Masters Indigenous Games involve sports and so much more

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Apart from Canada, Mexico and New Zealand, participants at this year’s Games also came from the U.S. and Greenland. Events held throughout the city included golf (Loch March), volleyball (TD Place Arena), track and field (Terry Fox Sports Facility), basketball (Carleton University), Arctic sports (Algonquin College) and 3D archery (Spencerville). Additionally, a small “Cultural Village” at Lansdowne invited the public to enjoy displays of music and dance, and peruse sponsors’ wares.

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Danielle Johnson is with Indigenous Sport & Wellness Ontario and a member of the planning board with the Masters Indigenous Games. Photo by Ashley Fraser /PostmediaArticle content

This year’s Games began on Thursday and ran until Sunday.

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“MIG is an opportunity to bring Indigenous people together,” said Danielle Johnson, a manager with Indigenous Sport & Wellness Ontario, which organizes the Games.

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“Sport and movement is medicine,” she added. “This gives us time to heal together, come together and talk. It’s more than just sport.”

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The exchange of culture was why Mexico City’s Jorge Hernandez, who is not Indigenous, came to Ottawa with the rest of that country’s contingent of athletes, coaches and trainers. Hernandez gave a demonstration of juego de pelota (translation: ballgame), a millennia-old Mayan and Aztec game in which players bounce a heavy rubber ball, almost as large as a soccer ball, with their legs, feet and, notably, hips. The game has been enjoying a revival in Mexico in the last couple of decades, and it’s the hope of Hernandez and others that it, too, might catch on with Indigenous groups outside of Mexico and become a mainstay at the Masters Games.

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Jose Jorge Hernandez demonstrates Ulama, a traditional Mexican ball game played by striking a heavy rubber ball with the hip. Photo by Ashley Fraser /PostmediaArticle content

“I would love to show Canadians the ballgame because it’s so important to my culture,” Hernandez said, also through a translator.

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That exchange of cultures was also part of what drove friends and volleyball teammates Koral Spencer-Tebiscon, Trevor Sealhunter and Jerrell Horse-Sam to make the 16-hour drive, along with Spencer-Tebiscon’s mother, Rhonda Spencer, from their home in the Cree Nation of Chisasibi — “as far north in Quebec as the road goes,” according to Spencer-Tebiscon — to compete at MIG. The three athletes held fundraisers in their community to help with expenses.

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Athletes, from left, Koral Spencer-Tebiscon, Trevor Sealhunter and Jerrell House-Sam, who were in Ottawa for the Games from Chisasibi, a Cree village located in northern Quebec. Photo by Ashley Fraser /PostmediaArticle content

“I had so much fun,” said Spencer-Tebiscon. “Where we’re from, everything that we do is regional, and we’re self-taught. We get very good game play there, but there’s only so far you can go. So having these events is a great experience, and very eye-opening.

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“When you’re from a small community, it’s really easy to feel that that is your world and that’s all you can achieve or that’s all you can meet. So it’s really nice to see other communities and reach out and find that camaraderie, to be able to make new friendships and understand different indigenous cultures.”

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