Annals of Leisure Research

Re-Indigenising Leisure: Reclaiming Spaces, Practices, and Futures

This special issue invites scholarship that centres Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, and wellbeing to interrogate the foundations of leisure research to date and explore futures of leisure studies. Leisure has long been framed through Western, individualised, and marketised paradigms. In contrast, Indigenous worldviews foreground collective relations, responsibilities to lands and waters, intergenerational continuity, and the ethical obligations of guardianship of treasures (tangible and intangible) that indigenous peoples value and cherish. The voices and perspectives of indigenous peoples are becoming more visible in leisure-focused journals, and with recent global and local discussions regarding indigeneity in various political, environmental, and societal contexts, we seek contributions that re-theorise leisure as praxis embedded in indigenous genealogies, community, ceremony, and everyday acts of resurgence; as well as empirical studies that demonstrate how leisure spaces and places (sport, outdoor/indoor recreation, arts, crafts, festivals, digital platforms and communities) can reproduce or resist colonial power, reclaim indigenous worldviews and practices, or transform leisure.

Positioning Indigeneity at the centre enriches core debates and significantly shifts focus in leisure studies, with regards to access and equity, participation, embodiment, policy and governance, place-making, nature-based recreation, wellbeing, and community development, while advancing decolonising methodologies and ethics in leisure research and praxis.

This special issue provides an opportunity to showcase how leisure practices/praxis can be vehicles for cultural revitalisation, youth programming, land and water-based recreation, environmental stewardship, and health promotion, and how institutional arrangements (funding, facilities, curricula, media) and relationships between leisure designers and providers can be transformed to uphold Indigenous rights and self-determination.

This issue will consolidate an emerging body of Indigenous-led leisure scholarship, offer theoretical and methodological exemplars (e.g., Kaupapa Māori, storytelling, sharing circles, relational accountability); and provide practitioners and policymakers with frameworks to align leisure systems with Indigenous needs and aspirations such as sovereignty and environmental stewardship. The main aim is to shift leisure studies from indigenous inclusion to indigenous transformation.

Prospective themes that will be captured by this issue include (but are not limited to):

• Decolonising leisure research and ethics, for example, Kaupapa Māori and other Indigenous methodologies; community-led research collaborations and relational accountability narratives.
• Leisure, land/water-scapes (green/blue-scapes) and environmental guardianship and place-based practices.
• Embodiment, identity, and wellbeing in the contexts of leisure (which can include sport and play), environmental and cultural recreation as sites of resurgence, healing, and belonging.
• Sovereignty, policy, and institutional transformations i.e., governance of parks, recreation systems, museums/festivals.
• Urban, rural, and digital leisure ecologies; Indigenous placemaking and online community leisure.
• Critical leisure theories - coloniality, intersectionality, and leisure’s political economy through Indigenous lenses.
• Critiques of Colonial perspectives and/or inclusion of perspectives from indigenous peoples, cultures and regions are welcomed in this special issue journal that celebrates indigenous worldviews, experiences, voices and knowledge.

References:

Fox, K. (2006). Leisure and Indigenous peoples. Leisure Studies, 25(4), 403–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614360600896502

Fox, K. M., & McDermott, L. (2019). ’A’ohe pau ke ’ike ka hālau ho’okahi [All knowledge is not taught in the same school] Welcoming Kānaka Hawai’i waves of knowing and Revisiting Leisure. Leisure Sciences, 41(4), 330–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2018.1442755

Rojo-Mendoza, F., Salinas-Silva, C., & Alvarado-Peterson, V. (2022). The end of indigenous territory? Projected counterurbanization in rural protected Indigenous areas in Temuco, Chile. Geoforum, 133, 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.05.012

Olive, R., Osmond, G., & Phillips, M. G. (2021). Sisterhood, pleasure and marching: Indigenous women and leisure. Annals of Leisure Research, 24(1), 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2019.1624181

Goldman, M. J. (2025). “Staying is complicated, not staying, however, is unthinkable”: A critical review of Indigenous presence in “natural” parks as a critique of colonial place making for conservation and leisure. Political Geography, 121, N.PAG. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2025.103362

Stronach, M., & O’Shea, M. (2021). Learning, understanding and valuing Indigenous peoples’ leisure. Annals of Leisure Research, 24(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2021.1881709