Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites?
Sport and Recreation for Aboriginal Youth
in Inner City Winnipeg, Manitoba
Janice Forsyth and Michael Heine
In 2002, the City of Winnipeg commissioned a study to find an economical way to repair and replace its infrastructure for sport and
recreation. The result was a detailed report, the Public Use Facilities Study. In 2005, the Winnipeg Free Press ran a series of twelve
articles that investigated public responses to the plan. In this article,
we examine how sport and recreation is discursively constructed in
PUFS and the WFP, and how these discursive events subtly but firmly
reinforce the boundaries between those who have access to sport and
recreation and those who do not, particularly Aboriginal youth.
En 2002, la ville de Winnipeg a commandé une étude pour trouver
un moyen économique de réparer et de remplacer ses infrastructures
destinées aux sports et aux loisirs. Le résultat en a été un rapport
détaillé appelé Public Use Facilities Study (étude sur les installations
d’utilité publique). En 2005, le Winnipeg Free Press a publié une
série de douze articles qui examinaient les réactions du public face
à ce projet. Dans cet article, nous examinons la manière dont les
sports et les loisirs sont présentés de manière discursive dans cette
étude et dans ce journal et la façon dont ces événements discursifs
renforcent de manière subtile mais ferme les limites entre ceux qui
ont accès aux sports et aux loisirs et ceux qui n’y ont pas accès, en
particulier les jeunes Autochtones.
Introduction
In 2002, the City of Winnipeg commissioned a study to find an economical
way to repair and replace its crumbling infrastructure for sport and recreation. The result was a detailed engineering report called the Public Use
Facilities Study (PUFS), which recommended building several large-scale
wellness centres as the cornerstones to the entire project. Three years later,
in response to news that PUFS would soon be implemented, the Winnipeg
Free Press (WFP) ran a series of twelve articles that investigated public
responses to the plan. PUFS had obviously become an issue worthy of
serious consideration.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided for this project by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Aboriginal Research Grants Program.
99
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Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
Our interest in these two events stem from work on a three-year
SSHRC-funded project that focused on the sport and recreation experiences of Aboriginal youth in the socio-economically marginalized region
of Winnipeg known as the North End. As part of the project, we worked
with Aboriginal youth to construct biographical narratives that might shed
much needed light on how they understand, negotiate, and rationalize
opportunities for sport and recreation participation in this struggling area
of the city. We then placed the resulting narratives into the context of the
official legitimizing and legitimized dominant discourse on sport and
recreation in the city, as represented by PUFS and the WFP.
We took on this project because we believed that advocates of Aboriginal youth participation in sport and recreation should be interested
in gaining a better understanding of how barriers to participation for
Aboriginal participants can emerge, even from discourses that initially
intend nothing more than to determine how access to sport and recreation can be improved for marginalized youth. While there is a substantial body of literature that examines the different types of barriers that
marginalized youth face, few studies analyze how public discourses on
sport and recreation can enable and constrain youth involvement, often
constituting a limiting effect even before any concrete building activity
or allocation of resources occur. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine
two interrelated issues: (1) how sport and recreation was discursively
constructed in PUFS and the WFP, as well as the concomitant issue of
how these discursive events subtly but firmly reinforce the boundaries
between those who have access to sport and recreation and those who do
not; and (2) how these narratives about sport and recreation influence the
recreational preferences of Aboriginal youth.
Aboriginal Marginalization in Winnipeg
Before we provide an analysis of PUFS and the WFP, it is important to
describe the broader social and economic context in which this study took
place. We refer here specifically to the increasing number of Aboriginal
people who live in urban centres in Manitoba, a trend that is due in large
part to Aboriginal urbanization, increasing self-identification of Aborigi The North End refers to what used to be the most northern section of Winnipeg. The term is still
widely used today, as demonstrated by its inclusion in the Public Use Facilities Study. However,
the North End currently includes a cluster of neighborhoods within a larger region of Winnipeg
known as the inner city. The City of Winnipeg does not recognize the inner city as an official
neighborhood, but the term is nevertheless used to track census data.
