Native Olympic Representation

History is being made at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. These games, which run Feb. 12 – 28, are historic because there has been unprecedented aboriginal participation in the planning and hosting of the games.

Besides the Vancouver Organizing Committee, a group called the Four Host First Nations was created in 2004 after finding out the games would be coming to British Columbia. Both VANOC and the FHFN are official hosts for the Olympic and Paralympics Winter Games, which will also be held in Vancouver in March. This is the first time indigenous people have been recognized by the International Olympic Committee as official host partners in any games.

“One of our greatest challenges is that Indigenous participation is relatively new to the Olympic Movement – there is no template we can follow – no clear indicators for how we measure our success. Indigenous participation in past Games, such as Calgary and Salt Lake City, has focused primarily on ceremonies and cultural programs. We plan to go beyond that, to set the bar higher, with the hope that future Organizing Committees can be inspired and learn from our experience.” – Gary Youngman, Consulting Director, Aboriginal Participation.

VANOC’s goal is to recognize and celebrate Aboriginal history, arts, culture and languages throughout the Games. They also want to ensure that the cultural programming maximizes opportunities for Aboriginal peoples while respecting tradition and protocol.

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The Redman's Message

The Civilization of the Whiteman is a failure; it is visibly crumbling around us. It has failed at every crucial test. No one who measures things by results can question this fundamental statement.

Apparently, the money-madness is the main cause of it all. We know that such a thing was unknown among the Indians. Their big menace was failure of food supply, and against this they prepared by using a storage plan that was effectual.

What is Civilization? Literally, it is a system by which men can live in a large group and enjoy all the benefits without suffering the evils that result from such association. For example, a man with his family is living isolated in the woods. They make or capture all necessaries of life. They defend themselves by fighting against the next family on the next stream,, and their only answer ‘o sanitary problems is to move out when the camp stinks.

But suppose one hundred families agree to live together in the same camp and combine their efforts to solve more effectively the problems of hostile tribes, food failure, disease, social pleasures and spiritual life. The men become cives. The resultant system evolved is a Civilization.

How are we going to appraise the value of a Civilization? By certain yard measures that are founded on human nature and which remorselessly investigate the fundamentals of the man-mind and the man-needs.

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The Tomahawk Strikes Again

Congress firmly believed it had the power to force trespassers off Cherokee lands, as was promised at the Hopewell Treaty; and the Cherokee placed great faith in the Congressional guarantee to protect their interests. The Cherokee Council accepted literally the last clause of the agreement which read: “Any settler who fails to remove within six months from the land guaranteed to the Indians shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Cherokee may punish him or not as they please.”

Federal officials made efforts to enforce the treaty but were almost powerless to keep their pledge. During the six or seven years following the Revolutionary War, the United States was more or less a loose Federation of Independent Commonwealths until the Federal Constitution was adopted by all thirteen states. Each state retained its state rights status which could not be infringed upon, and handled its own Indian Affairs – sometimes very badly. The Indians did not, and could not, understand the situation. They could only see the terms of the treaty being broken day after day.

As months passed and Congress made no visible move to stop the transgressors, the angered Indians took matters into their own hands and began raiding families who had settled on land promised them by the Federal Government. According to the treaty terms, they expected Congress to justify their actions. Instead, angered frontiersman struck back and bloody violence was committed on both sides. 

An unreasoning hate for Indians had developed among white frontier settlers. Many considered the aborigine natives as animals rather than humans. This attitude was somewhat summed up by one frontiersman who said to John Heckewelder, a Moravian Missionary: “An Indian has no more soul than a Buffalo. To kill either is the same thing, and when you have killed an Indian you have done a good act and have killed a wild beast.”

White immigrants wanted Indian land, so they planned and connived to get it by any means possible. Judge David Campbell of Franklin State (westerly portion of the colonial state of North Carolina) described the craze for land in this manner: “No people are entitled to more land than they can cultivate. People will not sit still and starve for land when a neighboring Nation has more than it needs.”

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