NASSS 2018 Conference - Vancouver

Byrd (2011) used the term “cacophony” to describe the competing voices that vie for legitimacy across different axes of U.S. settler colonial domination. While sport sociology has employed various critical perspectives to examine how sport exemplifies a variety of inequities, settler colonialism as the social formation that underpins modern sport and research institutions is rarely questioned (Sykes, 2014). The struggles of Indigenous Peoples in sport (e.g., the names/mascots used by pro and collegiate sport teams) are often understood and analyzed within a liberal multicultural framework that situates Indigenous Peoples in a paralleled fashion with other racialized minorities in the settler states (Bruyneel, 2016). Others, however, point out that the issue of race in settler states also cannot be fully comprehended if the analysis does not account for settler colonialism (Fujikane, 2008). This paper session focus on the following question: How could meaningful allyships be built in the “cacophony”, amongst sport sociologists who critically examine race (and other social justice projects) and those who pursue decolonizing projects that challenge the foundation of settler colonialism?