Libratory Vulnerability: Reimagining Indigenous Hockey Masculinities in Jordin Tootoo’s All the Way and Theo Fleury’s Playing with Fire

Abstract: Theo Fleury’s Playing with Fire (2009) and Jordin Tootoo’s All the Way: My Life on Ice (2014) are key texts in the under-researched fields of Indigenous hockey and Indigenous hockey masculinity. However, the importance of these autobiographies is not simply their contributions to these overlooked fields, but how each author models the fundamental value of vulnerability to their healing journeys from trauma and substance abuse. Tootoo (Inuk) and Fleury (Métis) were notorious National Hockey League “tough guys,” and so many readers expecting a rehearsal of hockey hypermasculinity would be surprised by the libratory masculinity offered by these books. We argue that the limited potentiality of these autobiographies lies in their possibility of reaching and affecting male audiences predisposed to hypermasculinity; the liberal possibilities of Fleury and Tootoo’s books are limited by their basis in dominant hockey culture and hypermasculinity, but at the same time they can potentially reach hyper-masculine hockey fans that other more radical works would not. Thus, the paradox of these autobiographies is that their hypermasculine tropes shift dominant hockey culture toward greater vulnerability, but it is these same tropes that also limit the changes that can be imagined to hockey culture. The objectives of this article are to: emphasize the need for vulnerability in Indigenous masculinities studies; illustrate that disembodiment is a common experience for Indigenous hockey players at the elite level; offer the term libratory masculinity to capture the oscillation between hyper-masculinity and masculinity; and propose that hockey hypermasculinity is antithetical to healing.