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
101
nal heritage, and the natural growth rate of the Aboriginal population living
in urban areas. To be sure, the demographic landscape of Manitoba, not
unlike other regions of the country, has changed dramatically since the
mid-twentieth century, when increasing numbers of Aboriginal people
began moving to towns and cities in search of more and better access
to health care, education, work, and sport and recreation. For example,
in 1996 the number of Aboriginal people in Manitoba was 128,685,
or 11.7% of the total population. In 2001, there were approximately
150,040 Aboriginal residents in Manitoba, accounting for 15.4% of the
total population. As these numbers reveal, Aboriginal people constitute
a significant and growing portion of Manitoba’s population.
The most striking thing about this data is that less than five percent
of Manitoba’s Aboriginal population lives on Indian reserves or settlements. In other words, the vast majority of Aboriginal people in the
province live in urban areas, with a noticeably large number based in
Winnipeg. In 1996, there were 45,750 Aboriginal people living in Winnipeg, constituting 6.9% of the population. As reported in The Daily, the
news source for Statistics Canada, Winnipeg has more Aboriginal people
than the Northwest Territories. In 2001, Winnipeg had the largest urban
Aboriginal population in Canada—55,760 Aboriginal people or 8.4% of
For a detailed overview of the current conditions for Aboriginal people in Manitoba, see Bruce
Hallett, Nancy Thornton, Harvey Stevens, and Donna Stewart, Aboriginal People in Manitoba
(Ottawa: Service Canada, 2006).
Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, vol. 4, Perspectives and Realities
(Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996), 519–621.
Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, vol. 1, Looking Forward, Looking
Back (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996), 24–25. See note 8 for problems
with the Aboriginal Peoples Survey. See also Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Population,
<http://www.statcan.ca/english/census96/jan13/man.pdf>. See note 1 for problems with the 1996
census data for Manitoba.
Statistics Canada, 2001 Census of Population, <http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/Products/
Analytic/companion/abor/tables/total/abpopdist.cfm>.
While most Aboriginal people in Manitoba live in towns and cities, it should be noted that between
2001 and 2006, the population on Indian reserves and settlements in Manitoba grew slightly by 5,207
people. Government of Manitoba, “Table 3: Population Counts for Manitoba Census Subdivisions
2006 Census,” <http://www.gov.mb.ca/asset_library/en/statistics/manitoba_table3.pdf>.
In 2001, 27.8% of Canada’s total Aboriginal population was living in metropolitan areas. There
are currently twenty-seven census metropolitan areas in Canada, including Winnipeg. Statistics
Canada, 2001 Census of Population, <http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/Products/
Analytic/companion/abor/charts/areaofres.cfm>.
Statistics Canada, The Daily, 13 January 1998, <http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/980113/
d980113.htm#ART1>.
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Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
the city’s total population. To put the matter another way, approximately
37.2% of Aboriginal Manitobans live in Winnipeg.10
A distinct and problematic feature of this demographic trend is the
tendency for Aboriginal people to be located in socially and economically marginalized neighbourhoods.11 This trend is especially visible in
Winnipeg, where Aboriginal people are disproportionately located in
the inner city, of which the North End occupies a significant part of that
political geography. In fact, in 2001 Winnipeg had a greater percentage
of Aboriginal people living in the inner city—thirty to fifty percent—than
any other urban center in Canada. And that number is increasing. A recent
study showed that eighty percent of Aboriginal people who move to Winnipeg settle in the inner city, suggesting that the number of Aboriginal
people in this socially and spatially defined area is on the rise.12
The growing concentration of Aboriginal people in the inner city is
also worth noting because of the extreme poverty that characterizes this
area. The condition is so severe that Jim Silver, a leading researcher from
the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has declared the poverty
among inner city residents in Winnipeg to be at a “catastrophic” level.13
While we understand that poverty is not confined to Aboriginal people
alone, we cannot fail to recognize that a disproportionate number of Aboriginal people in Winnipeg’s inner city are poor.14 In 1996, more than
fifty percent of all inner city households had incomes below the poverty
line, but over eighty percent of Aboriginal inner city households were
living in poverty.15 Aboriginality, as so often happens, correlates with the
lower rungs of stratification.
Statistics Canada, 2001 Census Aboriginal Population Profiles,��
�
<http://www12.statcan.ca/english/
profil01/AP01/Details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CMA&Code1=602__&Geo2=PR&Code2=46
&Data=Count&SearchText=Winnipeg&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&GeoLeve
l=&GeoCode=602>.�
10 Government of Manitoba, Aboriginal and Northern Affairs, Manitoba’s Aboriginal Community,
<http://www.gov.mb.ca/ana/community/mb_community.html>.
