Protesters say Olympics not welcome on 'stolen land'
Last Updated: Thursday, January 31, 2008 | 9:17 PM ET
The Canadian Press
Kanahus Pellkey says if aboriginals have their way, the 2010 Winter Olympics will not be all fun and games.
She and Dustin Johnson, two members of the Native Youth Movement from British Columbia, brought that message to Montreal Thursday.
"The world is not welcome to our territories," Pellkey told reporters during a news conference held at the Olympic Stadium, the main site of the 1976 Summer Games.
"This is all stolen land, here as well as on the West Coast."
Pellkey pointed out that her father attended the opening ceremonies in Montreal in 1976 to also protest against the Olympics.
The pair say they are visiting Central Canada and parts of the United States to raise awareness about opposition to the Olympics in Vancouver and the negative effects of holding the Games.
"We're travelling around bringing awareness to the issue that indigenous people are continuing to fight for their land and freedom," she said.
Pellkey said natives also are calling for an international boycott of the 2010 Olympics and all corporations that are involved in sponsoring the events.
"The Olympics are about money, the corporate sponsors are about money, everything is about money, but native people remain the most impoverished people in the land."
She and Johnson have already visited a half-dozen native and non-native communities in Ontario and plan to be in Ottawa on Friday.
The Native Youth Movement also says the construction of infrastructure for the Olympics is adding to extensive destruction of traditional homelands of local indigenous peoples.
Marcel Sevigny, a Montreal housing rights activist, said what is happening in Vancouver brings back memories of what occurred in Montreal before the 1976 Summer Games.
"The occupation of native land in British Columbia by organizers of the Olympics reminds me of the scandals that took place in Montreal, where several hundreds of families were forced out of their homes because of the Montreal Olympics," he said, referring to expropriations that took place to get land to build facilities.
Sevigny said he wasn't surprised real estate agents and promoters were trying to make a big profit to the detriment of the local population and natives in British Columbia.
"Here in Montreal [in 1976], it was to the detriment of very poor families in Montreal who were trying to find lodging … It seems to be the same thing, Olympics after Olympics."
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