The 2010 Olympic Games saw an unprecedented level of Canadian patriotism, both in Vancouver and across the country.
We’ll never forget it. Seven minutes and 40 seconds into overtime against our American rivals, Sydney Crosby potted what’s now known as “The Golden Goal,” securing the gold medal for Canada and creating what is possibly the greatest moment in Canadian hockey history. It was the crowning win of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games and will be the most reminisced moment for years to come. But don’t forget, there were 16 days of Olympics that came before that and they did more to redefine this country than any hockey game.
With the opening ceremonies, we introduced ourselves to the world. This was our big chance to shout “Canada” from the grandest stage—to let everyone know who we are. That’s why it was so surprising when themes of multiculturalism and bilingualism were notably downplayed. In place of these tried and true national ideals, a new identity emerged. With a reported three billion watching, we extolled the idea that, above all else, we are an Aboriginal nation.
From the initial Olympic bid to the final medal, these Olympics were steeped in Aboriginal tradition. In vying to host the Games at the beginning of the decade, the Vancouver Organizing Committee teamed up with British Columbia’s four host First Nations— the Musqueam, Squamish, Lil’wat, and Tsleil-Waututh—a partnership that lasted all through the hosting process. The Aboriginal Pavilion was among the most popular attractions, as was Canada Northern House, which showcased Inuit culture. The medals awarded in Vancouver bore designs of an orca and raven by First Nation artist Corrine Hunt. Not to mention the official Vancouver 2010 emblem, an Inukshuk.
Of course, only time will tell if 17 days can redefine a country on a constant journey to find itself. With so many cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and geographic inheritances, who can blame us?
Canada’s modern history began with French settlement in the 1600s, commencing a multi-century struggle between France and England for control over the resource-rich land. In the mid-18th century, Britain gained control, establishing Canada as an imperial nation imbued with British tradition for the next couple of centuries. Then, with moments such as Vimy Ridge in 1917, Canada began to break out of its dominion mould. With the Union Jack fading throughout the 20th century, we adopted ideas of multiculturalism, bilingualism, and federalism, led by possibly the greatest nation builder we’ve ever seen, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. We were Chinese-Canadians, French-Canadians, Polish-Canadians, but never Canadians. And for the last 40-odd years, this pluralism remained our creed, leaving the door wide open for divisive claims of French-Canadian nationalism that nearly tore Canada apart.
Perhaps the “mosaic” idea was all in an attempt to distinguish ourselves from our strong and united neighbours to the south. They’ve always been so comfortable and sure of themselves. We were jealous of their certainty and tried to create unity through our diversity, but it didn’t quite work. We were still left scrambling to find our core.
But we were looking in the wrong place. We needed to direct our gaze farther back: past the multicultural creed of the ’70s and ’80s, past Vimy Ridge, even past British colonial rule and French settlement. The characteristics of this country and the people in it—resourcefulness, perseverance, kinship, endurance, respect, modesty, tolerance, and loyalty—stem from a tradition of Aboriginal peoples that lived here for millennia.
Stuck in the urban bastion of Toronto, sometimes it’s easy to forget this tradition, but it’s nevertheless omnipresent from coast to coast to coast. Whether you just arrived on our shores, are a 10th-generation Canadian, or have lineage that runs past European settlement, there’s a common experience many of us share—an encounter with the unbridled, sublime land around us. Camping in Muskoka, plunging into Lake Louise, skating as fast as you can on a frozen Lake Winnipeg until your face hurts, catching dinner off the coast of Cape Breton, watching the midnight sun, or even gazing at the works of Emily Carr or the Group of Seven in the AGO are all experiences that trace back to the first peoples of Canada. As Pierre Burton said, having sex in a canoe is indeed a uniquely Canadian skill.
Now let’s be very clear about something: 17 days of patriotic fun does not erase 400 years of history. Tracing all the way back to European settlement and the Indian Act of 1867 that gave the federal government authority to legislate in regards to “Indians and Lands Reserved for Indians,” Canada has been steeped in Eurocentric policy and practice. There are even several groups, including the Olympic resistance Network and www.no2010.com, who opposed the Olympics because they claimed they were being held on unceded Aboriginal territory.
This shameful history should certainly not be forgotten, or even forgiven. But there comes a point when we must reconcile our historic clashes, and begin to build a new history based on mutual respect and cooperation, and move forward. The Olympics marked a crucial initial step in this process.