11 Issues pertinent to Aboriginal urbanization are documented and analyzed in David Newhouse and
Evelyn Peters, eds., Not Strangers in These Parts: Urban Aboriginal Peoples (Ottawa: Policy
Research Initiative, 2003).
12 Jim Silver, In Their Own Voices: Building Urban Aboriginal Communities (Halifax: Fernwood
Publishing, 2006), 16.
13 Jim Silver, ed., Solutions that Work: Fighting Poverty in Winnipeg (Winnipeg and Halifax:
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Manitoba and Fernwood Publishing, 2000), 26.
14 Just over one in five inner city households that live in poverty are Aboriginal. Almost four in
five, therefore, are non-Aboriginal. In short, most inner city Aboriginal households are living
in poverty, but most inner city households in poverty are non-Aboriginal. Silver, ed., Solutions
that Work, 39.
15 Silver, ed., Solutions that Work, 26.
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
103
Poverty among Aboriginal people is also influenced by other demographic factors. For instance, the age composition of Winnipeg’s
Aboriginal population is quite young. More than fifty-three percent are
twenty-five years of age or under, compared to slightly more than thirtyfive percent for the city as a whole. Added to this is the small percentage
of older Aboriginal adults, people who might serve as role models for
younger generations—less than six percent of the Aboriginal population
is fifty-five years of age or older, compared to almost twenty-one percent
in all of Winnipeg.16 As such, issues pertinent to young Aboriginal people
in Winnipeg, and in particular the inner city, require special attention.
Sport and Recreation in the Inner City
In such social and economic conditions, access to sport and recreation
opportunities are often restricted or altogether absent.17 In spite of these
challenges, a strong coalition of community groups exists in Winnipeg
that not only advocate for a broad range of new and improved programs
and services for inner city residents, but that are also involved in sustaining initiatives that have been developed to meet inner city needs.18 While
many of the initiatives focus on addressing macro and micro level issues
related directly to poverty, gang violence, education, justice, and health
care, issues related to sport, recreation, physical activity, and physical
education are increasingly being identified and examined as important
elements of inner city community development.19
16 Silver, ed., Solutions that Work, 86.
17 The dearth of national, regional, and municipal data on Aboriginal participation in sport and
recreation renders it impossible to make strong conclusive statements about the level of Aboriginal
youth participation in sport and recreation in Canada. However, a recent report suggests that
sixty-five percent of Aboriginal children participate in sport at least once per week. See Leanne C.
Findlay and Dafna E. Kohen, “Aboriginal Children’s Sport Participation in Canada,” Pimatisiwin:
A Journal of Indigenous and Aboriginal Community Health 5, no. 1 (2007): 185–206, <http://www.
pimatisiwin.com/Articles/5.1J_Aboriginal_Childrens_Sport.pdf>. While Findlay and Kohen
acknowledge the limiting effect of socio-economic status on sports participation, the paper is
primarily an analysis of quantitative data. For recent studies that examine the link between low
income populations and sport and recreation participations more generally, see Wendy Frisby et
al., Bridging the Recreation Divide: Listening to Youth and Parents from Low Income Families
Across Canada (Ottawa: The Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA), 2005). See,
in particular, pp. 51–77 for a discussion and analysis of the context in Winnipeg. See also, The
Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA), Recreation and Children and Youth Living
in Poverty: Barriers, Benefits and Success Stories (Ottawa: The Canadian Council on Social
Development for CPRA, 2001).
18 Tom Carter and Anita Friesen, “Tackling the Challenges of Inner city Marginalization: A
Partnership Approach,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 14, no. 1 (2005): 1–7.
