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The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the authors own assumptions made as academics using two examples from a research project with an Aboriginal community. The first attempt features a project that silenced the community. Later work engaged the community through tenets of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and a sport development project (SDP).

This project explores a shift from a mainstream qualitative approach steeped in post-positivism to a de-colonizing methodology which opened up a space for a SDP.

Mainstream research methodologies tend to silence marginalized communities and overlook local cultural practices. Effective community programming requires extensive consultation, and an approach that centralizes local voices.

Current understandings are limited to one Aboriginal Reserve.

Recommendations are proposed concerning how researchers might embark on practices that support the reversal of colonization and improve relations among people from two cultures previously in conflict. SDP initiatives and applied sport research grounded in CBPR are proposed as conduits to bettering relations among cultures in conflict.

The reader is provided with an example of how to attain goals of SDP at the local level through cultural praxis and a CBPR methodology.

This paper discusses the role played by social determinants of health in the incidence and management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (diabetes) among vulnerable populations. This issue is especially important in light of recent data from Statistics Canada indicating that mortality rates from diabetes have been increasing among Canadians since the mid‐1980s, with increases being especially great among those living in low‐income communities. Diabetes therefore appears – like cardiovascular disease – to be an affliction more common among the poor and excluded. It also appears to be especially likely to afflict poor women. Yet we know little about how these social determinants of health influence diabetes incidence and management. What evidence is available is provided and the case is made that the crisis in diabetes requires new ways of thinking about this disease, its causes, and its management.

To explore the discursive construction of disordered eating and athlete identity meanings within elite female athlete’s stories. Published athlete autobiographies were interrogated as cultural sites of analysis to accomplish this aim.

A critical social constructionist perspective on disordered eating is outlined along with narrative research findings on female athletes and disordered eating. A discursive psychological approach and critical discourse analysis (CDA) is then discussed to theorize and study meanings of disordered eating and athlete identities/subject positions. Next, the utility of studying two elite female athlete’s autobiographies is outlined followed by examples from a CDA of two athlete stories.

Two discourses and two identity/subject positions within each are outlined: discourse of performance and the “committed, controlled athlete” and a discourse of personal growth and the “empowered athlete in transition.” The features of each discourse and subject position are outlined and examples from each athlete’s story. The intention is to show the ways in which discursive resources construct the body, food and identities in sport and the implications.

The chapter is concluded with why studying “disordered eating and body talk” within discourses is useful to expand understanding of constraining and emancipative aspects of athlete identities, struggle and recovery.