2008 Woodie Awards
Natives group rebukes Olympic land-grab
2010 paving way for extensive development on aboriginal land
Richard Tardif (with files from Jacob Serebrin)
Issue date: 2/5/08 Section: News
The Olympics will come and go, but Natives will be left with the negative aftermath long after, said Kanahus Pellkey, a Secwepemc Native and Ktnuxa Warrior, and spokesperson for the Native Youth Movement (NYM).
The British Columbia group opposes the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and Pellkey has been traveling across the country along-side Dustin Johnson of the Ts'mksi'yen nation. They brought that message to Montreal last Thursday speaking to the media outside Montreal's Olympic Stadium, the site of the 1976 Summer Olympics, before speaking to a crowd of over 100 supporters at the Native Friendship Center in the evening.
Pellkey is traveling across Canada to raise awareness about opposition to the Olympics in Vancouver and the negative effects of holding the Games on what she says is "unceded" Native land. "It is all stolen land, here as well as on the West Coast," she said. "The government of British Columbia doesn't have the right to develop Native lands that were never ceded." She says that unlike what happened in the rest of the country, no treaties were signed in British Columbia.
Her main objection is to the role the games are playing in changing her people's way of life on the land. With other resource industries like agriculture, fishing and logging in crisis, she believes, the political and economic forces behind the games are promoting it as a 17-day worldwide televised info-commercial to attract investment for British Columbia's growing winter tourism economy.
"Premier Gordon Campbell, of British Columbia has made it his mandate to make all of B.C. an all seasons resort ... it's all about money, it's all about greed," she said.
Included in this are massively expanded ski hills - up to 40 are being planned for completion by the year 2012, six more by the following year connecting everything and splicing through B.C.'s backcountry. The B.C. government estimates the profits could exceed $6 billion by the year 2020.
But First Nations groups, such as the NYM, say the land is theirs. "Big corporations coming for the Olympics are going to see the potential to make money when they see our untouched land," said Pellkey. "We want investors to know our land is not for sale and has never been. For us right now we're holding onto the very last of what we have."
The British Columbia group opposes the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and Pellkey has been traveling across the country along-side Dustin Johnson of the Ts'mksi'yen nation. They brought that message to Montreal last Thursday speaking to the media outside Montreal's Olympic Stadium, the site of the 1976 Summer Olympics, before speaking to a crowd of over 100 supporters at the Native Friendship Center in the evening.
Pellkey is traveling across Canada to raise awareness about opposition to the Olympics in Vancouver and the negative effects of holding the Games on what she says is "unceded" Native land. "It is all stolen land, here as well as on the West Coast," she said. "The government of British Columbia doesn't have the right to develop Native lands that were never ceded." She says that unlike what happened in the rest of the country, no treaties were signed in British Columbia.
Her main objection is to the role the games are playing in changing her people's way of life on the land. With other resource industries like agriculture, fishing and logging in crisis, she believes, the political and economic forces behind the games are promoting it as a 17-day worldwide televised info-commercial to attract investment for British Columbia's growing winter tourism economy.
"Premier Gordon Campbell, of British Columbia has made it his mandate to make all of B.C. an all seasons resort ... it's all about money, it's all about greed," she said.
Included in this are massively expanded ski hills - up to 40 are being planned for completion by the year 2012, six more by the following year connecting everything and splicing through B.C.'s backcountry. The B.C. government estimates the profits could exceed $6 billion by the year 2020.
But First Nations groups, such as the NYM, say the land is theirs. "Big corporations coming for the Olympics are going to see the potential to make money when they see our untouched land," said Pellkey. "We want investors to know our land is not for sale and has never been. For us right now we're holding onto the very last of what we have."
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