19 For example, see Manitoba Aboriginal and Northern Affairs, Aboriginal Community Recreation
Resources Manual (Winnipeg: Leisure Information Network, 2002), <http://www.lin.ca/resource/
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Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
Within the context of these studies, issues related to poverty, safety,
gender, and race relations are identified as key factors that shape Aboriginal youth participation in sport and recreation. Such limited and limiting
circumstances can have serious implications for the health and well-being
of Aboriginal youth, who are frequently identified in the literature as being “at-risk” for chronic diseases associated with physical inactivity and
the negative effects associated with social exclusion.20 In recent years,
Aboriginal people and their allies, working in conjunction with various
government departments and non-profit organizations, have begun addressing the need for more, and more culturally appropriate, sport and
recreation opportunities for Aboriginal youth through the formulation and
implementation of declarations, policies, and action plans.21
Amid this increasing concern for improving opportunities for Aboriginal people to participate in sport and recreation activities, little attention
has been paid to the exploration of what Aboriginal people themselves
understand to be meaningful recreational activities. Indeed, the recreation
needs of Aboriginal people in Winnipeg, particularly Aboriginal youth,
html/ac760.htm>; Nancy Higgitt et al., Shared Responsibility: Building Healthy Communities in
Winnipeg’s North End (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Inner city Research Alliance, 2005), 8, 22, 42, 52,
<http://ius.uwinnipeg.ca/pdf/wira_healthy_communities.pdf>; Yale D. Belanger, “The Politics
of Accommodation in Winnipeg: The dynamics involved in developing a policy of Aboriginal
inclusion” (paper presented at First Nations, First Thoughts Conference, University of Edinburgh,
Canadian Studies, Scotland, May 2005), <http://www.cst.ed.ac.uk/2005conference/papers/
Belanger_paper.pdf>; Katie Anderson, “Physical Activity and the Inner city: The Case of West
Central Neighborhood,” The University of Winnipeg, Institute of Urban Studies Series: Student
Papers; Peter Donnelly and Jay Coakley, The Role of Recreation in Promoting Social Inclusion.
The Laidlaw Foundation, Perspectives on Social Inclusion Working Paper Series, 2002.
20 Canada, Report on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, vol. 4. Perspectives and Realities,
52–180; Daniel Salée, David Newhouse, and Carole Lévesque, “Quality of Life of Aboriginal
People in Canada: An Analysis of Current Research,” IRPP Choices 12, no. 6 (2006): 1–38.
21 A number of provincial and national reports, declarations, and policies exist on Aboriginal sport
and recreation participation. For example, see Healthy Kids Healthy Futures All-Party Task Force,
Healthy Kids Healthy Futures Task Force Report (Winnipeg: Government of Manitoba, 2005);
Canadian Heritage, Sport Canada’s Policy on Aboriginal Peoples’ Participation in Sport (Ottawa:
Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2005); Canada, A Canada Fit for
Children. Canada’s Plan of Action in Response to the May 2002 United Nations Special Session
on Children (Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2004), <http://www.hrsdc.
gc.ca/en/cs/sp/sdc/socpol/publications/2002-002483/canadafite.pdf>; The Federal-Provincial/
Territorial Advisory Committee, National Recreation Roundtable on Aboriginal/Indigenous
Peoples, Final Report (Ottawa: Federal-Provincial/Territorial Advisory Committee on Fitness and
Recreation, 2000), <http://www.lin.ca/resource/html/sp0087.pdf>; Working Group of the National
Aboriginal Youth Strategy, National Aboriginal Youth Strategy (Ottawa: Human Resources
Development Canada, 1999), <http://www.gov.ns.ca/abor/pubs/youstrat.pdf>; Standing Senate
Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, Urban Aboriginal Youth: An Action Plan for Change, Final
Report (Ottawa, 2003), <http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/abor-e/repe/repfinoct03-e.pdf>.
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
105
diverge considerably from the generalized understandings expressed in
official administrative discourses. This “poverty of opportunity”22 in
the inner city—a pattern wherein opportunities for sport and recreation
have never been adequately addressed and are routinely ignored—is due
in part to the types of activities that are validated in discourses on sport
and recreation in Winnipeg. The current municipality is a relatively new
entity, formed through the amalgamation of multiple townships in the
early 1970s. As such, the internal coherence of the city level bureaucracy
is still relatively fresh, such that the new, broader administrative unit is
still in the process of developing and integrating a coherent overall vision for sport and recreation within the city.23 PUFS represents a major
step towards building and implementing this vision, and so its role in
legitimizing what counts as appropriate sport and recreation in the city
cannot be overlooked.
