Sport Facilities III

“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

Rob Millington Brock University

Lyndsay M.C. Hayhurst York University

Audrey R. Giles University of Ottawa

Steven Rynne The University of Queensland

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.”

Keywords: corporate partnerships, corporate social responsibility, sport and social good, sport for development

Over the past two decades, sport has been increasingly cast as an important contributor to a wide range of development outcomes, including poverty alleviation, gender equity, and HIV/AIDS edu- cation, through what has come to be known as the sport for development (SFD) sector (Darnell, Chawansky, Marchesseault, Holmes, & Hayhurst, 2018). Indeed, SFD programming and scholarship have continued to grow for some time now. While much of the attention has been on global South nations in which programs have often been supported by foreign and philanthropic aid, there is increasing acknowledgment that SFD programs are part of the policy and practices of global North nations too (see Gardam, Giles, & Hayhurst, 2017). In the Canadian context, such programs are predominantly directed toward Indigenous peoples (Gardam et al., 2017), a trend that has found support in the federal government through a series of policy shifts over the last decade that have shaped how SFD programs are conceived, designed, and implemented domestically (Gardam et al., 2017). Importantly for our purposes here, these policies have positioned the private sector —including the oil, mining, and gas industry, also known as the extractives sector—as potential supporters of, and sources of funding for, social development programs (Devenin & Bianchi, 2018; Du & Vieira, 2012; Gilberthorpe & Rajak, 2017). Included within these programs are sport initiatives that are funded through

the extractives industry’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) endeavors (see Hayhurst & Giles, 2013).

Accordingly, in this paper, we drew on interviews conducted with extractives industry representatives of four companies that fund and implement SFD programming in Indigenous communities in Canada to address the following research question: How do extractives industry representatives explain their company’s involvement in sport and recreation-related CSR in Indigenous communities?

The extractives sector’s involvement in SFD programming in Indigenous communities in Canada can be linked to a substantial policy shift in 2005, when the federal government convened a roundtable to discuss how SFD could be better implemented in the Canadian context to meet domestic development goals (Hayhurst & Giles, 2013). The roundtable represented the govern- ment’s first official acknowledgment of the growing interest in domestic SFD programs, and it soon informed the growth of programs focused on Indigenous communities (Gardam et al., 2017; Hayhurst & Giles, 2013). This trend is evident in the range of Indigenous-focused SFD programs (see Gardam et al., 2017, for example) and in the “Strategic Plan 2015–2020” of the Aboriginal Sport Circle—a not-for-profit organization that supports the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities throughout Canada. It noted that SFD programs “have a positive impact on broader sector agendas including but not limited to economic development, health, mental health, environment and justice” in Indigenous communities (Aboriginal Sport Circle, 2015, p. 1). Furthermore, five of the 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) relate to sport and call upon the government of Canada to ensure that sport policies and programs are inclusive of Indigenous peoples and work toward

Millington is with the Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Hayhurst is with the York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Giles is with the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Rynne is with The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Millington ([email protected]) is corre- sponding author.

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addressing the legacy of residential schools and reconciliation (Giles & van Luijk, 2018). Moreover, within the past year alone, the government of Canada announced it was allocating almost $50 million over 5 years to SFD programs in Indigenous commu- nities (see Giles & van Luijk, 2018).

Related to the rise in SFD programming in the Canadian context, there is a notable rise in corporatized SFD initiatives focused on Indigenous communities (see Hayhurst & Szto, 2016). This corporatization is part of broader CSR strategies (see Dauvergne & LeBaron, 2014), whereby corporations have been encouraged to take responsibility for the economic, social, and environmental impacts of their operations (Michael, 2003). In this research, we followed Richey and Ponte (2008) in our understand- ing of CSR as a strategy deployed by corporations to offset social and environmental harms and deflect critique by “giving back” to local communities and global civil society. A notable arena in which SFD and CSR intersect is through the growth in support provided by extractives companies for SFD programming in Indigenous communities in Canada (see Gardam et al., 2017; Gartner-Manzon & Giles, 2016; Hayhurst & Giles, 2013). Exam- ples of such programs include Goldcorp’s support of Right to Play’s “Promoting Life-skills in Aboriginal Youth” program, Imperial Oil’s funding of “Imperial Oil Place” for recreational hockey and skating in Cold Lake, Alberta, and Rio Tinto’s support of programs such as the Northwest Territories Track and Field Championship, “Diavik Super Soccer,” and Sport North’s Kid- Sport program in the Northwest Territories (see Millington, Giles, Hayhurst, van Luijk, McSweeney, 2019).

The two propositions—that sport is a valued and appropriate tool of development for Indigenous communities and that the extractives industry is a suitable partner to implement development programs—highlight profound tensions regarding the politics of aid in Canada. Perhaps foremost among these tensions are the ongoing histories of colonial resource extraction in and near Indigenous communities and the impact of extractive practices on the environ- ment and access to traditional lands (Jenkins & Yakovleva, 2006). With the Canadian government actively encouraging the CSR activities of extractives companies in Indigenous communities in Canada, sport being at the forefront of many such initiatives, and Indigenous organizations endorsing sport programs as a potential way of fostering reconciliation, we need a better scholarly under- standing of why extractives companies would choose to become involved in funding SFD programs in the first place.

Our paper makes three novel contributions to the literature. First, we offer a response to Newell and Frynas’ (2007) call for work that explores “the potential and limitations of CSR in specific settings” (p. 670), with an eye to further understanding the perspectives of those at the “top” of CSR schemes (cf. Babiak, 2010) who are involved in funding SFD programs. Second, we also provide a response to Levermore and Moore’s (2015) observations that there has been relatively little research that (a) is conducted on the way that sport is deployed in CSR initiatives aimed at development outcomes and (b) uses critical CSR theories to explore and understand sport (for development) CSR. Third, through our study, we directly address the lacuna of empirical work that critically considers the perspectives of corporate executives who are involved in funding, executing, and implementing development projects (cf. Butler, 2015).

In advancing this work, we reviewed three strands of literature relevant to the extractives sector’s support of SFD: colonial resource extraction and CSR, sport and CSR, and the histories of sport and colonialism. We also provided an overview of the methodological and theoretical approaches that guide our analysis.

Following this, we presented the three overarching discourses that participants had reproduced 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 funding of SFD is “socially responsible” for extractives companies. Insights were then offered into the central tensions of the topic and areas for future research.

