Janice Forsyth | |
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 Janice Forsyth (2017) | |
| Born | Toronto, Ontario |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Western Ontario |
| Website | janiceforsyth |
Janice Forsyth is a Canadian associate professor of Sociology and the director of the Indigenous Studies program at Western University in London, Ontario. A former varsity athlete Forsyth was awarded the Tom Longboat Regional Award for Ontario in 2002.
Forsyth was born in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Northern Ontario. Her maternal family is from the Fisher River Cree and Peguis First Nation, Manitoba, Canada. [1]
Forsyth has three degrees from Western University, where she completed a BA in 1997, a MA in 2000, and a PhD in 2005. [2] [3] Forsyth studied the Socio-Cultural Study of Sport for her PhD degree.[ citation needed ] While studying at Western, she was a varsity athlete, and won several athletic awards from Western University. [4] She medalled in badminton at the Ontario University Athletics Championships [4] and won silver in the 3000 metres at their 1995 Track & Field Championship. [4] In 2002 that Forsyth received the Tom Longboat Regional Award for Ontario at the North American Indigenous Games. [5] [6]
After graduating, she was an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba from 2005 to 2008 and at the University of Alberta from 2008 to 2009. In 2010, she returned Western University as an associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, serving as director for the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western until 2015. [1] [3] Her areas of research include the Olympic Games, Canadian Residential Schools, equity issues in Canadian sport, and Aboriginal sport and health. [2] In 2020 Forsyth's book Reclaiming Tom Longboat: Indigenous Self-Determination in Canadian Sport was published by the University of Regina Press. [7] The book argues that the award, named after Onondaga long-distance runner Tom Longboat, has been used to advance colonial policies and political agendas. [8] [7] The political aspect of Indigenous sport is a common theme in Forsyth's work, explaining in a 2018 interview with the University of Manitoba that: "Sport is not value-free. Built into it are ways of prioritizing values and beliefs that may not be part of Indigenous cultural heritage." [9]
Outside of academia Forsyth has written articles for news sources such as HuffPost Canada [10] and The Guardian, [11] as well as being interviewed by multiple media outlets such as the Toronto Star, SportsNet, the Globe and Mail, CBC, and the Aboriginal People's Television Network. [12]
Through 2017, she has been leading discussions around sport and reconciliation, stemming from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada reports (released in 2015), with government and non-profit sectors in sport, physical activity, physical education, and health. [5] [13] [14]
In 2013, Forsyth was awarded the NASSH Book of the Year Award for Best Anthology for Aboriginal Peoples and Sport in Canada: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Issues , which she co-edited with Audrey Giles from the University of Ottawa, [15] and the Early Researcher Award/Premier's Research Excellence Award from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Innovation. [2] In 2015, she was named the winner for best paper published in the journal Sport History for her article "Make the Indian Understand his Place: Politics and the Establishment of the Tom Longboat Awards at Indian Affairs and the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada." [16]
J. Wilton Littlechild, known as Willie Littlechild, is a Canadian lawyer and Cree chief who was Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations and a member of Parliament. A residential school survivor, he is known for his work nationally and internationally on Indigenous rights. He was born in Hobbema, now named Maskwacis, Alberta.
Alwyn Morris, CM is a retired Canadian sprint kayaker. A member of the Mohawk nation in Kahnawake, he is considered one of the most influential Indigenous athletes of all time. He is the first and only Aboriginal Canadian athlete who won a gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games and one of the only three North American aboriginals to do so, alongside Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills.
Calvin Murray Sinclair was a Canadian politician who was a member of the Senate, and a First Nations lawyer who served as chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was a truth and reconciliation commission active in Canada from 2008 to 2015, organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
Jocelyne Dawn Marie Larocque is a Canadian professional ice hockey player for the Toronto Sceptres of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). She previously played in the PWHPA, with the Calgary Inferno and Markham Thunder of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL), the Calgary Oval X-Treme and Manitoba Maple Leafs of the Western Women's Hockey League (WWHL), and the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA). With the Bulldogs, she was a two-time NCAA Women's Ice Hockey Tournament champion. Larocque is of Métis heritage and was the first Indigenous athlete to participate in the women's ice hockey tournament at the Winter Olympics.
Waneek Horn-Miller is a Canadian former water polo player from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory. She was a member of the Canadian women's water polo team that won a gold medal at the 1999 Pan American Games in Winnipeg. Horn-Miller also became the first Mohawk woman from Canada to ever compete in the Olympic games. In 2019, she was awarded the Order of Sport, marking her induction into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in the athlete category.
Doris Mary Jones was the junior world compound bow archery champion in 2006. She is a Métis from Selkirk, Canada. Jones has been an archer since the age of four, competing all over the world, and is active with the Manitoba Metis Federation.
Rick Brant is a Mohawk athlete who primarily competed in track and field. Brant is a Tom Longboat winner, winning the National award in 1987. He is originally from Ontario and a member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation He now resides in Cowichan, British Columbia. Brant is most recently known for his contribution in being a founding member of the Aboriginal Sports Circle, Executive Director of the Indigenous Sport Physical Activity and Recreation Council (I·SPARC) and CEO of three separate North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) - 1993, 1997 and 2008. Brant served as President of the North American Indigenous Games Council from 2015 to 2018. He continues to serve on the Council's Executive Committee as Past President.
