Indigenous Youth Development through Sport and Physical Activity: Sharing Voices, Stories, and Experiences

Recent research has highlighted the cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of sport and physical activity participation for Indigenous youth (McHugh, Coppola, & Sinclair, 2013; Hanna, 2009; Lavallee, 2007). Despite the importance of Indigenous peoples participating in sport and physical activity (e.g., Forsyth & Giles, 2013), the meaning of youth development in this context is not well understood. The purpose of this research was to understand Indigenous youth development within the context of sport and physical activity through the voices, stories and experiences of Indigenous youth. Participants were 99 Indigenous youth (52 males and 47 females) between the ages of 15 and 25 years who took part in one of 13 sharing circles. Each of the sharing circles was facilitated by a trained Indigenous youth with guidance from an Elder/Traditional person. A Two-Eyed Seeing approach (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2012) was used to analyze the sharing circle discussions. This analytical process involved an initial inductive thematic analysis of the transcribed verbatim data followed by an Indigenous symbolic visual analysis of emerging themes using the Medicine Circle. Results revealed that involvement in sport and physical activity impacted Indigenous youth physically, cognitively, and emotionally. The spiritual impact was not as evident. Findings from the research will inform the development of a measure of Indigenous youth development within sport and physical activity settings.