Literature Review

From Colonial Extraction to CSR

The support for sport-based programming by extractives compa- nies in Indigenous communities in northern Canada signifies broader logics in CSR, whereby the provision of SFD programs is meant to demonstrate corporate commitment to sustainable development, while ensuring a social license to operate. Employing CSR strategies in and around the communities in which extractives companies operate is a relatively recent phenomenon; however, as Butler (2015) pointed out, the historically exploitative relationship between the extractives sector—mining in particular—and Indige- nous communities informs much of its contemporary CSR work. Staking claim to land and resources were central to settler colonial practices that involved the “literal and figurative erasure, removal and/or marginalization of Indigenous peoples from the mining sector” and the characterization of Indigenous peoples as “guileless children who led white men to the shining stones whose full value they seemingly did not grasp” (Butler, 2015, p. 74). Indeed, settler colonialism is fundamentally about the pursuit of land—and not simply labor or resources. Put differently, the goal of settler colonialism has consistently been about the recalibration of Indig- enous land into settler property (Rowe & Tuck, 2017).

In turn, resource extraction has long played a role in colonial endeavors in Canada, threatening access to, the health of, and rights over traditional lands. As Keeling and Sandlos (2015) recounted, northern development strategies in Canada have long been linked to the exploitation of natural resources whereby assimilating the Indigenous peoples and territories into the national economy was seen as a means to promote resource development. The exploitation of Indigenous lands was justified through a conventional belief that the North was an underdeveloped yet resource-rich frontier that could be capitalized upon through industry-friendly policies, often with little regard for their impact on the Indigenous peoples in the area (Hall, 2013). This agenda, Keeling and Sandlos (2015) noted, “advocated the transition of Aboriginal economies away from land- based subsistence and trade economies, and towards wage eco- nomics and settlement life—often with dire consequences for Aboriginal people themselves” (p. 7). Extractivism was thus a key vehicle of colonialism in Canada, bringing sudden influxes of workers, state agencies, and new communities, often resulting in further disenfranchisement, environmental degradation, and assim- ilatory policies (Butler, 2015; Keeling & Sandlos, 2015).

Legacies of exploitation and resistance continue to inform the relationship between the Indigenous peoples and settlers with regard to mining resources in Canada (Butler, 2015). In the last 40 years, the extractives industry has sought to implement CSR policies and programming to mark an ostensible shift in relations between industry and community from colonial exploitation to consultation, whereby social offsets are offered as a means of granting industry a “social license to operate” in and near Indige- nous communities (Nelsen, 2006). Largely coming to prominence

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in the 1980s, CSR in the extractives industry emerged as a response to the dual threats of opposition to the environmental and social impacts of extractions and a desire to stave off burdensome governmental oversight. In recent years, these dual threats have coalesced around extractives industry activity in and near Indige- nous communities, particularly around the issue of Indigenous land rights, and the need for industry to again secure a social license to operate.

This need to consider the social and environmental impact of corporate practices was (and remains) pronounced for extractives companies, given that the industry is widely regarded as one of the most environmentally and socially disruptive practices undertaken by business (Jenkins & Yakoleva, 2006). Of crucial importance is the fact that such perception threatens the industry’s long-term survival. As such, CSR offers a means for extractives companies to publicly showcase a commitment to community interests which, in turn, affords them a social license to operate—thereby bolstering the future economic viability of the company (Devenin & Bianchi, 2017; Gilberthorpe, Agol, & Gegg, 2016; Gilberthorpe & Rajak, 2017). This social license is granted if communities perceive that “the company offers an economic benefit . . . contributes to the well‐being of the region, respects the local way of life . . . and also that company management listens (to communities), keeps pro- mises, and there is mutual dialogue and a reciprocal communica- tion” (Devenin & Bianchi, 2018, p. 868; see also Boutilier & Thompson, 2011).

Sport Management and CSR

While the CSR initiatives of the extractives industry comprise endeavors ranging from support for educational programs to employability training and to environmental sustainability efforts, various sport management scholars have noted that sport is partic- ularly unique in its relationship to CSR. For example, Babiak and Wolfe (2013) pointed to the combined features of passion, eco- nomics, transparency, and stakeholder management as explicitly connecting sport to CSR. Bason and Anagnostopoulos (2015) have similarly suggested that sport CSR is on the rise and that sport has been widely recognized by the corporate world as an especially useful vehicle for promoting social responsibility (see also Walker & Parent, 2010). Sport management scholars have also documen- ted the growth of the SFD and its implementation by corporate, governmental, and nongovernmental stakeholders (see Lyras & Peachey, 2011; Sherry, Schulenkorf, & Phillips, 2016; Welty Peachey & Burton, 2017). Furthermore, as Hayhurst and Szto (2016) noted, there has been a noticeable “creeping” of corporat- ized approaches to SFD programs in recent years, a trend that highlights how corporate policies are increasingly directed toward the funding of sporting programs focused on promoting develop- ment through sport.

Indeed, the links between CSR, SFD, and Indigenous com- munities have also received attention, with scholars, including Hayhurst and Giles (2013), Gardam et al. (2017), and Gartner- Manzon and Giles (2016), noting that extractives companies have increasingly implemented sport programming as part of their commitment to development in the Indigenous communities near to their operations. In doing so, extractives companies often seek to capitalize on the “transformative” potential of sport to contribute to social good, drawing from discourses reflected in the SFD sector that have grown in popularity since the late 1990s (see Kidd, 2008). Over this period, SFD has been increasingly mobi- lized by governmental and nongovernmental organizations in

pursuit of a range of development strategies, most often in the global South, including infrastructural development, the promotion of health and education, and the empowerment of marginalized peoples (see Darnell, 2007; Kidd, 2008; Levermore, 2010). More recently, SFD has proven attractive for corporations in their CSR platforms, given sport’s ties to mass media, youth appeal, cultural universality, and immediate gratification benefits (see Smith & Westerbeek, 2007). However, while there appears to be widespread appeal and a seemingly endless number of ways in which SFD is being employed by a similarly extensive array of private and governmental bodies to impact social circumstances, a growing body of critical scholarship questions the power structures that underpin SFD in CSR.

