Ka muri, ka mua: Indigenous voices matter

• Published in: Journal of sport for development Vol. 11; no. 1
• Main Authors: Stewart-Withers, Rochelle, Hapeta, Jeremy, Giles, Audrey, Morgan, Haydn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Journal of Sport for Development 01.11.2023
• Subjects: Community; COVID-19; Decision making; Industrialized nations; Native peoples; Pandemics; Sports management; Success
• ISSN: 2330-0574; 2330-0574

KA MURI, KA MUA1: INDIGENOUS VOICES MATTER Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua – “I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past” is a whakataukī (proverb) that illuminates Māori (Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand) conceptualisation of time, “where the past, the present and the future are viewed as intertwined, and life as a continuous cosmic process. [...]as we write this closing piece for the Special Issue: Indigenous Voices Matter to Sport for Development (SFD), it makes sense to return full circle to reflect on where the seeds were first planted for this work. To us, this was deeply concerning, especially because in both the Global North and South, Indigenous peoples are frequently the target of SFD initiatives, while at the same time often excluded in decision making around project and program design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation (Stewart-Withers et al., 2022). Indigenous people bear the brunt of this lens when they are targeted by deficit-focused SFD initiatives (Gartner-Manzon & Giles, 2018; Hayhurst & Giles, 2013; Stewart-Withers et al., 2022). [...]there is a need to build on a tradition of Indigenous arguments that challenge deficit views (Hapeta et al., 2019). The term Indigenization is important – as opposed to just decolonizing SFD, because decolonizing debates have had a tendency to center the colonizers. [...]as discussed by Hoskins and Jones (2022), “Indigenisation refers not to the inclusion of indigenous people, values and knowledge within a largely unchanged or superficially changed institutional structure, but to the normalisation of indigenous ways of being and knowing” (p. 307).