Sport for development and Indigenous Australians: a critical research agenda for policy and practice

ABSTRACT

This research note seeks to critically examine Sport for Development (SFD) policies and programming targeting Indigenous Australians. Through a narrative literature review, this article seeks to broaden the discussion surrounding the use of sport as a development tool throughout Australia’s Indigenous communities, by considering perspectives within SFD literature that have received limited attention in existing policy and research approaches. The findings of this literature review expose a dominant trend towards positivistic research that reinforces existing approaches, and a lack of criticality surrounding the use of sport as a development tool. This article, therefore, seeks to pose a new research agenda by drawing on international perspectives with the potential to broaden this discussion surrounding the use of sport as a development tool for Indigenous Australians. Issues of conceptual clarity, the use of sport as a mechanism for social control, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism are largely absent from existing literature exploring SFD for Indigenous Australians. Calls to de-colonise SFD are also largely absent from the literature reviewed, and therefore calls for the decolonisation of SFD globally are also considered. Finally, this research note calls for researchers working in this space to engage critically with the use of sport in Indigenous communities, to shift the focus away from the production of ‘evidence’ to a broader discussion around the use of sport, including how research must contribute to decolonising both policy and practice through privileging Indigenous perspectives and voices.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport for development
• indigenous
• Australia
• critical
• decolonising
• policy

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback in preparing this manuscript, and Will Sanders from the Australian National University for his helpful assistance in responding to reviewers’ comments.

Disclosure statement

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan Lucas

Ryan Lucas is currently undertaking doctoral studies at Monash University, with his research focussing on the role of sport in Indigenous youth development programs in remote communities of the Northern Territory of Australia. Ryan’s research interests include sport and social policy, sport for development and inclusivity in sport for marginalised populations.

Ruth Jeanes

Dr Ruth Jeanes is an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Ruth is a social scientist whose research interests focus on the use of sport and active recreation as a community development resource, particularly to address social exclusion amongst acutely marginalised groups.

Zane Diamond

Zane Diamond PhD, is a Professor in the Faculty of education, Monash University. Zane’s research investigates the alienation from mainstream education that people from non-dominant cultures report. Zane’s research interests include Indigenous and traditional wisdom in modern universities and schools, culturally inclusive pedagogies, and an overarching study of the pedagogies of wisdom development in university and school students.