Dr. Janice Forsyth

Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 48 (Dr. Janice Forsyth): In Episode 47 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Forsyth, member of the Fisher River Cree Nation and Professor in Indigenous Land-Based Physical Culture and Wellness in the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Drawing on Indigenous epistemologies and research methodologies, Dr. Forsyth’s research combines history and sociology to understand the differing historical and contemporary relationships among sports, culture, power, and politics. We discussed some of the following issues: disenfranchisement and Bill C-31; negotiating culture on a daily basis; working through individual, systemic, and societal racisms as a student and high performance First Nations athlete; the importance of Indigenous student university centres; understanding how organized sports were, and are, used as a tool of assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous land; the legacy of residential schools; oral history research with residential school survivors; (un)learning from the past and questioning approaches to “reconciliation” in sport; Indigenous understandings of health and physical education; decolonization; and so much more.