In an intimate exploration of racism, a new documentary created in Winnipeg shows that incidences of racism don’t just affect individual athletes, but the wounds of discrimination often affect the whole family.

Sidelined, The Colour of the Game launched at the Canadian human rights museum on March 22, with a panel discussion with Daria Jorquera Palmer, executive director of the anti racism in sport campaign (arisc) and athletes featured in the film.

As talented athletes have entered the sports world, even as youth, they have come face to face with name calling and physical gestures of disrespect, and often a dismissive attitude from competition hosts.

A Manitoba coach was stunned when one of her team athletes was targeted throughout a final competition match, and the referees took no action.

The team decided on the approach they would take in the competition, to support each other and take a stand, but the experience was also devastating for the athlete’s mother who had hoped that the behaviour would have ended in her own generation.

In another instance, a white father realized that the lack of diversity at the board level was hindering the awareness and focus on racist incidences in the organization, noting the incidences his daughter, a person of colour, was experiencing.

Patrick Bruyere received an apology for an official act of racism during the 1967 Winnipeg Pan Am Games 32 years after it happened (as documented in Run as One: The Journey of the Front Runners, available online). As Bruyere shared in the panel discussion of the film, he realized that the years living in Indian residential school caused depression and a sense of hopelessness, and had taught the front runners to not fight back.

Niigaan Sinclair hosted the discussion, sharing the story that the only time Wilton Littlechild, an Indigenous athlete renowned in both hockey and baseball, was allowed to speak his language at residential school was while playing hockey in school tournaments.

“We went to our community and asked who should we talk to,” said Daria Jorquera Palmer, who worked on the project with the support of Immigration Partnership Winnipeg, and received funding from Heritage Canada. “What is happening in sport is a microcosm of society because of the attention paid to it. It feels great that we can amplify voices. We aren’t just statistics, we are community, we are family.”

“I might as well cry because I cried all through the film. For myself and my family. Now I’m calling meetings in our school district and trying to get them to take cultural awareness training. You just need one big mouth, like me, to get it going,” said Tina Savea, a Cree mother whose children are Cree/Samoan, and now lives in BC. “This is just the beginning. I feel excited and very honoured to be a part of it.” Adinah Sheppard, a rising Black hockey star, said “intersectionality is a very important to acknowledge, its important for girls and boys to see.”