Social Mapping as Biographical Narrative
We used a biographical narrative approach, specifically social mapping,
to collect data for this project. Our use of social mapping, employing
cartographic metaphors (various forms of imagery accompanied by brief
descriptions), focused on developing visual representations of community use patterns and social dynamics in an urban setting. This method
has shown to be effective in the context of marginalized populations for
engendering reflection, and a narrative, of social practices.24
There are a number of different ways to conduct social mapping, and
the method varies depending on the desired outcomes. Maps can be used
visibly and visually to communicate important social information among
marginalized groups who usually do not have the mastery to employ officially sanctioned forms of discourse. In this study, social mapping—that
is, creating visual representations of community use patterns and social
dynamics in an urban setting employing cartographic metaphors—was
22 The term “poverty of opportunity” is borrowed from David Ross and Paul Roberts, Income and
Child Well-Being: A New Perspective on the Poverty Debate (Ottawa: CCSD, May 1999), who
use it to describe a pattern whereby children who grow up in poor families are, on average, less
likely to do well in life than children who grow up in non-poor families. Ross and Roberts cited
in Silver, ed., Solutions that Work, 13.
23 Catherine MacDonald, A City at Leisure: An Illustrated History of Parks and Recreation Services
in Winnipeg, 1893–1993 (Winnipeg: City of Winnipeg, Parks and Recreation Department, 1995),
162–172.
24 Doug Aberly, Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment (Gabriola Island: New
Society Publishers, 1993), 130–131.
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Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
used to communicate important social information in an effort to “reclaim
the commons” and depict “strategies of resistance”25 in the area of inner
city sport and recreation practices. In our study, we used large- and smallscale maps of Winnipeg to plot physical spaces, on which the youths then
inserted their personal sport and recreation biographies using a sketch
mapping technique. Mapping serves as an effective method for visualizing
barriers, enabling a deeper understanding of the misalignments between
the existing allocation and distribution of sport and recreation facilities,
and Aboriginal youth community use patterns. In this sense, mapping can
be a useful tool in participatory action research, where the outcomes of
knowledge mobilization and production are linked to advocacy and social
change. Researchers who seek to help local populations reclaim communal
spaces and offer alternative visions for the possibilities of public policy
development might find social mapping of benefit.26
The mapping approach was augmented through the use of photo
elicitation, a method sometimes referred to as Photovoice.27 Photovoice
allows for the reflection on biographical information at a very personal
level, enabling the participant to control how the biographical fragment
in question is visually framed. Photovoice was selected because of its
emphasis on participatory action research and social change, two key
elements that formed the underlying rationale for our project.28
The combination of social mapping and Photovoice facilitated the
easy identification of “active spaces” inhabited by Aboriginal youth.
What is more, however, the combined methods also yielded a coherent,
rather stark symbology of “empty spaces”—those areas that youth cannot
access for a variety of reasons. Costs, safety concerns, family responsibilities, and fear of racism rank prominently among these. It is this aspect
of disempowerment, in particular, about which that Aboriginal youth
25 Aberly, Boundaries of Home, 4.
26 Janice Forsyth, Michael Heine, and Joannie Halas, “A Cultural Approach to Aboriginal Youth Sport
and Recreation: Observations from Year 1,” in Aboriginal Policy Research: Moving Forward,
Making a Difference, Vol. IV, eds. Jerry White, Susan Wingert, Devon Beavon, and Paul Maxim
(Toronto, ON: Thompson Educational Publishing Inc., 2007), 93–100.
27 We found the following descriptive articles about photo illicitation and photovoice to be a good
starting point for understanding how to usefully employ these methods: Douglas Harper, “Talking
About Picture: A Case for Photo Elicitation,” Visual Studies 17, no. 1 (2002): 13–26; Carolyn
Wang and Mary Ann Burris, “Photovoice: Concept, Methodology, and Use for Participatory
Needs Assessment,” Health Education and Behavior 24, no. 3 (1997): 369–387; and Robert
Strack, Cathleen Magill, and Kara McDonagh, “Engaging Youth Through Photovoice,” Health
Promotion Practice 5, no. 1 (2003): 49–58.
28 Caroline C. Wang, Susan Morrel-Samuels, Peter M. Hutchison, Lee Bell, and Robert M. Pestronk,
“Flint Photovoice: Community Building Among Youths, Adults, and Policymakers,” American
Journal of Public Health 94, no. 6 (2004): 911.
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
107
sometimes find difficult to construct a reflective narrative. Social mapping combined with Photovoice can often serve to elicit the rich detail of
this particular aspect of Aboriginal youths’ experience of marginalization
in sport and recreation.