In speaking to the range of programs and sponsors, Giulianotti (2015) argued that sport-related CSR programs are primarily associated with neoliberal policies that favor a voluntarist approach to corporate giving and are rooted in discourses of private philan- thropy, voluntary self-regulation, and marketability. These neolib- eral tendencies, Giulianotti (2015) asserted, call into question the extent to which sport-based CSR can have tangible impacts when the emphasis is often on positive media releases and related public relations strategies, frequently codified when “end-of-project re- ports are filled with glossy photographs that are interspersed with a few supportive participant quotes” (p. 244). Furthermore, SFD CSR also reflects tensions within the CSR literature more broadly regarding the politics and accountability of corporate giving. “Nonstate actors,” Giulianotti (2015, p. 244) argued, “do not, in principle have the same degree of democratic mandate or position of accountability that should be found among state actors at the local and national level” (p. 244). These concerns draw attention to issues of private authority (see Cutler, 2010) and the increasing corporatization of development efforts, including those in the SFD realm (Hayhurst & Giles, 2013).

In many cases, the effect of corporate leadership in these realms is to promote “the status quo as normal and seeing markets and corporations as natural,” which thus fails to address the root causes of underdevelopment or social marginalization and disen- franchisement (Dauvergne & LeBaron, 2014, p. 11). These themes have particular relevance to our research of extractives-funded SFD in Indigenous communities. It is worth noting here that, in general, extractives companies do not directly employ the language of “sport for development.” Yet, given the growth of the field and the ways in which companies deploy and fund programs in pursuit of wide-ranging development outcomes, the use of sport in CSR strategies aligns with Coalter’s (2013) characterization of the “sport plus” model in which sport is implicitly understood to have inherent development properties for participants and commu- nities and where sport is adapted to augment other (corporate responsibility) programs to maximize their potential to achieve broad-based development objectives. Furthermore, as Hayhurst and Szto (2016) and Darnell and Hayhurst (2011) argued, there is a need to interrogate the ways in which corporations are increasingly taking up the SFD mantle in varied ways. This is particularly true for scholars interested in the decolonization potential of SFD: while SFD is meant to address a myriad of social issues, corporatized forms of SFD may in fact serve to maintain, or even further perpetuate, forms of socioeconomic inequality (Darnell & Hayhurst, 2011). Such concerns are relevant here, given that extractives companies are seeking to promote the development potential of their CSR programs, despite the socially and environmentally deleterious effects of extractivism (Jenkins & Yakovleva, 2006).

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Sport and colonialism

While SFD is commonly understood to be a low-cost and popular tool for promoting various forms of development, sport also has a long history of colonial exploit. As in a variety of settler colonial states, in early 20th-century Canada, government control over the Indigenous peoples was enacted through successive administra- tions with strict policies and programs, through which sport played an active role (Forsyth & Wamsley, 2006; Robidoux, 2012). Euro- Canadian sport became part of assimilatory strategies aimed at making the Indigenous peoples “productive” members of main- stream society, while rooting out what were seen as backward and barbaric traditional physical cultural practices (Henhawk, 2009; Paraschak, 1995; Robidoux, 2012). Residential schools were a primary site for promoting such abusive practices, where sport and physical education offered a disciplinary apparatus for “training and coercing bodies into a new form of social control” that would assist in the assimilatory mission (Forsyth & Giles, 2013, p. 34).

It is important to note, however, that the use of sport as a tool of colonialism in Canada was actively resisted by the Indigenous peoples (Henhawk, 2009; Robidoux, 2012). Indeed, literature in sport history and the sociology of sport has detailed the importance of land-based physical practices for many Indigenous groups and the extent to which the assimilatory strategies of government were resisted within and through both Euro-Canadian sport and tradi- tional physical–cultural practices (Hall, 2013). For many of the Indigenous peoples in Canada, sport, games, and recreational activities were (and are) often tied to the land and operated as key sites for reinforcing social, political, and economic aspects of life (Heine, 2013). As Heine (2013, p. 164) detailed,

“many games tested technical skills and competencies also important for land-based subsistence lifestyle,” with “target practice competitions such as the bow and arrow shoot and the spear throw (for both the Inuit and Dene), the harpoon throw (for the Inuit), and the axe-throw (for the Dene) . . . understood to be directly relevant for the development of survival skills.”

Heine (2013) further noted that the practical utility of such recreational practices cemented a fundamental link between people and land, a relationship that remains of profound importance for northern Indigenous peoples.

Land-based practices are of great importance to many Indige- nous communities. As such, there are inherent tensions in having extractives companies fund SFD programs, not only for the troublesome environmental and social record of the industry, but also that extractive activities prevent access to lands for traditional physical–cultural activities that SFD programs are now meant to offset, or replace. The research presented here is thus both timely and pertinent in that it engages directly with industry representatives to actively probe (a) their understandings of the extractives sector’s involvement in sport and recreation- related programs in Indigenous communities and (b) what they perceive the role of sport to be in CSR practices. In short, by researching industry representatives, we sought to address these issues and provide insights into corporate views regarding SFD programming in Indigenous communities in northern Canada.

Theoretical Framework: Postcolonial Approaches to Management and CSR

Postcolonial thought hinges on understandings of oppression in relation to other social categories, such as race, class, and nation,

and other intersections of power, and it starts by radically critiquing imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Postcolonial theory calls for the provincialization of universal Western ideologies and claims of knowledge and the “unquestioned sovereignty of West- ern epistemological, economic, political and cultural categories” such as those engrained in management and organizational studies (Banerjee & Prasad, 2008, p. 91). In turn, postcolonial theory offers a key analytic departure point for studying the cultural, semiotic, discursive, and epistemic facets of global inequalities (Go, 2016).

Postcolonial approaches have recently gained traction in a number of social science fields, such as international relations (see Agathangelou & Turcotte, 2016) and sociology (see Go, 2016). Though a number of studies have used postcolonial and critical sociological orientations to investigate SFD (see Darnell, 2012; Darnell & Kaur, 2015), fewer studies have used postcolonial frameworks in the realms of management and sport CSR, with some exceptions (see McSweeney, Hayhurst, & Kidd, 2019). This is surprising, given that critical management scholars have been drawing on postcolonial theory in their studies for the past 20 years (e.g., Calas & Smircich, 1999; Prasad, 2003). Our study aimed to contribute to postcolonial orientations to management and CSR in sport by using postcolonial approaches to critically interrogate corporate involvement in Indigenous-focused SFD. Drawing on the work of Calas and Smircich (1999) and Westwood (2006), this orientation invocates a focus on a number of issues, such as sameness, homogenization, and universalizing; silencing the other; the politics of knowledge and representation; and business, impe- rialism, and globalization.

