Keeping local sports fun and safe

Kahnawake Shakotiia’takehnhas Community Services (KSCS) and the Sports and Recreation Unit of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) are partnering up to create an education and awareness campaign to ensure sports stay safe and positive in town for all those who participate - athletes, coaches, spectators, and referees.

Although there have been highly publicized and scrutinized bullying incidents in sports recently in town, both KSCS and Sports and Recreation said that this initiative has been in development for a while, not just in reaction to these incidents.

“The campaign has been in the works since November 2024. It was brought to the prevention team’s table as one of the areas we hoped to address as many of our prevention team members are parents, coaches, and community members who are involved in Kahnawake sports programs themselves,” said Corleigh Beauvais, a KSCS prevention worker who is part of the team spearheading this campaign.

“We hope to raise awareness, encourage positive sportsmanship and foster a culture of respect - ultimately strengthening the foundation of our sports community as a whole.”

Roiatate Horn, director of the Sports and Recreation Unit, said that KSCS’s expertise and resources made them a natural fit for this partnership.

“We’re excited to partner with KSCS on this, in terms of them being subject matter experts on trauma and addressing bullying, and we’re excited to be able to take those key learning points from their disciplines and apply it to sports,” said Horn.

“We feel like in the long run, it’s going to help the athletes become not just better athletes, it’s going to help them to become role models for the younger generations.”

Violence in minor sports - not just physical but also verbal and emotional - is a pervasive problem everywhere, not just in Kahnawake. That sort of violence they are trying to curb often happens towards officials, and it is particularly problematic, according to Horn.

“While I can’t speak as an expert, I can tell you that recruitment for officials is down across all sports, especially hockey, not just in the Suroit zone, but across Canada and even parts of the US, and a lot of it has to do with the attitude of parents, coaches, and players,” said Horn, who himself used to be an official.

“The referees learn with every game that they do. They’re trying to improve. You have to understand that if your son or daughter is playing an Atom game, that’s a young referee, probably in their first or second year. They’re learning as well.”

Horn said that the campaign will include things such as banners placed around the Kahnawake Sports Complex walls, dressing rooms, and boards, as well as possible seminars for coaches and athletes and social media campaigns featuring athletes from town.

A future part of the campaign, according to Horn, will also have the goal of giving athletes and coaches tools to deal with racism, which still happens to Kahnawake teams when playing teams from outside the community.

“It’s sort of a wide-reaching campaign. The first part, we’re looking at bullying, but we’re also looking at racism in an additional part of this campaign,” said Horn.

The campaign will begin in earnest in the coming weeks.

“We have a good roadmap of what’s going to happen,” said Horn. “We’re just plotting out some things on that map as we go.”

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