Braiding Counter-Stories: A Narrative Inquiry into Sport, Indigenous Identity, and Healing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This project used narrative inquiry to explore the sport, physical activity, and education experiences of Indigenous post-secondary student-athletes in the Canadian prairies. In Saskatchewan, where Indigenous peoples represent 17% of the population (Statistics Canada, 2022), their presence in university athletics reflects a striking gap in athletic representation. At the University of Saskatchewan, only 3% (13 of 420) of student-athletes identify as Indigenous (N. Orr, personal communication, October 2023). This underrepresentation prompted a critical question: Why do Indigenous student-athletes remain marginalized in post-secondary sport? While existing literature documents the systemic barriers Indigenous communities face in accessing education and sport, rooted in the enduring impacts of colonization, there remains a lack of research that centers the voices and lived experiences of Indigenous student-athletes themselves. Narrative inquiry, grounded in the dimensions of temporality, place, and sociality (Clandinin, 2013), offered a way for three participants—Phoenix, Lily, and Sam—to share their personal journeys across time, connecting past experiences to their current realities. To guide this work, the research team drew on the braid as a conceptual and ethical metaphor, inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013). The braid, formed through the interweaving of Indigenous knowledge, story, and relational accountability, helped us hold the layered, temporal, and relational nature of the narratives. It did not replace narrative inquiry but deepened our commitment to honoring Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Data was generated through three in-depth conversations with each participant, focusing on early experiences, transitions into post-secondary sport, and present-day reflections. Each narrative revealed how sport served as more than physical activity; it became a site of healing, cultural reconnection, and personal transformation amid the effects of intergenerational trauma. Through story, participants did not simply reclaim identity; they braided new narratives of resistance, ceremony, and hope. Although all three have since completed their athletic careers, sport continues to shape their lives and communities. These stories offer critical insights for institutions seeking to support Indigenous student-athletes, not by assimilating them, but by creating space for culturally grounded, relational, and holistic engagement in sport and education.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.027 | 0.051 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.017 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.015 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".