‘No Olympics on stolen native land’: contesting Olympic narratives and asserting indigenous rights within the discourse of the 2010 Vancouver Games

The Olympic movement is a powerful industry and resistance to it is often deemed unnecessary, and at times is considered to be criminal. The campaign calling for ‘No Olympics on Stolen Native Land’ is perceived to be a radical crusade calling for the cancellation of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. However, the reality is these Olympic Games will take place and they will be hosted on unceded and non-surrendered indigenous lands. The British Columbia land question remains unanswered, and the very presence of the current Olympic structure on contentious indigenous lands has the potential to temporarily silence, and perhaps permanently alter, the immediate needs of indigenous peoples within British Columbia, Canada. This essay contributes to the ongoing narrative of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics as it provides an historical framework for understanding the fragile tensions that exist between present-day Olympic programming and indigenous activism.