Golf Culture and Chiefs Organizations

By Johnny Hawke

The Chiefs of Ontario is now advertising its annual Golf Tournament where the stated goal of this event each year is to support initiatives in the host community.

The host community this year is Chippewas of Rama First Nation — a community that already operates and benefits from one of the largest casinos in Canada. The Golf Tournament is also being held in Coldwater On which is within the broader territory connected to the Chippewa Tri-Council communities of Rama, Beausoleil, and Georgina Island.

I am from so-called Beausoleil First Nation and this past week I have personally filed three self-represented motions in Federal Court seeking injunctions against projects impacting our lands and treaty rights: a nuclear enhancement project, the transfer of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park to a Township, and a municipal development project.

These matters directly affect rights affirmed under the 2018 Williams Treaties Settlement Agreement between the Province, Canada, and the seven Williams Treaty First Nations, rights which are also protected under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

I filed these motions myself because many Chiefs from these communities continue to stand by without aggressively pushing governments and corporations to fulfill their legal Duty to Consult obligations in these specific projects in our Territory.

So while golf tournaments, banquets, and corporate networking events are promoted as “supporting the community,” grassroots people on the frontlines protecting land, water, treaty rights, and future generations are often left without meaningful legal support or representation.

If these fundraising initiatives truly exist to support the people, then where is that support when community members are forced to self-represent in Federal Court to defend collective rights that leadership should already be fighting to protect?

INDIANS AND GOLF

Golf culture within Indigenous political organizations is often defended on the basis that tournaments raise money for scholarships, youth programs, cultural initiatives, sports teams, and other community causes. However, from a radical Indigenous and anti-capitalist critique, the fundraising benefits do not outweigh the deeper political and cultural problems embedded within golf’s corporate and bourgeois character.

Golf has historically functioned as a symbol of wealth, exclusivity, colonial privilege, and executive networking culture. Within Indigenous political spaces, golf tournaments can become environments where Chiefs, consultants, government officials, mining executives, lobbyists, and corporate actors build informal relationships outside meaningful public accountability. Critics argue this creates a comprador-style Indigenous political class increasingly integrated into settler-capitalist systems rather than remaining grounded in community struggle and traditional accountability structures.

1990 "Oka Crisis" where armed conflict was instigated by the expansion of a Golf Course on Burial Grounds in Kanehsatake Mohawk lands.

From this perspective, the issue is not merely recreation or fundraising itself, but the normalization of elite political culture and corporate proximity within Indigenous governance. The concern is that reliance on these spaces compromises neutrality, weakens resistance to corporate interests, and distances leadership from grassroots realities such as housing insecurity, addiction, unsafe water, youth suicide, poverty, and land defense struggles.

Critics also point out that communities are often told controversial fundraising environments are acceptable because they “benefit the community,” yet similar arguments are used to justify alcohol-centered fundraising events despite the well-known harms alcohol has caused in many Indigenous communities through colonial displacement, intergenerational trauma, and addiction.

Golf tournaments frequently intersect with this same culture of corporate sponsorship, alcohol consumption, executive leisure, and political networking, reinforcing what some view as a performative model of leadership disconnected from ordinary people.

The symbolism becomes even more politically charged when considering the historical relationship between golf courses and Indigenous land conflicts.

1990 Siege of Kanehsatake, Land Defenders man barricades to protect Burial Grounds from expansion of a Golf Course.

The Oka Crisis itself was sparked in part by the proposed expansion of a golf course onto disputed Mohawk burial grounds and territory. For many Indigenous activists, this remains a powerful example of how elite recreational spaces, corporate land interests, and colonial governments have historically been prioritized over Indigenous sovereignty, sacred sites, and community rights.

Under this critique, golf tournaments are not viewed as politically neutral community events, but as symbols of assimilation into colonial bourgeois norms — where access to power, status, and corporate acceptance increasingly replaces grassroots accountability, land-based values, and collective responsibility.