Sport as a cultural offset in Aboriginal Australia (original) (raw)

Sport-for-development is increasingly employed as a tool for domestic development within marginalized communities. In Australia, sport is assumed to have a ‘natural fit’ with Aboriginal communities – accordingly it is utilized in a variety of ways. In seeking to challenge and examine this situation and the dominant / unquestioned / invisible assumptions inherent, we propose the notion of cultural offsetting – whereby sport is positioned as a way of offsetting a variety of losses that Australian Aboriginal communities and peoples have experienced and continue to experience. Within the context of sport, this article examines whether cultural offsetting using sport is feasible and/or desirable. While the conclusion reached is that Aboriginal peoples have been using sport as a cultural offset for some time, serious questions remain regarding the capacity of sport-for-development programmes to offset the variety of losses (e.g. culture, language, identity) experienced by Aboriginal Australians.