The research here focused on the latter two points regarding representations and imperialism, while recognizing how the first two points permeate the relationships between the extractives industry and Indigenous communities. It is also important to note that academic research has all too often contributed to homogenizing and silencing the other. Given our own positional- ities as settlers, in this paper, we focused on how the CSR SFD programs of the extractives industry understand what development looks like, who is in need of it, and how it can be enacted. In this regard, in this research, we sought to “turn the gaze back on the West” (Khan, Westwood, & Boje, 2010, p. 16), so as to focus on extractives industry engagement with, and perpetuation of, the four points noted previously.

Postcolonial approaches to management and CSR thus present a pertinent opportunity for researchers to better foreground and critically consider the legacies of colonialism—particularly in relation to the role of corporations in projects of colonization, in which they have played a pivotal role. For example, Banerjee (2011, p. 324) recounted the work of the East India Company in expanding the British Empire:

The East India Company conquered territories, pillaged lands, enslaved populations and set up colonial outposts to serve king and country to the emergence of the modern sovereign nation state and its organizational accumulator, the transnational corporation.

As Frenkel and Shenhav (2006) pointed out, the very foundation of management (and organization) studies is rooted in a colonial epistemology that is largely premised on a binary distinction between “western” and “nonwestern.” In short, “the colonial aspect of the management viewpoint, which views the ‘other’ as inferior while seeing ‘western’ culture as a universal model, made man- agement into the spearhead of neo-colonialism in the age of decolonization” (Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006, p. 17). It follows

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that a postcolonial CSR approach would “explore how the stunted choices and deprived conditions the poor and marginalized see before them are in fact a product of the West’s structures, practices and processes” (Khan et al., 2010, p. 16).

While a postcolonial approach to management and CSR is useful in the “unlearning of a colonial mindset” (Khan et al., 2010, p. 18), it is important to point out that many Indigenous theorists are “suspicious of the ‘post’ in relation to the ‘colonial’ for ‘confront- ing the ongoing colonization of native lands remains at the top of the agenda for indigenous peoples’” (Byrd & Rothberg, 2011, p. 4 as cited in Rowe & Tuck, 2017). Put differently, some have suggested that postcolonial theory does not go far enough in actively tackling issues that decolonization clearly foregrounds, such as social justice, equality efforts, and landlessness (Rowe & Tuck, 2017). Global capitalism—heightened vis-à-vis neoliberal globalization—has, in many ways, recolonized Indigenous com- munities, exacerbating inequality, discrimination, and resource wars. As Connell (2018) pointed out, “the colonized world was, first and foremost, a source of data. Here raw material of very diverse kinds was collected, often with the aid of Indigenous knowledge workers, for shipment to the metropole” (p. 3).

In short, postcolonial approaches to management theory and CSR question the functionalist, colonialist, and universalist ten- dencies that tend to underpin management studies and ask us to interrogate the historical, local, cultural, and ideological stand- points of knowledge practices involved in organizations (Westwood, 2006). Overall, we suggest that postcolonial ap- proaches are fruitful in stimulating debates regarding the involve- ment of the extractives sector in funding, implementing, and developing SFD programs.

Methodology

After receiving research ethics board approval, the interview participants were selected using purposive sampling. As Neuman (1997) noted, purposive sampling is appropriate when searching for in-depth information from specific, specialized, or particular cases. Using this sampling approach, extractives corporations that utilize sport-based CSR programs in northern Canadian Indigenous communities were contacted. As part of a larger project (see Millington et al., 2019; van Luijk, Giles, Frigault, Millington, & Hayhurst, In Press), we identified corporations through their CSR and sustainability documents available online. We then limited the sample to those companies engaged in some form of SFD in Indigenous communities. Following this, we identified and con- tacted representatives involved in CSR, community outreach, or communications. This typically involved communicating directly with company representatives engaged in those programs (as identified through corporate Web pages, CSR documents, and LinkedIn profiles) over e-mail or phone. In total, we conducted interviews with six individuals from four extractives companies active in northern Canada that directly engage in, fund, or partner with multiple SFD-type organizations, sporting teams, events, or facilities. Three of the companies are headquartered in Canada and three of the companies operate outside of Canada. Each interview participant held a managerial or executive role within the company, related to CSR or community engagement. Five participants were women, and one participant was a man; none of the participants identified as Indigenous. Each participant had been employed by the company for several years and held a managerial or executive position in community outreach, sustainability, CSR, or Indige- nous affairs departments. They all agreed to participate on an

anonymous basis, and we gave them the following pseudonyms: Morgan, Alex, Jordan, Riley, Chris, and Jamie.

It is worth noting that the research team contacted over 35 employees and the head offices of 19 extractives companies engaged in SFD programming; however, the vast majority declined our invitation to be interviewed or were unwilling to do so “on-the- record.” While hesitant to speculate, we believe that this reticence speaks to the complexity of the topic and to the unpalatable understanding that, no matter how well-intentioned, CSR strategies cannot fully offset the harms caused by extractivism. Furthermore, given the novelty of the study as the first to engage directly with extractives representatives related to SFD programming, the depth of the interview results, and the overarching aim for transferability rather than generalizability (see Smith, 2018), we do not believe the sample size to be a limitation of the study.

Authors 1 and 2 conducted semi-structured interviews with six extractives industry representatives over the phone or Skype, which we digitally recorded with the participants’ consent (in-person interviews were not feasible, given the participants’ range of locations). Semi-structured interviews allow for a free-flowing conversational interview with open-ended and probing follow- up questions (Gagnon, 2010). Such an approach was intended to allow the participants to guide the direction of the interview and speak to what they felt was of most importance (Gagnon, 2010). The research team transcribed the digital recordings verbatim and then sent the transcripts back to the participants to review and make edits. None of the participants opted to make changes to the transcripts.

Once the participants approved the transcripts, we began the critical discourse analysis (CDA) process. CDA is commonly utilized within the social sciences to explore how discourses are mobilized to make social meaning (Phillips & Hardy, 2002). As Fairclough (2003) argued, discursive categories emanate from society and social relations in ways that serve to reproduce or challenge social realities. Discourse is therefore understood to be both privileging and marginalizing; as such, critical discourse analysis seeks to identify dominant discourses, and question the contexts in which these discursive constructions are produced and embedded (see Rovito & Giles, 2013), which aligns well with our theoretical framework.

