ABSTRACT
The development of settler colonialism as an autonomous scholarly field has, in the main, bypassed most sport historians. Colonialism and settler colonialism share the feature of exogenous domination over their destinations, but the differences are stark in relation to population structure, claims of sovereignty, colonial and settler mindsets, and narrative making. The characteristics of settler colonialism help draw attention to the ambiguity about what constitutes Indigenous identity. In reviews of the field of sport history and in monographs about sport and race, racialization is often conflated with colonialism and settler colonialism. The theoretical and political project for sport historians shifts from an antiracist framework, which has dominated the discipline, to decolonialism that privileges Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and voices. Indigenous people are categorized as non-white colonized people, which effaces their indigeneity by failing to recognize the unique processes intrinsic to settler colonialism.
