Abstract
The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much of the critical studies tradition does little more than add “data” from colonially suppressed peoples without re-examining the dominant discursive narratives. This paper explores the historiography of indigenous sport to pose questions about the ways the Imperial Archive has shaped our understandings and the manner of access to that source material, suggesting ways that they might be used to disrupt the dominant epistemologies of colonial(ist) sport history. It constructs a sixfold typology and explores each type through the analysis of a single representative source. In doing so, it tests the limits of researchers’ moral responsibility to include research communities in the process of development and production of data and critiques the view that responsibility for and conduct of the analysis rests solely with the researcher. In posing the problem of “the archive, “ the paper explores ways in which the decolonization of sport history and the indigenization of the subject can help reconfigure the meaning of modern sport and develop a more fluid, dialogic approach to historiographical practice.
