By loprespub on June 21, As part of National Indigenous Peoples Day, on June 21 communities across Canada will hold events to celebrate Indigenous cultures and contributions to Canada. Indigenous peoples have been instrumental in the development of sport in Canada and have had significant achievements as athletes, coaches and organizers. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have played their own sports to teach survival and other life skills, for fun and competition. The contributions of Indigenous peoples to Canadian sport are visible today in sports such as kayaking, canoeing, and snowshoeing.

Sports in Canada consist of a wide variety of games. The most common sports are ice hockey , lacrosse , gridiron football , soccer , basketball , curling and baseball , with ice hockey and lacrosse being the official winter and summer sports, respectively. Ice hockey, referred to as simply "hockey", is Canada's most prevalent winter sport , its most popular spectator sport, and its most successful sport in international competition. Lacrosse, a sport with Indigenous origins, is Canada's oldest sport. Canadian football is Canada's second most popular spectator sport, being the most popular in the prairie provinces. As a country with generally cold winters, Canada has enjoyed greater success at the Winter Olympics than at the Summer Olympics , although significant regional variations in climate allow for a wide variety of both team and individual sports.

Most of her practice happens with a bucket of balls at the driving range or putting green. And when she does manage to get out for a round, she can rarely afford to play more than nine holes. Even better, her finish — four strokes over par for a three-round total of — earned her a spot at the Canadian Women's Amateur Championship, which gets underway July 24 in Vancouver. Alexis is the only Indigenous woman on the provincial team, and according to Golf Canada, she is the only player identifying as Indigenous among the players registered for the national ladies amateur championship. Alexis has always loved the game and showed strong promise as a junior player in her teens.

The Tom Longboat Awards were established in to recognize Aboriginal athletes "for their outstanding contributions to sport in Canada" [1] and continues "to honour Indigenous athletes across Canada" [2] annually. As a program of the Aboriginal Sport Circle , the awards provide a forum for acknowledging top male and female athletes both at the regional and national levels. The regional recipients will be considered as nominees for the national award that is presented to the top male and female athletes at the annual induction ceremony hosted by Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.