Raven Plays Ball: Situating ‘‘Indian Sports Days’’ within Indigenous and Colonial Spaces in Twentieth-Century Coastal British Columbia 1 ALLAN DOWNEY and SUSAN NEYLAN Abstract: Beginning in the nineteenth century, Anglo-Canadian colonial agents (residential school administrators and teachers, missionaries, and government offi- cials) introduced a number of Western-style sporting activities among Indigenous peoples through athletic clubs, church gatherings, and school physical fitness pro- grams. In keeping with a Victorian conception of leisure, these elites understood sports in moral terms, believing that they would support ‘‘civilizing projects’’ in- tended to remake Indigenous socio-cultural spaces into colonial ones. Indigenous communities, however, used these same sports organizations to challenge, resist, and even displace colonial agendas. Inspired by J.R. Miller’s treatment of Indigenous– non-Indigenous relations as a nuanced, multidirectional, often contradictory encounter, we argue that ‘‘Indian Sports Days’’ in coastal British Columbia from the 1910s–1940s were complex social spaces, reflective of both Indigenous and colonial perspectives. Keywords: Aboriginal/Indigenous history ; Indigenous studies; sport; twentieth century; British Columbia; colonialism; Canada Re ´sume ´ analytique : Au de ´but du dix-neuvie `me sie `cle, les agents de la colonisa- tion anglo-canadiens (les administrateurs et enseignants des e ´coles re ´sidentielles, les missionnaires et les fonctionnaires du gouvernement) pre ´sente `rent au peuple autochtone un nombre d’activite ´s sportives de style occidental a ` travers des clubs d’athle ´tisme, des assemble ´es d’e ´glise et des programmes scolaires de culture phy- sique. Conforme ´ment aux ide ´es victoriennes sur le loisir, ces e ´lites donnaient aux sports une valeur morale, croyant que les sports appuyaient leurs « projets civilisa- teurs » qui visaient la colonisation des espaces socio-culturels indige `nes. Toutefois, les communaute ´s autochtones se servaient de ces me ˆmes organisations sportives pour mettre au de ´fi, voire me ˆme refuser d’obtempe ´rer et me ˆme supplanter les programmes coloniaux. Prenant pour point de de ´part la vision de J.R. Miller que les traitements des relations indige `nes-non-indige `nes e ´taient des engagements nuance ´s, multidirectionnels et souvent contradictoires, nous soutenons que les « journe ´es sportives Indiennes » sur les co ˆ tes de la Colombie-Britannique durant les anne ´es 1910–1940, e ´taient en fait des espaces sociaux complexes refle ´tant les deux perspectives indige `ne et coloniale. Mots-cle ´s : histoire des autochtones/peuples indige `nes; e ´tudes indige `nes; sports; vingtie `me sie `cle; Colombie-Britannique; colonialisme; Canada 1 Some of the research for this paper was facilitated by funding support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors kindly thank the expertise and time of interviewees, and also the generous feedback of our three anonymous reviewers. Canadian Journal of History / Annales canadiennes d’histoire 50.3 6 2015 doi: 10.3138/cjh.ach.50.3.003