Native Youth Protest 2010 Olympics

January 31, 2008

Author: Sam Bick

Source: The McGill Daily

http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=6953

With the 2010 Vancouver Olympics rapidly approaching, indigenous groups in Canada are protesting that the events – to be held on unceded Salish, St’at’imc, and Squamish territory – will wreak environmental and social destruction.

Activists Kanahus Pelkey and Dustin Johnson have embarked on a three-week speaking tour across the East Coast and Great Lakes entitled “No Olympics on Stolen Land” to illuminate the threat. The two visit Montreal’s Native Friendship Centre tonight.

“By having the Olympics [outside Vancouver], it opens our land, our sacred sites, our medicine grounds,” Pelkey said.

“All these big corporations are going to see the potential in our land, and we want them to know that our land is not for sale,” she added.

Pelkey, a spokesperson for the Native Youth Movement (NYM), explained that NYM is opposing the Olympics not only because of unresolved land claims issues, but also due to the threat the Olympics poses to the local land and low-income communities in the city.