Sport as Ethnic Boundary Maintenance: A Case of the American Indian

Abstract

An ethnic group's members select and translate into social boundaries cultural behaviors that support the group's values. By using sport contact situations between Navajo Indians and Euro-Americans in a 1903 Fourth of July festival and present basketball participation, it is shown that the content and form signaling ethnic boundaries changed over time from traditional Indian sports to Euro-American sport participation. An analysis of these inter- ethnic sports encounters showed that the ethnic group members' perception, selection, and expression of changing behavioral content continually reinforced ethnic diversity. It is suggested that, because inter-ethnic sports' participation reaffirms one's own cultural values, these encounters define ethnic differences, not similarities.