Maybe Canada’s connection to Aboriginal culture was so obvious it was overlooked. Not anymore. The 2010 Olympics shone the light on who we really are.
Comments
I have written a critique of the above article at this site:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&suggest¬e_id=373239789470
In case you cannot access it on Facebook, here is the critique, but without the photos or captions:
In the following critique I provide not only a criticism of the Olympics, but more importantly a critique of the way that the Olympics is framed in the media.
The way it is framed in the Varsity article above promote nationalism and exclude criticism of it, and makes First Nations' issues politically "safe" and non-controversial.
That is problematic when there is First Nations opposition to the Olympics (or what it represents - corporate capitalism and environmental destruction) that is deliberately ignored.
I consider this important because as many aboriginal scholars have written about, fetishizing aboriginal cultures - which the Olympics does - is a way to assimilate them, while at the same time avoiding a critique of the dominant society that assimilates.
This is increasingly a problem vis-a-vis extraction industries, and which has allowed those industries - and governments working with them - to more conveniently exploit indigenous cultures around the world and destroy the landbase they inhabit, while at the same time pretending to be their allies.
In "Canada redefined" Alixandra Gould argues that the inclusion of First Nations in the Olympic ceremonies was an important moment in Canadian history.
The issues of many First Nations were not addressed by the Olympics and find it disturbing that Canada and the corporations that run it refuse to address these issues, but at the same time appropriate First Nations culture for their grand corporate spectacle, the Olympics.
Thus, the sight of First Nations people participating in the Olympics was akin to the Roman troops parading conquered nations through the streets of Rome, as a kind entertainment or spectacle for the bemused Romans, and as a way to illustrate the power of Rome over other nations.
The reason I consider the article worthy of critical analysis is that it is for the largest student paper of the largest university in Canada, and it reflects many of the biases and assumptions regarding First Nations and the Olympics contained in the corporate mainstream media in Canada.
I would expect this of the Globe or National Post or Toronto Sun, but frankly was hoping for more from a student paper, though I believe there was another article which mentioned this in the Varsity. But why not this one? It makes this article seem very slanted.
Sioux feather headdresses are worn by non-Sioux First Nations reps at the Olympics, providing clear evidence of cultural fetishism and corporate appropriation of First Nations culture, reducing it to mere entertainment.
At the same time, serious criticism of the Olympics by First Nation activists - as represented on the http://no2010.com/ site - was ignored in this article and in Canada's mainstream press.
As Noam Chomsky has noted in his critical analysis of media, Manufacturing Consent, it is often not what is written, but what is not written, what is omitted, that is problematic. Chomsky speaks of the "sourcing" of mass media news, to refer to this selective representation of what is newsworthy.
Here is what is not mentioned in the Varsity article:
1) First Nations critical of the Olympics.
The article mentions First Nations groups who participated, but ignores First Nation groups who criticized the Olympics as violating land claims and native rights. There is a whole site dedicated to this criticism. See http:/no2010.com/
The no2010 analysis, written by and in consultation with First Nation activists and groups, makes several major claims, including links of Olympics and IOC to colonialism and fascism, major ecological destruction caused by the Olympics, homelessness caused by the Olympics here and in other countries, and related criminalizing of the poor (gentrification-displacement), the negative impact on women through increases to prostitution and trafficking and related murder of Native women, massive public debt (in the billions of dollars), the imposition of a police state and repression of and attacks on individuals and citizens' groups, corruption among IOC officials, and the corporate invasion of British Columbia.
The claim by the Varsity article - that we may now redefine Canada as inclusive of First Nations, despite historical oppression - sound good on the surface, but it ignores the fact that the many land claims have not been properly settled and land not ceded.
The article therefore unwittingly plays into an assimilationist agenda, in its overall direction - especially the bit about how the historical injustices done to First Nations people are now in the past, and all is right now - as though those injustice are not still ongoing.
Assimilation has a more sophisticated veneer than it did when First Nations languages were not allowed in schools. Then it was exclusionary; now it is pluralist, on the tacit understanding that First Nations cooperate with extraction industries.
These industries agree to celebrate the culture in question, in a fetishized way, but relegate it to mere ethnicity and cultural practice. Which is to say, that actual sovereignty and control of the landbase is disallowed.
