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. Continue reading “Episode 13: The Story of Fred Sasakamoose (Season 1 finale)”
Arenas on Stolen Land – Edmonton’s Rogers Place & Gentrification
Today on the podcast, we go to Alberta.
Continue reading “Arenas on Stolen Land – Edmonton’s Rogers Place & Gentrification”
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). Continue reading “Episode 6 – McGill Redmen: Change the Name”
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. Continue reading “Episode 1: This Game We Love, On Stolen Land”