Indigenous Feminist Gikendassowin (Knowledge) Decolonization through Physical Activity. Book Review, J. Hall.

• Published in: Leisure Studies
• Main Author: Hall, Jenny
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 2021
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General); HM Sociology; HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform; HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare; anishina*
• Online Access: http://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/6238/; https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/6238/1/Book%20Review%20Jenny%20Hall%20Jun%202021.pdf; https://www-tandfonline-com.yorksj.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/02614367.2021.1962394; https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2021.1962394

Tricia McGuire-Adams shows us why stories matter by exploring how they are central to our understanding of ourselves and how we think and feel about each other. Through exploring the way settler colonialism causes ill health she advances how Indigenous Peoples can resist existing narratives and regenerate their health through processes of decolonisation. Decolonisation is meaningful and transformative resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation of minds, bodies and lands. She argues that rebuilding and restoring health can be achieved through Indigenous People reconnecting with ancestral knowledge and current stories of physical activity. She critiques settler-colonial stories that negatively portray Indigenous Peoples’ physical health and demonstrates how such narratives perpetuate inequality. By highlighting the way health disparity research documents the differences in health between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Peoples, she shows how this pathologizes Indigenous Peoples as ill. Moreover, by contrasting this with the way settler colonial notions of health are reified she exposes how Indigenous Peoples’ ancestral notions of health are subjugated. This has marginalising effects that disproportionately impacts Indigenous women by suppressing Indigenous Peoples’ cultural solutions to ill health. Through critical engagement with dibaajimowinan (stories founded in ancestral knowledge), McGuire-Adams theorises how narratives of the great physical strength and skill Indigenous People possessed through land-based activities such as fishing, trapping and hunting can have a decolonising effect. Focusing specifically on Indigenous women, she asks ‘Can physical activity that encompasses a decolonization approach be a catalyst for regenerative well-being for Anishinaabeg Women?’ (chapter 1).