The Olympics continue to be on "stolen land" many First Nations critics say:
"BC remains largely unceded and non-surrendered Indigenous territories. According to Canadian law, BC has neither the legal nor moral right to exist, let alone claim land and govern over Native peoples. Despite this, and a fraudulent treaty process now underway, the government continues to sell, lease and ‘develop’ Native land for the benefit of corporations, including mining, logging, oil & gas, and ski resorts.
Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples suffer the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, imprisonment, police violence, disease, suicides, etc."
Source http://no2010.com/
None of this is mentioned by the author of the above article. She appears to be unaware of the criticism of Paul Martin's assimilationist white paper on First Nations, widely critisized for arguing for the very thing her article unwittingly seeks to do.
Further evidence of the problematic nature of the assimilation and not mentioned by Gould, is Canada's failure to sign the United Nations Aboriginal Treaty.
For more information on Canada's refusal to sign the UN document see http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/06/20/aboriginal-declaration.html
Canada wants to relegates these injustices to the dustbin of history and pretends that continuing injustices are not happening. This is accomplished by including First Nations in the Olympics, as though everything is okay, that past injustices are righted and all is well. It is not, as the 2010 literature attests.
The media plays a significant part in this complicit re-telling of history and this negation of neo-colonialism through extraction industries and subscription to the paradigm of unlimited economic growth (i.e. capitalism).
I do not wish to diminish the importance of the ceremonies and ritual to the actual persons who participated in them, or those who found them meaningful in themselves. I would do them a disservice to do so, since I am sure for some of them, it was the biggest honour of their lives to perform in front of billions of people. Furthermore, I admire their skills immensely, and the integrity that many FN reps brought to the ceremonies, despite their certain knowledge of the protests.
However, I do not think the Harper government, RBC, Coke, fossil fuel companies or the corporate media in Canada viewed them the same way; as noted before, I believe they saw such such ceremonies much in the way that the Roman conquerors saw the slaves from foreign lands they brought into Rome as proof of their power. Except that we are the foreigners, and this land is theirs.
Those who operate the tar sands and mining companies surely must be tired of complaints and law suits and blockades from First Nations peoples, as must the BC government in response to contested land claims and the Feds are surely no fan of complaints forward by FN groups over the decades. So here was a way to bring the disruptive First Nations into the fold, to pacify them symbolically in front of the whole world. And it worked.
2) The Varsity article also ignores support for the Olympics by fossil fuel corporations and their backers (e.g. RBC), making the Olympics covertly pro tar-sands and anti-environment:
"Many of the main corporate sponsors of the Olympics are themselves responsible for massive ecological destruction and human rights violations, including McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Petro-Canada, TransCanada, Dow, Teck Cominco, etc., while others are major arms manufacturers (General Electric & General Motors)."
Source: http://no2010.com/
3) The article further ignores the roughly $8 billion spent on the Olympics that could have gone to renewable energy or health care or education or affordable housing for First Nations groups, many of whom live in poverty. Why was so much money spent on sports and to promote nationalism? The article does not ask this.
4) The article ignores the many other social and environmental costs of the Olympics and the corruption of the IOC. See http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2001/03/09/tor_breadnotcircuses030901.html and http://no2010.com/
Moreover, what the article does mention is also problematic ...
It promotes a kind of cheap patriotism first associated with the Olympics in 1936 in the Munich games attended by Hitler, continuing to the present day with the hockey game attended by Harper, and subsequently used by him in Parliament to promote his neo-con agenda.
This nationalism might seem innocent, on its face, but it recall that nationalism and patriotism have been used to justify foreign invasions, eradicate civil rights, and practice xenophobia.
The author of the article seems to be unaware that First Nations representation in the Olympics represents what native scholar Ward Churchill called "the appropriation of indigenous identity" and what some anthropologists (after Marx) call "cultural fetishism" - essentially turning them into entertainment pieces for white spectators.
See Ward Churchill's book Fantasies of the Master Race, for a history of such appropriation. With the Olympics we have a new chapter to add.
Such appropriation is a subtle form of cultural assimilation, in that it conveys the impression of cultural autonomy for the ethnic minority while at the same time assimilating them into a capitalist economic structure.
This reduction of native cultures serves two purposes: it mitigates white guilt and at the same time commodifies and depoliticizes native culture, to make it saleable and politically powerless - much as the teepee and headress have become emblematic in Hollywood films, to essentially dehumanize First Nations by turning them into representatives of a long-lost tradition, a quaint dance number.
But this ignores the fact that First Nations are still resisting European colonialism, including open-pit mining and the tar sands.
