Decolonization, Reconciliation & Hockey w/ Chief Wilton Littlechild (Se 2 Ep 2)

 

Wilton Littlechild is a Cree chief from Maskwacis, Alberta. He is a lawyer, a former hockey player, a residential school survivor, and more recently he was one of the commissioners of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He joins us as a special guest on this episode of Changing On The Fly to talk about his own life story, how we can use hockey to promote nation to nation dialogue and understanding, and how we can move towards decolonizing sport, particularly through the Calls to Action of the commission.

Episode 13: The Story of Fred Sasakamoose (Season 1 finale)

 

This is our last episode of Changing On The Fly for season 1! We’ll be back with season 2 in the fall.  So as we head out for the summer, we leave you with this very special episode.

Fred Sasakamoose is a Cree elder from the Ahtahkakoop Cree reservation in central Saskatchewan. He famously became one of the first Indigenous people to ever play in the NHL, putting on a Chicago Blackhawks jersey and playing 11 games for the team in the 1953 season. But the road to there was paved with trauma, tragedy, and resilience. Fred, like so many other Indigenous people of his generation, is a survivor of Canada’s Residential School system. He learned to play hockey at St-Michael’s Indian Residential School, but also suffered great abuse there. Still, he kept up with his passion, and went on to make it to the highest level for a hockey player.

Arenas on Stolen Land – Edmonton’s Rogers Place & Gentrification

 

 

Today on the podcast, we go to Alberta.

 

 

The Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers are sworn enemies on the ice, their rivalry known as the ‘Battle of Alberta’. And off the ice, the way these cities approach their hockey infrastructure couldn’t be any more different. Calgary residents recently voted in a referendum to refuse the city’s bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympics, and the city is also adamantly refusing to pour public money into building a new arena for the Flames. Meanwhile 3 hours up the road in Edmonton, the Oilers moved into their shiny new digs at Roger’s Place in 2016, at a cost of $313 million to local taxpayers. And to top it off, the new arena is contributing to the forced displacement of an urban Indigenous community just down the street.

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Rylan Kafara and Jay Scherer from the University of Alberta, who have both been studying the impacts of Roger’s Place on their city. Rylan gives us a tour of the surrounding area, and they both break it all down for us.

Episode 6 – McGill Redmen: Change the Name

 

On this episode of Changing On The Fly, we kick it with Tomas Jirousek, an Indigenous student athlete at McGill University in Montreal. He’s a rower, former hockey player, hailing from the Kainai First Nation in Alberta, and he’s been leading the charge to get McGill to change their racist varsity team name – The Redmen.

Then, we take you to a recent demonstration held at McGill on this issue, and we’ll hear from Nakuset of the Montreal Native Women’s Shelter, and Denzel Sutherland-Wilson, another Indigenous athlete at McGill (from the Gitxan nation).

Episode 1: This Game We Love, On Stolen Land

 

 

 

Welcome to the very first episode of Changing on the Fly, a podcast about hockey and social justice.

On this episode, we lace up the skates and hit the ice to talk about colonialism in hockey, and the Indigenous hockey experience. What does it mean to call hockey “Canada’s game” while Canada is a country built on stolen Native land? We’re gonna take a deep dive into hockey’s role in Canada’s residential schools, the presence of Native mascots in sports, and the changing role of Indigenous hockey players in the NHL today.