Congratulations to Dr. Janice Forsyth for receiving $2.5M SSHRC Partnership Grant with the Indigenous Hockey Research Network (IHRN).
Ice hockey has long been entangled with settler colonialism—used in Residential Schools as a tool of assimilation and shaped by racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia—yet it also remains a powerful site of Indigenous resilience and community life.
The Indigenous Hockey Research Network (IHRN) is reshaping this contested space by advancing community-driven, Indigenous-led research. The IHRN brings together 18 co-investigators, including many of the leading Indigenous scholars of sport, alongside two collaborators and 21 partner organizations from across Canada.
The grant is co-directed by Dr. Janice Forsyth (UBC) and Dr. Sam McKegney (Queen’s, PI), whose collective leadership connects Indigenous communities with researchers across the arts, sciences, and humanities.
Projects span three areas: Decolonizing Systems (challenging structural racism in hockey), Decolonizing Experiences (tools to support athletes and advocates), and Decolonizing Approaches (indigenizing research methods and knowledge mobilization).
Together, this network is transforming hockey into a site of Indigenous values, ethics, and decolonial change.
Co-applicant: Dr. Moss Norman