First Nations Women, Games, and Sport in Pre- and Post-Colonial North America

• Published in: Women's History Review
• Main Authors: Delsahut, Fabrice, Terret, Thierry
• Other Authors: Centre de Recherche et d'Innovation sur le Sport (EA647) (CRIS), Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2014
• Subjects: [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences; Indian; First Nations
• Online Access: https://univ-lyon1.hal.science/hal-02336767; https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2014.945801

The historiography of games among First Nations women still is in its infancy. Yet Indian women had access to a wide range of recreational activities that were deeply rooted in each stage of their lives and more especially in all that was ceremonial, ritual, magical and religious. This paper proposes a synthesis of the history and cultural anthropology of these practices in the American Indian history of pre- and post-Columbian North America, through to the end of the Indian Wars in the 1890s. It explores how a gendered approach allows renewed analysis of the contact between traditional American Indian games and modern sports and examines the impact of sporting acculturation on these activities at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The case of the Fort Shaw 'Blues' is used to explore the complex relationship that American and native cultures hold with modern women's sports.