It is no coincidence that tar sand corporations have bought the allegiance and sanction of environmental groups and First Nation representatives - two of the most powerful political forces standing in the way of their continued expansion.
The Varsity article plays into this agenda well by mentioning historical injustices done to First Nations, as having occurred in the past (conveniently) but their memory now erased by the Olympics. No mention here of continued resistance or Canada's failure to sign the UN treaty or First Nations resistance to the Olympics. The author conveniently fails to include these critical points, revealing her pro-Olympics nationalist bias.
This blatant cultural appropriation cheapens and debases the living indigenous cultures of the people who are excluded, largely because they continue to resist. It divides FN peoples into two camps: those that are acceptably compliant, who receive the largess of corporate donations, and those that are to be ignored or arrested when they do not cooperate with the colonial takeover of their land and corporate appropriation of their culture.
The Olympics - and the mainstream media coverage of it - represents the growing trend toward corporate appropriation of First Nations cultures. This is made possible by the greed and corruption of such leaders as Grand Chief Phil Fontaine, who has taken millions of dollars from mining companies and other corporations, effectively selling out to those who would rape and pillage the land for profit.
The way one can spot such appropriation is amazingly simple: look at the clothing. Real indigenous people dressed in clothing that appears clean and unworn, and what "native" clothing is supposed to look like - with feather, tassles, etc - especially when used in the context of a ceremony which affirms corporate power - points to the fact that the ceremony is meant as a show for the prevailing powers.
Cultural appropriation - reducing the entire culture in this way - is a symbol of corporate and government power over the indigenous culture, enough to co-opt it. This is a pattern not only in Canada, but across the world, as revealed in this article regarding the Pueblo Diaguitas in Chile:
"Mining company dresses real indigenous people in fake ‘Indian’ costumes" http://www.protestbarrick.net/article.php?id=542
Fontaine and the AFN were supporters of the Vancouver Olympics, and were actually confronted by 2010 protesters in Toronto: http://no2010.com/node/864
The Varsity author unwittingly falls into the trap of promoting the narrow de-politicized re-framing of First Nations people and purposely ignores the uncomfortable uncontainable voice of First Nations peoples who will not be fetishized and appropriated as the land is desecrated and reduced to toxic moonscapes by extraction industries.
Overall, it is a disappointing show for the student paper, indicating clearly how student journalists buy into the biases and prejudices of the mainstream media, preparing them to emulate their elders in that industry, and continue the grand tradition of obsfucating the truth by selling the public a narrow corporate-defined nationalist version of reality.
This narrower version of reality - which excludes the experiences in this case of the First Nations who opposed the Olympics - lacks any serious social or environmental analysis, and errs by perpetuating a kind of herd mentality - one that buys into the reduction of First Nations to mere cultural artifice, a nicely tamed ethnic minority (not a fierce political opponent of extraction industries with legitimate claims to oppose the destruction of the land).
The Vancouver Olympics were a perfect staging grounds for these corporations, convincing the Canadian public to buy into a nationalist ideal and at the same time forgo uncomfortable questions regarding the tar sands, the violation of First Nations land treaties, neo-colonialism, the assimilation of First Nations into a capitalist power structure, and the continued destruction of the wilderness.
Mar 23, 2010 at 04:19 PM
How interesting that the Federal Government and Stephen Harper support the Olympics and claim to be supporters of First Nations peoples at the Olympics and in Parliament, and at the same time, pull funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The problem with the above article is that it fails to acknowledge this hypocrisy and buys into the comfortable fallacy that historical injustices have been righted through the symbolic inclusion of First Nations in the opening ceremony. Compare it to what is actually happening and the Olympic ceremony seems little more than an excercise in corporate blandishments, meant to clothe the spectacle in an aura of respectibility and feel-good self-congratulation. And the Varsity bought into it, hook line and sinker ...
"The federal government is cutting funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation on March 31, 2010. This will mean that many counsellors specifically for Aboriginal people in Canada will be losing their jobs.
"Stephen Harper apologized to Indigenous people in Canada for the atrocities of the Residential School system but he and his government will not fund the healing that still needs to take place for this and other injustices.
"Please sign the petition below to tell Stephen Harper to put his money where his mouth is:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/fundAHF/
All My Relations.
Chi Miigwetch/Nia:wen, Jason
Jason Latremoille jlatremoille@hotmail.com Indigenous Environmental Studies (IES) Trent University"
Mar 28, 2010 at 09:16 PM
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