We used Fairclough’s (2001) five stages of analysis to guide our CDA. The stages involved first identifying the social problem (extractives industry support of SFD in Indigenous communities), identifying the social relationships (industry, community, and government), considering whether social order “needs” the prob- lem (Is CSR a necessary intervention?), identifying and analyzing the discourses, and engaging in a reflexive analysis to evaluate our own critique. Authors 1 and 2 organized and coded the data with the support of the qualitative software analysis program Nvivo (QSR International Pty Ltd., Melbourne, Australia). As Silver and Lewins (2014) noted, software like Nvivo is regularly used in qualitative research to develop coding schemes, to link data and concepts, and to help to reinforce the nonlinear and fluid nature of qualitative analysis. In this way, initial concepts of “histories of colonialism,” “reconciliation,” “responsibility,” “benefit,” and improvement were expanded into categories of positive change, mutual benefit, and sustainable futures, which were then further explored in conversation with the broader literature in the field. These categories then informed the discourses of SFD as a catalyst for positive relationships, SFD as a contributor to “social good” in Indigenous communities, and funding SFD as socially responsible.

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Results

In this section, we have outlined three discourses mobilized by extractives industry representatives to explain their CSR strategies and their support for SFD in Indigenous communities: SFD is a catalyst for positive relationships between industry and commu- nity, SFD is a contributor to “social good” in Indigenous commu- nities, and extractives industry funding of SFD is “socially responsible.” Importantly, while the participants did not tend to use the specific term “sport for development,” as our interviews illustrate, the industry’s support of sport-based CSR aligns with the central tenets of sport as a contributor to “social good,” which defines much of the SFD sector. In what follows, we have explored each of these discursive categories in detail.

SFD Is a Catalyst for Positive Relationships

A prominent discourse mobilized by industry representative was that SFD is a catalyst for positive relationships. In other words, industry support for and sponsorship of SFD programs—as part of larger CSR platforms—was viewed as a means to address the industry’s historically contentious relationship with Indigenous communities. As part of this ostensible commitment to change, representatives were willing to recognize the exploitive history of the extractives industry and its role in colonial forms of resources extraction and subjugation. For example, in speaking to the history of colonialism in Canada and the role of the extractives industry therein, a familiar refrain was a “newfound” need to consider the wants of the community, rather than solely those of the corporation. In making reference to histories of colonial exploit over the past 150 years, extractives representatives keyed in on notions of relationships and a desire to listen to community needs as illustra- tive of a commitment to improving the industry’s standing with Indigenous communities:

Back in the day, you really just opened your mine, and you did your thing, and you engaged with government, and you got your permits, and on you went. And in today’s landscape, that’s changed. So, we’ve stepped back, and we’ve gone and negoti- ated agreements with a couple of the impacted First Nations. Then we’ve got the relationship we’ve got with those folks, and continue to engage and do some good things. (Morgan)

In the quote above, there is a clear recognition that the previous practices of ignoring Indigenous communities, extracting re- sources, and leaving the land scarred, with little regard for the impact of such practices, are no longer acceptable. In speaking to the broad motivations of CSR programming, industry representa- tives were thus willing to recognize that their companies had “poor relationships with Indigenous groups,” but also stressed that the industry was “going through transformation” by recognizing that the territories in which they operate belong to Indigenous peo- ples (Alex).

Just as industry representatives were willing to recognize the problematic history of their practices, they were also eager to draw upon discourses of social change to describe their contemporary standing with Indigenous peoples. Importantly, sport and the sponsorship of SFD programs were framed as part of such change and illustrative of relationships built on consultation, partnership, and co-ownership, rather than on exploitation and apathy:

We have a collaboration agreement, or we’re in negotiation for a collaboration agreement, with a large number of those

communities in our operating context in Canada. So, when we know that our partners are having kids from their communities who [are participating in a company sponsored SFD program], it actually really boosts the excitement about a sponsorship like this because we can actually link it back to our community partners . . . . It was a very transparent collaborative process. (Jordan)

Thus, SFD programming was framed as a means for industry and community to work together, to collaborate on a matter that would be exciting for both the company and for the community partner. SFD programs were thus discursively framed as a means of catalyzing positive change and actively shifting and improving the relationships between industry and the Indigenous communities.

Importantly, SFD programs were also framed as a way of helping to support Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the land. “It’s an interesting thing because a lot of those First Nations are the stewards of recreational land,” Riley noted in explaining how they selected what programs to fund. “We often partner with First Nations to maintain trails, so there is a strong linkage between the recreation for everybody and First Nations—so there’s a lot of connections there and that’s why we might land on specific invest- ments like that” (Riley). Similarly, a second representative of the same company noted that the company funds a youth camp that offered a “mix of traditional knowledge and literacy . . . and a whole bunch of different cultural activities for the youth but combined with different educational pursuits” (Chris). In this way, forms of sport and outdoor recreation offered a means for the company to support connections to traditional lands and cultural practices that had been potentially compromised by colonial practices of land appropriation. Thus, from the perspective of industry representatives, supporting and funding SFD programs were made intelligible through the discursive framing of sport as a key catalyst to changing their relationships with Indigenous communities from one of exploitation or ambivalence to one of consultation and partnership.

SFD Is a Contributor to “Social Good” in Indigenous Communities

For many of the representatives interviewed, support for SFD was illustrative not only of a change in relationships with Indigenous communities, but also of a commitment to promoting “social good” in Indigenous communities. Indeed, corporate representatives were eager to argue that extractivism was beneficial to the communities, whereby vast corporate resources could be put to good use and help develop the communities in which they operate. For example, industry representatives noted that their support for SFD program- ming stems, in part, from a sense that such programs would contribute to developmental outcomes, including health promotion and educational opportunities, in Indigenous communities. The following quote from Jamie is illustrative in this regard:

From a community building perspective . . . there’s very much a focus on breaking addiction cycle, for example. And in certain communities, Indigenous communities, they see sport as the opportunity to do that, then that’s about community building. So, for me it’s very much going to come back to those [issues]: community and capacity, leadership solutions from the community piece.

SFD programs were thus framed as an opportunity to promote positive change and self-improvement within the community, a sentiment mobilized by other extractives representatives:

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You often hear things like “sports keep kids off the streets,” and I think that on the flip side of that, it keeps kids engaged in something, not out of trouble, but it actually keeps them actively engaged in something that they love. I think in communities where now we’re having this wild epidemic of suicide and depression and drug use and things like that, that definitely supports the notion around getting kids involved in something that keeps them actively happy and engaged in something they love. (Jordan)

From the perspective of industry representatives, SFD programs are of benefit to local communities in that they strengthen bonds within the community, offering a means to addressing ill-health— including drug use and suicide—while fostering personal growth and development.

