P.E.I. sports leaders urged to find ways to bring Indigenous youth into the game

Sports organizations across Prince Edward Island are being encouraged to invite Indigenous youth to come and try their sport. 

The P.E.I. Aboriginal Sport Circle invited Island sport groups to Abegweit First Nation in Scotchfort recently to learn more about Mi'kmaw culture, as a first step toward reaching out to share their sport. 

About a dozen representatives from provincial and multi-sport organizations took part in the session, which started with a smudging ceremony and cultural presentation by elder Terry LeBlanc. 

"I think it's important to offer opportunity to Indigenous youth — and you don't know what you might be interested in if you've never had a chance to try," said senior program co-ordinator Lynn Ann Hogan. 

"We at the Aboriginal Sport Circle can't be out and deliver everything ourselves, so that's where partners come in.

"We want to have close working relationships so that we can invite those provincial sports organizations to come to the community, to deliver in community or offer youth an opportunity to try out for a team, or go to a come-try event that might be out of their community as well," Hogan said.

Hogan said the priority of the workshop was to provide an introduction to the Mi'kmaw culture, and talk about what sport organizations could to offer a safe environment to try a new sport. 

"For example, some of our youth who grew up in Lennox Island, they went to school in Lennox Island with a very small number of their community members from kindergarten right to Grade 6," Hogan said.

"To make the jump to a junior high school out of your community could be quite scary, and you just might not see yourself in those other sport opportunities.

"You might think to yourself, 'Well, I've never tried lacrosse, so you know, I don't want to be embarrassed by not knowing how to play the sport, and I'm assuming that everyone else has already learned it.'" 

Hogan said she hopes sports will offer no-commitment tryout sessions for youth at no cost if possible "because sometimes… there's a big price tag that goes along with registering for a sport for a whole season.

"If we can remove that, bring the sport to the youth, get them to have fun, they're going to want to come back for more, and to learn more about it."

She said partnering like this will be of benefit for sport organizations too: "They're interested in increasing their participation and part of that is reaching our youth in Indigenous communities."

Nic Joseph is the assistant coach for the female lacrosse team for Canada Games 2025, and started working with Lacrosse P.E.I. a few months ago.