Mapping “The Tree”
In total, twenty Aboriginal youth participated in the social mapping and
Photovoice project, sometimes complementing their maps with elaborate
texts about their sport and recreation experiences.29 The narrative that
emerges from these maps and their associated stories predominantly expresses the significance of the empty as well as the active spaces referred
to above. What the narrative also brings into focus, however, is a space
that positively validates recreational practices of an entirely different
nature—practices that do not entail participation in sports at all. In this
instance, it is not that the barriers referred to above preclude participation.
Rather, the recreational space that emerges, being the result of the youth’s
own constructive choices, simply renders inoperative the barriers that they
often encounter in the space of sports. Thus, in spite of the infrastructural
obstacles that they face, and in spite of their marginalization in the city’s
dominant recreation landscape, Aboriginal youth have the ability to shape
and create their own recreational landscapes and practices, particularly by
constructing meaningful recreational spaces outside the area of recreation
validated in dominant discourses that emphasize sports participation. In
this way, these Aboriginal youth are able to circumvent the barriers created by the effects of the dominant discourse.
An excerpt from one of the maps, reproduced in Figure 1, provides
an instructive example of this narrative. The map identifies “The Tree”
as one of the mapmaker’s central recreation spaces. The caption states:
“When we get tired of the car hangout [another important non-sport
recreation site], we will go next door to the tree and climb it.”30 Another
project participant likewise reflects on the central importance of local
space in the youth’s recreation landscape:
The climbing tree: My friend and I go to this park every lunch
hour for school to play grounders. The climbing tree is located
in the park’s field, good tree. This tree is a great place to gather
thoughts and ideas. Parents don’t like me hanging out late.31
29 For a more detailed description of the mapping project, see Forsyth, Heine and Halas, “A Cultural
Approach to Aboriginal Youth Sport and Recreation,” 93–100.
30 Project participant Roddy, “Roddy’s recreation map,” and accompanying narrative, Winnipeg,
MB, March 2007.
31 Excerpted from Project participant Peter, “Peter’s recreation map,” Winnipeg, MB, March 2007.
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Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
Figure 1. Mapping “The Tree.”
Source: Project participant Roddy, “Roddy’s recreation map,” Winnipeg,
MB, March 2007.
Eighteen of the twenty maps developed by the youth indicate a similar
predilection for non-sports oriented recreational practices, suggesting a
significant disconnect between the forms of recreation validated by the
city’s administrative discourse and the recreational practices mapped and
visualized by project participants.
PUFS: A “Capacity” for Sport as Recreation
The marginalization of Aboriginal sport and recreation participants is
positioned within the existing sport and recreation system of the city,
represented by PUFS, a 398-page engineering study that represents the
city administration’s authoritative discourse on the state of “desirable”
recreation.
Capacity considerations are a common element of administrative
policy determinations, and there is nothing innocuous about the contents
of PUFS as an engineering document. At the level of policy determination, however, the study’s selection of categories for measurement and
evaluation constitutes an implicit decision about what model of recreation
to validate. Being obscured by the ostensibly objective “neutrality” of
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
109
Figure 2. Efficient Urban Recreation: Mapping a “Capacity”
for Sport.
Source: Economics Research Associates, Public Use Facilities Study,
Final Report (Winnipeg: The City of Winnipeg, Department of Community Services, Public Works, and Property, Planning and Development, 2004), 73, <http://winnipeg.ca/interhom/pdfs/PUFS/PUFSFULLREPORT.pdf>.
the study’s statistical apparatus, this decision is never made explicit, and
thus serves to reproduce an unexpressed, normalized understanding of
appropriate forms of recreation. The study validates this normalization
through statistical means, and is reinforced, in turn, by an extensive
array of visual confirmations in the form of tables and graphs (see, for
example, Figure 2). An examination of the recreation landscape that
emerges from the study’s selection of criteria for measurement—and
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Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
thus validation— soon reveals that the study is heavily inflected towards
a normalized understanding of engagement in organized sports as the
most desirable form of recreational practice. On the basis of this implicit
determination, the study provides a detailed administrative rationale that
equates efficient engagement in sports, as the principal form of recreation,
with economies of scale. The latter, according to PUFS’ recommendations,
are to be realized through the development of large-size recreation centres
to serve expanded intake areas defined without reference to pre-existing,
historically grown community recreation structures.