Notably, SFD programs were seen as being not only of benefit to the youth, but the community writ large. For example, in terms of community capacity building, one representative noted,

[Anticipating the broader impacts] maybe helps position sports and recreation more clearly within community development . . . . The broader impact of having the community participate in something like this, participating in sports and recreation might prevent them from doing other things or might encour- age them to develop leadership skills, or this—this sort of broader impact for a community rather than the outcomes for particular individuals. (Riley)

As SFD was understood to contribute to social good for individuals and for the community as a whole, removing barriers to participat- ing in sport was seen as a key contribution made by industry. For example, one representative noted that residents of Indigenous communities face numerous barriers to participating in sport:

Generally speaking, Indigenous participation was low because of barriers to entry. Quite often some family didn’t have access to the equipment or, there wasn’t access to the transport . . . . What are the barriers? . . . Once you give people aspirations for a way out, it’s a remarkable change. (Alex)

Indeed, the notion that sport could create new, more sustain- able futures for Indigenous youth was a common discourse mobi- lized within the interviews. For example, one representative saw sport as a pathway “into what was otherwise a closed world” for Indigenous youth, through its ability to provide

access for training and to provide an opportunity to mentoring —we supported international Aboriginal athletes on the basis that . . . they would get to local communities to be with young people, to provide them with you know—expanding horizons —to think about alternatives to what might be in the local community, which might be no hope at all, um and the other aspect of sport was that it was a very social activity . . . it created a change in people’s aspirations. (Alex)

Furthermore, supporting SFD programs was not only framed as a means of reconnecting with traditional land and cultural practices, but also a potential means of coping with the effects of neocolonialism and associated forms of marginalization and disenfranchisement in the contemporary context. As Morgan noted,

They all still behave with a lot of anger. And the reason why they behave with a lot of anger is because they still continue to

fight for everything they’ve got . . . . That’s where I think sport can be real powerful. Because getting angry when you’re playing sport is okay, I’m all right with getting angry, and you get a little tougher, you turn on that, really what it is, is turning that winning switch on versus losing switch.

In this way, sport offered something unique in that it provided a productive outlet and coping mechanism in order to focus on the future. Thus, providing a “way out” or “expanding horizons” was framed by industry representatives through sport’s ability to create new opportunities for local youth via the funding of SFD programs, providing equipment or contributing to sport infrastructure.

Funding SFD Is Socially Responsible

While industry representatives were clear that the community benefits were the priority in SFD programming, it is also important to note that industry has itself something to gain through CSR and from SFD programs in particular. While perhaps not the primary concern, corporate representatives did note that SFD programs offer their companies an opportunity to showcase their commit- ment to community development, a key aspect of social responsi- bility. Thus, in some respects, SFD programs act as a means of marketing to combat poor public perception of the industry, both locally and within the broader public sphere. As Alex noted,

A strong aspect to [funding SFD] is pride. The contribution that the company makes to people doing well. We’re not Coca- Cola, so it’s not about that type of sales approach . . . [sport] was used as part of our positioning to try and change our engagement and knowledge, our relationships across a wider network.

In other words, unlike other like other corporations, the dubious social and environmental record of the extractives industry requires a visible, community-based approach to marketing. Jordan simi- larly remarked,

In the mining sector as you know, you know if you were working in the baking industry or whatever, when you’re investing in a program it’s not necessarily that your customers or stakeholders are benefiting from that program, it might just be a part of an education strategy or some strategy that you have. But we’re not a customer facing industry.

In not being a “customer facing industry” like a bakery or Coca- Cola, there is a need to engage in CSR strategies that are highly visible in order to draw the attention of others. As is well documented in the sport management literature (see Darnell & Kaur, 2015), SFD is one such highly visible vehicle for CSR strategies.

A second way in which SFD was framed as an avenue to social responsibility for the extractives industry was through notions of “employability,” whereby CSR SFD programs offered a means of improving employability within and for Indigenous communities. Here, it was clear that extractives industry executives felt that—by providing employment opportunities for Indigenous communities and training them through sport to gain the necessary “skill set” to be highly employable—they were demonstrating social responsi- bility. For example, as Morgan noted, SFD promoted skill sets within Indigenous youth that would be transferable to the work- place and even provide opportunities for employment within the extractives sector:

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So, I certainly see several qualities. Probably leadership is number one. Independence, number two . . . . And just teamwork and understanding. Teamwork and collaborating and working with others is a big strength and good tool that you can pull away from any of that stuff . . . . Certainly through the community, they would be identified as such, and based on some of that knowledge, skill and ability they’ve picked up, if there’s an open employment opportunity, they should highlight that and bring it to our attention, and in our discussions when we are looking for employable folks to fill in positions, right?

Other interview participants similarly drew upon this notion that sport provided opportunities for Indigenous youth to become more “employable”:

There’s this apparent knowledge that being active is important and obviously everyone from sports knows that you get disciplined, you are probably strong as a person and physi- cally. You know that there are a lot of positive attributes that you look for in an employee that you probably find in someone who is an athlete. I don’t see a far reach in that if you’re keen and disciplined, and interested in sport as a young person that you may also be keen and interested and healthy and actively looking for those opportunities. (Jordan)

Similar points regarding social responsibility were made in reference to the “sustainability” of the SFD programs. Here, sport was framed as a means to support the futures of Indigenous youth and Indigenous communities in which they operated, while secur- ing the industry’s position within said futures. For example, Jamie offered that, when considering what programs to fund, sustainabil- ity was a priority:

When I look at programs, I’ll look at sustainability and even if we’re still operating in the community, we probably won’t fund beyond five years, it’s an exception if we do. Because we also want that organization working towards sustainability . . . building their own solution, having it funded, having support in place with the goal of moving them toward sustainability.

The following from Jordan is similarly illustrative in this regard:

When it comes to the overall mining industry, looking at the impact on communities is definitely where we struggle with it, when it comes to this like community contribution. We also look at environmental impacts as welland we also look at other kinds of impacts like the economic impact of local procurement and local hiring. But when it comes to putting money into social programs or community programs and initiatives, we don’t always have good levers for measuring impact and so thankfully organizations [like the SFD program], when they have the capacity to do their own impact measurements that really helps us.

Thus, most participants viewed sustainability as key to the long- term viability of the program or the economic future of the community and company. As we discuss further below, the environmental sustainability of the programs (or industry activity) was conspicuously absent from such discourse.

