A hoop dancer performing at the announcement of the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion. Photo from www.canada2010.gc.ca

This is somewhat after the fact, but I’ve been thinking about the Olympic opening ceremonies over the past few days, and the topic came up again at a recent dinner with friends. This was the first time we had gotten together since the start of the games, and we were reviewing our overall impressions of the festivities. The consensus was that the ceremony was technologically impressive and that K.D. Lang’s performance was the highlight of the evening.

My dinner companions and I thought that the opening ceremonies didn’t show the world anything about Canada that they didn’t already know (wheat, whales, plaid, fiddles, snow) and that it was biased toward Western themes.   As easterners – and by “easterners” I mean Atlantic Canadians, and not Ontarians or Quebecers – we felt that the east was not as well represented as it could have been.

We all enjoyed seeing Ashley MacIsaac in the step-dancing punk fiddler number, but surely the east has something to offer other than fiddlers. Maybe someone could have choreographed a modern dance tribute to our culture of defeatism. I would have enjoyed a video montage of creeps and bums running oil rigs (I know, I know – that was Ralph in Alberta, not Gordon in BC – you have to admit they’re somewhat similar). They could have made that platform thing in the middle of the stadium into a giant carpetbag and had little people in sou’westers stream out of it and jig up to Service Canada booths, dancing their little hearts out for their EI payments.

But I digress. I’m actually not that upset about the western flavour of the ceremony. The games are, after all, in B.C. If my provincial government paid that much money I’d want to be prominently featured, too. I don’t want to sound like the people complaining that there wasn’t enough French. As far as that goes, I’m guessing that if the games were held in Quebec there would be a notable lack of English and few artistic tributes to Alberta.

What we really wondered about over dinner was why there was so much Aboriginal content. Before anyone jumps straight to the hate mail, take a moment to hear me out. The opening number was impressive and the young performers were great. I’m not a bigot or a racist – First Nations people should certainly be represented at the Olympics. I think, though, that the way Canada uses their eye-catching art and traditional dancers is somewhat hypocritical. I think that the government uses First Nations people and their culture when it is convenient and ignores them when it is not. They will showcase First Nations people at the games, presumably to show how important they are to Canada, and then fight them tooth and nail (or, alternatively, completely ignore them) when the world is looking the other way.

I understand that the opening ceremony of any Olympics is supposed to be a feel-good showcase of how the host country wants to be perceived by the rest of the world. There’s a reason why there was no video montage of the Downtown Eastside and why the Beijing ceremonies didn’t touch on human rights issues. Ostensibly, the Olympics are not a political event but you’d have to be terribly naïve to actually believe that. As long as governments fund the games, I don’t see how it is possible to avoid politicizing them, however subtly. So, were First Nations people included because they are genuinely seen as an important part of our overall Canadian culture, or is it politically correct tokenism?

Our government tells the world that it (and Canadians) value First Nations people, but we have yet to see much evidence of that, outside of according them the glamour job of opening the Olympics. The number of aboriginal performers in the ceremony was approximately 300. The number of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native women stands somewhere around 520. If you want to read a heartbreaking account of how Canada actually treats some of its aboriginal people, look up Our Sisters in Spirit: A Report to Families and Community, compiled by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC).

Many of the aboriginal women in the Sisters in Spirit report either went missing from or were murdered in the Vancouver area. On Valentine’s Day, these lost women were remembered at the 19th annual Women’s Memorial March, which wove through the Downtown Eastside. According to the NWAC, statistics show that Native women between the ages of 25 and 44 are five times more likely than non-aboriginal women to die violently. First Nations people are over-represented among the ranks of the poor, the addicted, and the incarcerated. There is a stark difference between the reality facing many First Nations communities and the feel-good, patriotic display the world saw last week.

Although governments should not be expected to take responsibility for every trouble in every community, the issues facing Canada’s aboriginal people seem to demand a stronger response than has so far been evident. Time will tell if the opening ceremonies and the official status accorded to the Four Host First Nations represented a real gesture of respect or were just another photo op.

Related posts:

1. Vancouver First Nations Resisting 2010 Winter Olympic Games While many aboriginals in Canada are joining in the celebrations...
2. Exclusion of Women’s Ski Jumping from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is a Supreme Court of Canada Cop-Out On December 22nd, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to...
3. Canada’s ‘Own the Podium’ Program Yields Golden Dividends at Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games The Vancouver 2010 Olympics are now over, with the nation...
4. The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games Endure Despite Tragedy and Criticism After years of painstaking planning, construction, advertising and anticipation, the...
5. RCMP Deny Harassing Olympic Protesters, I.S.U. Vancouver 2010 Mafia Security Tactics, and Trampling of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “Intimidation Olympic Style” Senior R.C.M.P. Officials can deny harassing Vancouver Olympic protesters all...

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.