Beverly "Bev" Beaver is a Mohawk Canadian athlete from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada, known for her performance in fastball, hockey, and bowling. Beaver was born to Reg and Norma Henhawk and had four siblings, Sidney Henhawk, Charlene Nuttycombe, Toni Johnson, and Justine Bomberry. Beaver's competed as a professional athlete from 1961 to 1994. She is known to have developed her athletic skills by playing sports with boys throughout her childhood, even becoming a prominent player on a boy's bantam hockey team at age 13. Beaver played exclusively on Native fastball teams; however, she has played on non-Native teams in other sports. Throughout her career she earned awards such as the Regional Tom Longboat Award for Southern Ontario (1967) and the National Tom Longboat Award (1980). Beaver is credited with earning other awards for performance in fastball, hockey, and bowling. Some of her hockey artifacts are in the Hockey Hall of Fame, in its diversity exhibit.
Richard "Bear" Peter is a Canadian First Nations wheelchair basketball and para-badminton player. Peter was born in Duncan, British Columbia, and currently resides in Vancouver. When Richard was four years old, he was injured in a bus accident, leaving him in a wheelchair ever since. He began playing wheelchair basketball at the age of 15 when he was inspired by a team that came to his school and introduced him to wheelchair sports. Since then, Peter has competed in the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Paralympic Games, winning the gold medal for wheelchair basketball for three of those years.
Indigenous peoples of Canada are culturally diverse. Each group has its own literature, language and culture. The term "Indigenous literature" therefore can be misleading. As writer Jeannette Armstrong states in one interview, "I would stay away from the idea of "Native" literature, there is no such thing. There is Mohawk literature, there is Okanagan literature, but there is no generic Native in Canada".
Phyllis "Yogi" Bomberry was a Canadian softball catcher from southwestern Ontario. She competed nationally winning many Canadian Women's Softball Championships. Bomberry became the first female to win the Tom Longboat Award. She died on January 3, 2019.
Beverly Stanger was a blind Canadian Indigenous track and field athlete from the Timiskaming Band of Notre Dame du Nord, Quebec. She competed at the 1976 Toronto Olympics for the Physically Disabled, and the 1977 Ontario Summer games held in Brantford, Ontario. Stanger was a recipient of the prestigious Tom Longboat Award in 1976, only the second female to have done so and the first disabled athlete.
Reginald ("Reg") Underwood, member of the Tsawout First Nation, near Victoria, British Columbia, made his name known as an elite athlete competing in softball as an outfielder for the Victoria Bate team from 1974 to 1984. During that time, he helped the team to a string of successes at the senior "A" men's level, winning 10 Provincial Championships, 6 National Championships, and the 1979 Pan Am Games. The team was also named Co-World Champions at the 1976 World Championships in Wellington, New Zealand, where twelve nations competed, but bad weather forced the cancellation of the tournament before it could be completed. The title was shared between the semi-finalists: Canada, New Zealand, and USA. The Victoria Bate team was unique because it was the only club team to ever win the World Championships; all of the others had been All-Star teams. 1976 was the last year in which a club team would be represented at the World championships. In 1990, the team that Reginald played on between the years 1975-1976, was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
The Tom Longboat Awards were established in 1951 to recognize Aboriginal athletes "for their outstanding contributions to sport in Canada" and continues "to honour Indigenous athletes across Canada" annually. As a program of the Aboriginal Sport Circle, the awards provide a forum for acknowledging top male and female athletes both at the regional and national levels.
Jason Loutitt was a Canadian marathon and long-distance mountain runner and cyclist from Squamish, British Columbia. Loutitt was the recipient of the Tom Longboat Award in 2001.
Sara-Lynne Knockwood is a Canadian taekwondo athlete and a band member of Nova Scotia’s Indian Brook First Nation. She was raised in Enfield, Nova Scotia with her two sisters by her father Ron and her mother Jennifer. She won gold medals in the 2002 North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She was inducted into Miꞌkmaq sports hall of fame in 2016 for her achievements in taekwondo.
The Aboriginal Sport Circle (ASC) is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1995. It is designated as Canada's governing body and voice for Aboriginal sport throughout the country. The ASC brings together the athletic interests of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis communities, to increase and promote physical health among indigenous populations. The ASC also gives out the national Tom Longboat Award to the outstanding male and female Aboriginal athlete in Canada each year.
Carole Polchies was born in Woodstock First Nation, New Brunswick. She is a Canadian first nations woman known for her involvement in sports including softball, canoeing, horseshoes and tennis. Later she became involved in organizing sport competitions including the Indian Summer Games, which were first hosted in 1997.
Joy SpearChief-Morris is an indigenous Canadian hurdler from Lethbridge, Alberta. She is a multiple Ontario University Athletics and U Sports track champion and has competed for the Canadian U23 National Team. A Blackfoot from Alberta's Blood Tribe, SpearChief-Morris was the (female) recipient of the 2017 Tom Longboat Awards, awarded annually by the Aboriginal Sport Circle to the most outstanding male and female indigenous athletes in Canada. Her mother is Kainai First Nation and her father is an African-American from Los Angeles.
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