Discussion

The purpose of this research was to better understand—and locate—the discourses that are mobilized by extractives industry

representatives in order to explain their involvement in corporate- sponsored SFD programs in Indigenous communities. The results demonstrate that company representatives mobilized three over- arching discourses to explain their sport-based CSR initiatives: first, representatives drew on discourses of “sport is a catalyst to changed relations” between industry and community; second, and relatedly, industry representatives drew upon discourses of “SFD is [a] contributor [to] ‘social good’ in Indigenous communities”; and third, industry representatives mobilized discourses of “SFD is a socially responsible vehicle for giving back to the community.” In this section, we have made use of CDA—informed by the literature reviewed above—to interrogate the espoused reasons for extrac- tives industry involvement in SFD programs. In what follows, we have discussed three main areas relating to power and change, supposed beneficiaries, and sport’s role in sustainable futures.

Of Power and Change

Industry representatives seemed willing to recognize the impact of colonialism on Indigenous peoples and communities in Canada and that the extractives industry has historically paid little attention to Indigenous rights and interests in their areas of operation, while directly benefitting from dispossession and marginalization. Where extractives companies were once able to “drop in” to Indigenous territories, extract resources, and depart, there is now acknowledg- ment that this is no longer possible. The participants subsequently highlighted SFD programs (among other CSR practices) as indicative of the new era of engagement and consultation with Indigenous communities. In this regard, the industry representa- tives drew upon discourses of partnership, co-ownership, and negotiation to frame their “new approach” to relationship building with Indigenous communities. In place of (colonial) understand- ings of Indigenous lands as idle yet resource-rich and of Indigenous peoples as unwilling or unable to make use of such untapped capital, contemporary CSR practices more purposefully and stra- tegically frame industry and Indigenous communities as partners. These discourses bestow industry with an air of compassion, or benevolence, for the commitment to “doing right” by the commu- nities in which they operate, sharing in the generation of wealth to support community capacity building.

These discourses of change, we argue, belie the broader power dynamics that continue to underpin the relationships between industry and community. As Howitt and Lawrence (2008) asserted, negotiations between extractives companies and Indigenous com- munities have always been and will always be embedded in historically structured power relations that are far from equal. Indeed, postcolonial approaches to management and CSR show that historical relations of power may prevent the unshackling of assumptions that underpin the colonial-corporate mindset (Parsons, 2008). In the framing of partnerships, corporations are positioned as “a mediator of interests in the everyday engagement between those representing corporations and those representing Indigenous peoples,” imbued with paternalistic discourses that render “the Indigenous domain as unable and unsuitable to exercise decisive influence over environmental and social governance” (Howitt & Lawrence, 2008, p. 101).

In some ways, CSR strategies seek to relegate the industry’s troublesome social and environmental record to the past, while offering a new way forward through support of SFD built on discourses of partnership and change. Indeed, a common theme within the critical literature is that SFD programs rely upon the supposedly inherent ability of sport to promote social good,

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combined with vague and malleable definitions of what develop- ment entails (see Darnell, 2012; Giulianotti, 2015; Levermore, 2010). Such a priori understandings are thus particularly attractive for CSR, in that the ability of SFD programs—and their corporate sponsors—to promote social good is assumed and goes unques- tioned. Furthermore, the research here points to how these issues overlap with the politics of resource extraction in Canada and the need for extractives companies to be viewed in a positive light. As Levitan and Cameron (2015) argued, the emergence of CSR as a key dimension of business operations in northern Canada has advanced neoliberal logics that include “the removal of barriers to accumulating capital; the privatization of state assets, functions and services; and the promotion of market-based solutions for various social, economic, environmental and political struggles” (p. 269). Discourses of partnership enacted through CSR programs thus propagate approaches to corporate-led development in Indig- enous communities that privilege individualism, entrepreneurial- ism, and capitalist growth, while overlooking the ongoing and more deleterious effects of extractivism that include socioeco- nomic disparity and environmental harm (Levitan & Cameron, 2015; Preston, 2013).

Of Benefit to Whom?

Industry representatives also drew heavily on a discourse of SFD as a social good for Indigenous communities and industry. Whereas once, resource extraction was clearly a key component to settler colonialism with little care for how local Indigenous communities were affected, the new “socially responsible” approach to commu- nity relations seeks to emphasize the perceived benefits gained by Indigenous peoples connected to areas in which extractives opera- tions take place.

While industry representatives readily pointed to the commu- nity benefits of their support for CSR and SFD initiatives, it is equally clear that such programs are of benefit to the industry itself, in at least two ways. First, such outreach goes to great lengths in affording companies social license to operate. The logic goes that communities benefit from the vast wealth created through corporate activities, and corporations are able to position themselves as “good neighbors” intent on doing what’s “right” for the communities in which they operate. Second, the provision of CSR programming through sport offers a response to mounting public unrest regarding the social and environmental impacts of the extractives industry (see Aqueveque, Rodrigo, & Duran, 2018; Du & Vieira, 2012; Oh, Bae, & Kim, 2017). Being seen to be “good neighbors” who do “social good” has shown to be particularly important in “contro- versial industries” like tobacco, firearms, gambling, and more recently, the extractives sector (Du & Vieira, 2012). Indeed, the extractives industry has increasingly been seen as controversial for their adverse social, environmental, and ethical practices that include, for example, deterioration in local air and water quality, global warming, and high-profile disasters such as oil spills (Du & Vieira, 2012). CSR strategies are, therefore, of chief concern in promoting goodwill in the eyes of the public.

Given the pervasive common-sense understanding of sport’s ability to contribute to a range of “social good” objectives in the vein of SFD and the concomitant need for extractives companies to advertise their “genuine” commitment to sustainable futures for Indigenous communities, it is perhaps unsurprising that the indus- try looked to engage with SFD. As noted throughout this paper, sport has been increasingly incorporated into CSR endeavors because it offers corporations direct access to local communities

while communicating seemingly universal values (Levermore, 2010). As such, sport offers a potentially attractive outlet for extractives-led CSR practices in that it advances corporate objec- tives while contributing to “social good.” In this way, the focus of industry on promoting good health and educational outcomes and the focus on the future, “keeping kids off the street,” articulate with the “transformative” potential of sport while focusing social change on the individual.

Yet, a growing body of critical literature has called into question the extent to which CSR SFD programs can contribute to “development” and other forms of “social good.” As Giulianotti (2015) noted, there are a number of concerns related to whether CSR and sport-based interventions have tangible social impacts and benefits, outside of positive media releases. Furthermore, sport-related CSR endeavors have been accused of being driven by asymmetrical power relations and engendering a dependency model of development that promotes a reliance on industry for social welfare programming (see also Levermore, 2010). Indeed, what is missing from our work here (but is featured in other articles based on this project) are the voices of Indigenous community members who are not necessarily receptive to sport-focused CSR programming funded, developed, and/or executed by the extrac- tives sector (see van Luijk et al., In Press). In this regard, the top- down nature of SFD CSR initiatives in Indigenous communities risks a modern form of (neo)colonialism.

