Squamish Band Will Likely Protest at Games Despite its Support for Olympics

By David Carrigg; Friday, April 18, 2008 - The Province
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=7802528...

Squamish band members will likely protest at the 2010 Olympic Games despite the chief signing an agreement with the Vancouver Organizing Committee to support the event.

"There will be some level of protest, and I hope so, too," Squamish First Nation Chief Bill Williams said Thursday.

"We are going to be working with VANOC, but we have 3,500 members and not all want to be part of the Olympics. They want to talk about the children and the hardships in the community and they have the full right to do that."

Williams said natives across Canada have the highest ratings in all the worst quality-of-life scenarios.

"We have the highest rate of people incarcerated, the highest rate of children dropping out of schools, the highest rate of children in the child-care system and I could go on and on," Williams said.

"I myself as an aboriginal male have the shortest lifespan."

Williams was reacting to a warning in Ottawa yesterday from Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, that natives could protest at the 2010 Olympics to highlight their "desperate conditions."

In March 2007, three members of Vancouver's Native Warriors Society cut down the Olympic flag at Vancouver City Hall.

The Downtown Eastside's Anti-Poverty Committee has also staged several anti-Olympic protests, including an attack on a podium outside the Vancouver Art Gallery during the launch of the Olympic clock. The clock has been defaced twice.

Fontaine likened the lives of some native communities to those of Tibetans under Chinese rule.

"We find the Tibet situation compelling," he said. "The Tibetans are disenfranchised people. The situation here is similar, but it's different in this sense - the poverty we're talking about exists in Canada's own backyard.

"It's OK to express outrage with the Chinese government's position against Tibet, but [Canadians] should be just as outraged, if not more so . . . with what is being done to First Nations here."

Tibet protesters have made international headlines with their demonstrations, by interfering with the Olympic torch relay and calling on countries to boycott the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Fontaine and Williams signed a memorandum of understanding with VANOC last summer. The Squamish band is one of four covered by the agreement.

The memo says that the four host First Nations and the Assembly of First Nations will work with VANOC to "ensure a successful 2010 Winter Games."

In a prepared statement, VANOC boss John Furlong said "VANOC is committed to achieving unprecedented aboriginal participation in the planning and hosting of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games."

Furlong said VANOC is the first organizing committee in Olympic history to recognize aboriginal people as equal partners in staging the Games.

Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said the prospect of natives protesting against the Olympics is "a little odd to me."

"We have an excellent working relationship with the four host nations that are in the Olympic territory," he said.

dcarrigg@png.canwest.com