“Back in the Day, You Opened Your Mine and on You Went”: Extractives Industry Perspectives on Sport, Responsibility, and Development in Indigenous Communities in Canada

Abstract

Over the past two decades, significant policy shifts within Canada have urged corporations from all sectors, including the extractives industry, to fund and support sport for development (SFD) programming in Indigenous communities, often through corporate social responsibility strategies. The idea that sport is an appropriate tool of development for Indigenous communities in Canada and that the extractives industry is a suitable partner to implement development programs highlight profound tensions regarding ongoing histories of resource extraction and settler colonialism. To explore these tensions, in this paper, the authors drew on interviews conducted with extractives industry representatives of four companies that fund and implement such SFD programs. From these interviews, three overarching discourses emerged in relation to the extractives industry’s role in promoting development through sport: SFD is a catalyst to positive relationships between industry and community, SFD is a contributor to “social good” in Indigenous communities, and extractives industry funding of SFD is “socially responsible.”