++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is the author’s version a review of Engaging (with) indigeneity: decolonization and Indigenous/Indigenizing Sport History (forthcoming in the Journal of Sport History). It appears here in its pre‐publication format in lieu of the publisher’s version of record. Author: Malcolm MacLean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Engaging (with) indigeneity: decolonization and Indigenous/Indigenizing Sport History 1 Malcolm MacLean England “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” ‘The Second Coming’ W.B. Yeats The drive to decolonize the academy has resulted in a series of new connections leading to the re‐ evaluation of old understandings. For some scholars this drive has been accompanied by a profound rethinking of modernity. Part of this focus on modernity has been critique of its imbrication with colonialism including the ways that the contemporary social sciences engage with the colonized and the colonial subaltern. Most damningly, Gurminder Bhambra has argued that much of the practice in the critical studies tradition does little more than add ‘data’ from colonially suppressed peoples without re‐examining the dominant discourse. 2 Bhambra’s critique poses a significant challenge to historians of sport working in and with colonial and de‐ and post‐colonizing settings; this challenge has two principal aspects related to epistemological framing 3 , and to the form and content of the archive. This paper explores this second aspect to pose questions about the ontology of ‘data’ in those archives, the manner of access and the ways in which they might be able to be used to disrupt the dominant epistemologies of colonial(ist) sport history. This analysis is framed by Graham McFee’s argument that researchers have a moral responsibility to include research communities in the process of development and production of data, while critiquing his view that responsibility for and conduct of the analysis rests solely with the researcher. 4 Drawing on Bhambra’s analyses, the point is not to build a globally relativist history that continues to be framed by a centralizing European modernist epistemology, but to propose an historiographical ontology that rejects universal history from the perspective of coloniality to engage with pluriversality as a global project leading to coalitions of understanding in place of modernity’s vision of scholarship as leading to coalitions of knowledge. This paper is an initial step on the path for sports history as an epistemological contribution to a wider political project engaging sports history as an agent in indigenous political struggles. This goal will be pursued in two stages. In the first there is an argument that sport, as a form of modernist body culture practice, is essential to the colonial mission, taking on specific meanings in the context of settler colonialism. With the exception of the nuance in respect of settler colonies, this case should be widely recognized. The second stage explores the idea of sport as part of a