Merely 'drums and feathers'

In April 1991, Olympic kayaking gold medalist Alwyn Morris of Kahnawake brought together aboriginal leaders who cared deeply about the health and wellness of young people. He also invited decision-makers from Sport Canada, who heard about the hopelessness and poverty that envelopes so many First Nation communities, where buying something as commonplace for non-native people as a good pair of children's running shoes, let alone finding funds for an ice rink, is a dream.

Morris envisioned a day when a Canadian Olympic team actually reflected the 3.8 per cent of the Canadian population that identifies as aboriginal. If we have 200 athletes on the 2010 Olympic team, seven to eight should be aboriginal. But even Tewanee Joseph, CEO of Four Host First Nations, the aboriginal group that represents the four nations on whose traditional lands the Games will take place, admits he knows of no aboriginal athletes on our team to Vancouver.

This October, more than 18 years after Morris's meeting, I found myself in Ottawa with a new generation of aboriginal leaders in sport and they were grappling with the same issues that representatives in 1991 had to confront. There is still no ministry or department in the federal government whose duty it is to ensure long-term funding and support so aboriginal people can lead healthy, active lives.

Sport Canada did not, despite hearing many heartbreaking stories, decide to run with this particular torch. Their policy on aboriginal people and sport has non-committal language to prevent the government from taking action. In the 18 years since that first meeting, children have been born and are now young adults -- all the while missing out on physical activity opportunities because, simply put, they are not a priority in this country. How could they be when Canada and the United States are the only countries that refuse to sign the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

Aboriginal sports leaders spend most of their time trying to raise money from people with none. They scramble to borrow sports equipment, rent vans with their own cash because so few parents have safe vehicles, and supply healthy food and clean water so when kids get hungry and thirsty after playing sports, they don't also get sick. There was an incredible energy in the leaders I met most recently, but their task is monumental. They are expected to move mountains with money raised at bake sales.

Earlier this year we saw aboriginal people in northern Manitoba fall critically ill and die from H1N1 flu in a way that wasn't happening in non-native communities. If you go to these communities you will find houses contaminated with mold, open insulation next to mattresses on floors in extraordinarily tiny living quarters, and shared slop buckets as toilets instead of running water.

How shameful such conditions exist in a county this rich. Should the Olympic torch relay touch down among such poverty, there will be no photo-ops inside moldy, dilapidated homes. We'll see shots of excited children, but when the torch leaves, so will any attention and the nickels and dimes that happen to come along with it. Those children will again be abandoned by a sport system that only shows up to exploit their trust.

Canadians should not be lulled into a complacency that allows them to imagine poverty disappears in the lives of aboriginal people because we shoot through their community with a torch, or we buy Olympic gear made in Haiti, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh and China that sports an aboriginal design. Or that just because aboriginal people will perform in the opening ceremonies their drinking water is now safe; their kids have sports and recreation programs and they'll be vying for a spot on our next Olympic team.

The Olympics and sport in general should not be a smokescreen for what is Canada's worst legacy of all: a deeply embedded racism that denies aboriginal people agency in their own lives.

VANOC's Aboriginal Youth Gathering from Jan. 30 to Feb. 14 is a perfect example. First of all the youth are sent home almost as soon as the Games begin -- suspiciously soon after the evening opening ceremonies of Feb. 12 when the real mega-millions will be made off broadcast rights. If any of the young people from the youth gathering are performing in them, they must sign away all rights to even one cent of the revenue.

In order to come to the gathering, you have to agree to "volunteer." They had to sign a VANOC contract over five pages long that stipulates, among other things, they will not be paid for their services; or have any rights to revenues generated through their artistry and talent. They have to bring their dancing regalia or drums to Vancouver; in fact in order to be considered they must send a photo of themselves in regalia -- not in the 21st-century clothing they normally wear. The youth must be able to take direction and perform in front of an international audience, but the contract takes away all their rights as artists. If they compose music, create visual art, choreograph a dance, or dance and drum while in Vancouver, not only will they not be paid for it, they will not be allowed to own their own creations.

When Morris opened his meeting in 1991 he said aboriginal people are tired of being "drums and feathers" trotted in to entertain white people. Alex Nelson, CEO of the B.C. Aboriginal Sport and Recreation Association, said aboriginal people are alive, thinking, dynamic human beings; not artifacts in a museum. Real words drowned out by Olympic myths.

Author, coach and former national team cyclist Laura Robinson has covered four Olympic Games and four North American Indigenous Games. She coaches the Anishinaabe Nordic Racers at Chippewa of Nawash First Nation.

This comment piece first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on 19 November 2009 and is reprinted at playthegame.org with kind permission of the author.