Issues of land rights and environmental health are central to such forms of (neo)colonialism. While SFD programs were framed by participants as a means of reconnecting with traditional land and cultural practices—and of coping with the effects of (neo)colo- nialism—they ultimately fail to address the environmental harms caused by extractivism, including restricting access to traditional lands. There is a risk then that “offsetting” the damages caused to Indigenous lands through Euro-Canadian sport-based CSR shifts attention away from the ways that Indigenous peoples have been prevented from participating in traditional land-based practices through extractivism in the first place (see Levermore, 2010). Such concerns point to an inherent tension in the CSR programming of the extractives industry: discourses of social responsibility are framed around understandings of economic forms of sustainability, rather than environmental ones (see Millington et al., 2019). Even if lands are remediated after mine closure and reclamation, the land is irreparably changed, thus compromising claims to sustainability. Ultimately, these forms of social good fail to engage with many of the factors that contribute to industrial harm in Indigenous com- munities, including—but not limited to—the impact of extracti- vism on the health of and access to traditional lands.

Conclusion

In this paper, we identified key discourses mobilized by extractives industry executives who are employed by companies. Companies that fund and implement SFD programming in Indigenous com- munities in Canada (and globally) as part of their CSR portfolios were found to draw upon discourses related to positive change, social good, and social responsibility. Taken together, these findings force us to think critically about the nexus of SFD, extractivism, and the politics of development in Indigenous com- munities. Three conclusions emerged from our preceding analysis: power relations within CSR and SFD initiatives must be explicit, even when framed within a discourse of partnership; the role of sport in contributing to “social good” must continue to be called into question; and critical attention must be paid to the ways in

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which the benefits of CSR from the extractives industry are framed, particularly in regard to matters of land rights.

The politics of decolonization and the role of SFD are also worthy of consideration here. Certainly, previous research has demonstrated that Indigenous physical practices and other health-promoting practices can play important roles in broader decolonization efforts, particularly those that directly connect to, and prioritize, the land (Hayhurst, Giles, & Wright, 2016). That is, the land is paramount to extractives-funded Indigenous SFD in Canada. For it is the land that is being extracted, yet it is also the very foundation and essence for many Indigenous physical cultural practices in northern Canada (Norman et al., 2015). While it is clear that a “decolonizing framework prioritizes Indigenous sovereignty and futurity” (Rowe & Tuck, 2017, p. 8), Indigenous communities need to have the power to decide what Indigenous self-determina- tion and sovereignty in SFD look like for them. In saying this, we return back to the recognition discussed earlier in our paper, that SFD is in and of itself rooted in Western imperialism and is part of the colonization process in Canada. However, this does not pre- clude SFD from being part of a decolonial future, defined by Ritskes (2017) in the following way:

The decolonial future is not the emergence of one people at the expense of another, but a future where everyone’s right to be is affirmed and the challenges of working together to build with and on the land beyond the limits and definitions of settler colonialism are embraced. (pp. 84–85)

Ritskes’ thoughts lead us to more questions than answers, particularly in regard to unequal power relations that often make corporate funding and CSR programs the “least worst” option for Indigenous communities when few other forms of investment are readily available. Such questions include the following: What does this decolonial future highlighted by Ritskes in the quote above mean for SFD? How can the land be centered in Indigenous-focused SFD programming, policy, and practice without at the same time exploiting the sacred connection between Indigenous peoples and the land? How might the colonial mindset that seems so engrained in the CSR and SFD discourses highlighted throughout our paper be unlearned (cf. Khan et al., 2010)? How do we move beyond the distracting narratives of pity, salvation, benevolence, and altruism that underlie industry-led SFD CSR interventions in Indigenous communities and instead focus on the unequal power relations and stunted choices that make extractives-industry-funded SFD pro- gramming in Indigenous communities even possible in the first place? And should we be critical of Indigenous-focused SFD CSR programs that work to prepare people to better participate in competitive capitalism (see Millington et al., 2019)? While respond- ing to these questions is beyond the scope of our paper, we suggest that these issues present a need for further research. Furthermore, these questions represent a potentially useful departure point for thinking critically about the future trajectory of (Indigenous- focused) SFD and CSR in Canada and globally.

The question of practice also presents a point of departure for future research, particularly with regard to how SFD programming can be implemented in a manner that aligns with a decolonization approach. From a sport management perspective, the relationship between SFD and CSR is worthy of particular attention, especially if we follow Wainwright’s (2008) assertion that decolonizing devel- opment “proceeds as resistance to the ways in which neo-liberal mechanisms embedded in development ‘(re-)colonize’ marginalized groups via market forces and social hierarchies” (cited in Darnell & Hayhurst, 2011, p. 186). Thus, we advocate for future research

within sport management to better consider the links between SFD and decolonization from a practitioner perspective.

Following Rowe and Tuck (2017), such work would do well to consider decolonization as a verb rather than a noun in a manner that prioritizes social justice, civil rights, and equality efforts in a context of landedness, racial categories, and settler colonialism. Foreground- ing a capabilities approach within Indigenous communities may be one pathway to such a decolonizing approach so as to view sport less as tool of development or as a “social activity that teaches practical lessons, develops character, or offers a hook to engage young people in education” (Darnell & Dao, 2017, p. 30). Instead, we suggest it would be fruitful to prioritize and uphold self-determined opportu- nities rather than “development” outcomes. Prioritizing local knowl- edge systems and local knowledge holders in design and deployment would be a foundational consideration in such an approach. As it pertains to corporatized approaches to SFD, future research would do well to heed Hapeta, Stewart-Withers, and Palmer’s (2019) call for “ground-up” (rather than corporatized “top-down”) approaches that embrace indigeneity and create meaningful transformation through approaches that “adopt an ‘Indigenous plus’ rather than ‘plus Indige- nous’ [vessel] to deepen practices . . . and create more connectivity” (p. 8). As the study here has shown, such an approach is particularly relevant for CSR models of development that all too often privilege ill-defined, homogenized, and nonlocalized notions of “social good.” Ultimately, the answers to the questions posed here must place control of SFD programming—corporatized or otherwise—squarely in the hands of Indigenous communities so as to promote sovereignty and self-determination.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (grant no. 142788).

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