the Northwest Territories (NWT) and Nunavut, Canada. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research were used to collect data pertaining to Northern youths’ experiences in local (community swim team), regional, and international (Dene games) sport contexts. While participation in these events provided youth with the frequently cited benefi ts of sport (e.g., sense of excitement, accomplishment, and fun), these sporting experiences also demonstrate the ways in which their participation in sport is informed by their Northern Aboriginal identities. As such, we argue that while sport can serve assimilationist and colonial agendas, it can also provide an avenue through which these agendas can be challenged and subverted, thus allowing Northern youth to ass ert and maintain identities that diff er from other Canadian youth.
