Manitoba Indigenous Games: Introduction

Since 1999, the Manitoba Indigenous Summer Games (MISG) provided Aboriginal athletes, coaches and officials in Manitoba the opportunity to fully participate in their own multi-sport competition. It emphasized active participation in sporting competition for our Aboriginal youth regardless of sport specific skill levels, age and gender. Sport competition was one of the many goals of which participants took advantage. Opportunities to meet new friends, develop social interaction skills and gain valuable educational experiences in the diverse cultural and traditional practices found in the Aboriginal population were all found equally valuable, if not more important, than competition alone.

The Opaskwayak Cree Nation will always be recognized as the founders of the Manitoba Indigenous Summer Games. They had the dream for Aboriginal youth to participate with other Aboriginal youth in mainstream sport competition, at the same time learning many valuable tangible and intangible skills and knowledge about themselves as Aboriginal people.

The Manitoba Aboriginal Sport & Recreation Council has proudly accepted the stewardship of this wonderful and exciting event. The selfless act of the OCN Recreation Department to hand over governance of the MISG to MASRC was done in part to ensure its growth and development as a provincial event. The MASRC was the obvious choice as it is the recognized Provincial/Territorial Aboriginal Sport Body for Manitoba.

The MASRC has fostered the growth of this event and presented each successive host with hundreds more participants at each staging. We provided opportunities for increased participation and challenged each host to raise the standards each year. MASRC was able to market this event not only to the Aboriginal population but also to non-Aboriginal interests. We made the necessary partnerships, ensured continued funding from the Provincial and Federal government, and redeveloped the documents used to provide technical and staging information packages.

The success of the MISG has evolved into a greater need for more sporting, recreational, and cultural events similar in size and scope. To complement the obvious link the MISG has to the North American Indigenous Games, where 16 sports are represented and 5 in MISG, more competitive events were recommended from the grassroots levels to high performance circles.

In response, the MASRC will be hosting another Aboriginal multi-sport event. The introduction of the Manitoba Indigenous Winter Games (MIWG) in 2006 will bring forth more opportunities for provincial level competition in five sports, recreational activities, and the display of and teachings of traditional Aboriginal cultures.