The narrative in PUFS consequently produces a double disconnect.
First, through its implicit validation of sports, the delineation of meaningful recreation in PUFS clearly diverges from the Aboriginal youths’
narratives referred to previously. Second, in its preoccupation with the
economic efficiencies to be achieved through the construction of largescale recreation centres, the study also proposes a disconnection of facility
distribution from pre-existing community structures.
The WPF Refraction of PUFS
It was this latter implication of PUFS’ narrative that especially provoked
a sustained and largely critical response from the WFP.32 Defending the
existing community-based recreation infrastructure against its seemingly
impending displacement by what the articles pejoratively refer to as “super-sized mega facilities,”33 the WPF repeatedly draws a highly positive
picture of the social and community-strengthening benefits of the existing
recreation infrastructure. Those benefits are represented predominantly
as successful and meaningful participation in organized sports. Thus,
although Aboriginal recreation is addressed explicitly in only two of the
twelve articles, the thematic structure of the newspaper’s response functions as yet another discursive constraint on the aspirations of Aboriginal
youth to enter the city’s recreation spaces on their own terms. Set against
the recreation maps and narratives produced by the Aboriginal youth,
the validation of even community-based recreation that emerges from
the narrative in the WFP carries its own effects of social exclusion. Our
reading of the narrative in the WFP reveals that the position taken by the
32 The newspaper published a series of twelve major articles examining the state of the city’s sport
and recreation infrastructure. “How We Play: Taking Stock of the City’s Recreation Infrastructure,”
Winnipeg Free Press, 14–26 February 2005.
33 The term is used throughout the series of twelve articles (see for example, WFP, 14 February
2005, A4). The negative connotations of this particular usage have been firmly established since
Morgan Spurlock’s 2003 docudrama, Super Size Me.
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
111
newspaper is exceedingly critical of, possibly even hostile to, the PUFS
recommendations.34 The newspaper does not refute any of the arguments
advanced in PUFS, but strategically positions its criticism by validating a
recreation model against which PUFS fails in several important ways.
First, there is the scale of the facilities recommended by PUFS. In
short, the facilities are too big. The newspaper’s criticism is implied by
its choice of words. There is no explicit acknowledgment that the scale
of the facilities is problematic. Instead, the choice of words to describe
the facilities—“massive,” “supersized,” “humongous”35—contextually
function as negative qualifiers in respect to the pre-existing centres that
they would replace. The contrasting implication, of course, is that the
existing centres represent a desirable, viable scale.
Correspondingly, the creation of such oversized structures is implicitly
represented as the destruction of existing facilities. To make way for the
new centres, the existing infrastructure variously have to be “ripped,”
“bulldozed,” or “carved.”36 PUFS itself uses no such language, but
typically refers to the existing facilities by the somewhat evasive term
“surplus,”37 and in doing so discursively facilitates an evaluation of the
existing structure of sport and recreation in the city that paves the way
for the removal of such excess. Beyond this exclusive focus on the new
facilities’ ostensibly destructive effect, the WPF does not consider the
potential relevance of the large-scale facilities advocated by PUFS. For
reasons discussed below, the potentially not negative or non-destructive
effects of the proposed facilities are never conceptualized.
Yet it is not merely the existing facilities that, as the WFP insinuates,
will be “ripped” and “bulldozed.” In recommending the destruction of
existing facilities, PUFS’ suggestions would also serve to destroy the
specific forms of recreation that the existing facilities enable. The posi34 It should be pointed out that our analysis of the WFP series was concerned with uncovering the
enabling effects of that narrative for a specific, normalized understanding of meaningful and
“beneficial” sport and recreation practices, and the consequences of this specific normalization
for Aboriginal youths to put into practice the forms of recreation described in their social maps. It
is neither our concern here to adjudicate potential “motives” or intents that grounded the political
thrust of the WFP series, nor do we wish to engage the argument concerning the positive effects
of sports participation that is heavily promoted in the WFP series.
35 See for example, WFP, 17 February 2005, B2; 14 February 2005, A4.
36 See for example, WFP, 14 February 2005, A1, A4; 16 February 2005, B2; 19 February 2005,
A4.
