'Historic': The Indigenous girls' football team that's breaking down barriers in sport

Athletes from across Canada have descended upon Ottawa to form Canada’s first-ever national Indigenous U18 girls’ football team.

The players are currently taking part in training camp, and are set to compete this weekend in Football Canada’s Women’s U18 Tackle National Championship.

Kevin Hart, president of Indigenous Football Canada, described the inclusion of an Indigenous team as “historic.”

“Historically, this is the first Indigenous initiative to field an Indigenous national team in any sport in Canada,” he said in an interview with CTV Morning Live on Friday.

Hart, who is the former regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations and a member of the Manitoba Football Hall of Fame, has been on a long journey to bring together football and Indigenous culture.

This journey involved the creation of a diversity task force, where Hart advocated for the importance of inclusion in football and introducing the sport to Indigenous communities.

He said the biggest challenge came when Football Canada informed his organization that not only would they be creating the first U18 Indigenous football team to compete at the Canada Cup, but that it would be a girls’ team as well.

“This is historic in itself, because it’s not the boys breaking down the barrier for this, it’s our women that are leading the way here,” he said.

The National Indigenous Team will be competing against teams from Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec, and will be competing against the National Indigenous team at the Women’s U18 Tackle National Championship.

The tournament takes place in Ottawa from July 23 to 29.

- With files from CTV’s Katherine Dow.