Aboriginals are missing from Games
Evidence of the precedent-setting campaign to include Canada's aboriginals in the 2010 Winter Olympics is everywhere.
The logo is a multicoloured Inuit inukshuk. Coast Salish art is on flags, banners, sculptures and murals inside and outside venues plus a line of souvenirs.
Three pavilions are aboriginal- themed and the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame has an aboriginal section. Hundreds of dancers from tribes across Canada were in the opening ceremony. The Olympic cauldron burns on Jack Poole Plaza, named for the part-M?tis VANOC founding chairman who died of cancer last October.
Aboriginal athletes, however, are missing from the 206- member Canadian Olympic team. Snowboarder Caroline Calve, of Lachine, Que., is the only one who comes close. Her grandmother was Algonquin.
"It would be really nice to see more aboriginal athletes in that starting line," four-time Olympic cross-country skier and Gwich'in First Nation member Sharon Firth told QMI.
The original domestic bid was conceived after the 1990 Oka uprising near Montreal and the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff near 100 Mile House, B.C., spurred sympathetic protests on and off reserves. Except for small parcels, none of the Four Host First Nations has reached a treaty and settled overlapping land claims which include sites of Olympic venues. Hence the "no Olympics on stolen native land" slogan chanted by anti-Olympic protesters.
Bob Mackin Sunmedia
Aboriginals are missing from Games - Woodstock Sentinel Review - Ontario, CA
Evidence of the precedent-setting campaign to include Canada's aboriginals in the 2010 Winter Olympics is everywhere.
The logo is a multicoloured Inuit inukshuk. Coast Salish art is on flags, banners, sculptures and murals inside and outside venues plus a line of souvenirs.
Three pavilions are aboriginal- themed and the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame has an aboriginal section. Hundreds of dancers from tribes across Canada were in the opening ceremony. The Olympic cauldron burns on Jack Poole Plaza, named for the part-M?tis VANOC founding chairman who died of cancer last October.
Aboriginal athletes, however, are missing from the 206- member Canadian Olympic team. Snowboarder Caroline Calve, of Lachine, Que., is the only one who comes close. Her grandmother was Algonquin.
"It would be really nice to see more aboriginal athletes in that starting line," four-time Olympic cross-country skier and Gwich'in First Nation member Sharon Firth told QMI.
The original domestic bid was conceived after the 1990 Oka uprising near Montreal and the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff near 100 Mile House, B.C., spurred sympathetic protests on and off reserves. Except for small parcels, none of the Four Host First Nations has reached a treaty and settled overlapping land claims which include sites of Olympic venues. Hence the "no Olympics on stolen native land" slogan chanted by anti-Olympic protesters.
Bob Mackin Sunmedia
Aboriginals are missing from Games - Woodstock Sentinel Review - Ontario, CA