37 See for example, Economics Research Associates, Public Use Facilities Study, Final Report
(Winnipeg: The City of Winnipeg, Department of Community Services, Public Works, and
Property, Planning and Development, 2004), 11-6, 12-1, and passim.
112
Forsyth and Heine, “Sites of Meaning, Meaningful Sites”
tive validation of the existing facilities in the WFP series emerges from
their strategic juxtaposition in the text to the representation of PUFS’
destructiveness. These “endangered” forms of sport and recreation are
depicted in the WFP predominantly as participation in organized sport,
and their community-validating effect is strategically brought out in the
newspaper’s narrative through their repeated positioning as meaningful
family-validated and -validating practices. Seven of the eighteen relevant
photos placed in the WFP series symbolically reinforce the validating
effects of familial participation in organized sports. The text in at least
two additional articles explicitly makes the same connection. A further
six items validate participation in sport as meaningful recreation, without
placing the depiction in the context of familial validation (see Table 1).
As a consequence, the WFP narrative, like the PUFS recommendations,
serves to validate participation in sports as a significant form of recreation, albeit—at least from the perspective of the WFP narrative—from
diametrically opposed positions. With respect to the recreational preferences indicated by the Aboriginal youth, neither the capacity-oriented
endorsement of sports in PUFS nor their emphatic validation as family- and community-sustaining activities in the WFP series hold much
promise for relevancy.
Table 1. Distribution of Visual Narrative Elements in the
WFP Series.
Sport / Recreation
Non-Sport
Non-Aboriginal
Family
Not Family
9
6
1
Aboriginal
Family
Not Family
1
1 (“Traditional”)
-
∑ = 18 (two of the nine entries under “Sport/Family” consist of textual references only)
Concluding Remarks
The WFP’s sports model, which takes on positive meaning when it includes family and community, is one that Aboriginal youth tend not to
validate through their social maps and recreation biographies. While the
WFP acknowledges the debilitating effects of poverty on regular access
to sport and recreation, its form of validation of sports participation in
the familial context renders these detrimental effects invisible, with the
exception of a singular instance of when sports are positioned as a means
to manage the social crises that poverty often tends to engender in inner
city Aboriginal households. Beyond that, the series’ visual representa-
Native Studies Review 17, no. 2 (2008)
113
tion of successful sports participation simply takes the availability of the
material wherewithal for granted.
This is where we come to the social effect of discourse. Aboriginal
youth only enter the picture when they are engaged in popular understandings of Aboriginal cultural activities, like powwow dancing. The implicit
message is that Aboriginal youth who want to engage in dominant sport
forms like basketball or volleyball, but who cannot afford the access,
can at least get involved in Aboriginal cultural activities as a form of
recreation. This understanding subtly reinforces the marginalization of
Aboriginal youth from the growing structure of sport and recreation in
Winnipeg by suggesting that there are plenty of alternatives to engage
Aboriginal youth. Although one might argue that the message implies the
contrary—that Aboriginal youth would go into sport when materially possible (the preferred model being organized sport)—our argument above
makes the case that Aboriginal youth do something else altogether (e.g.,
walk with friends to malls, bring young family members and relatives to
the park, or, in the case of Figure 1, hang out in neighbouring yards), and
that this mismatch lies in the disconnect between competing discourses
on sport and recreation.
The process of exclusion is an unintended effect of the discourse in
the WFP. The positive evaluation of family and community in the WFP
is what makes sport meaningful, and this is very different from the way in
which Aboriginal youth are represented in the WFP (and through self-representation in the mapping project). Even in those instances where family
is identified in biographical maps, it is not connected to sport. That is, if
Aboriginal youth were to take a sports photo, as they did throughout the
mapping project, family would not be part of what validates the activity’s
communal importance. This is very different from the representation in
PUFS and the WFP.
How is all this relevant? These kinds of deconstructions are necessary
because even though the WFP does not set out to be antagonistic to Aboriginal youth involvement in sport and recreation, there is an underlying
effect that restricts Aboriginal youth participation when compared to what
the Aboriginal youth have in mind—something altogether different from
the types of sports and recreation recommended by PUFS and the WFP.
Such deconstructions are necessary in order to disrupt the dominant hegemonic discourse of sport and recreation, and open up alternative spaces
for envisioning more inclusive opportunities for Aboriginal youth in the
growing structure of sport and recreation in major urban centres.