Native artisan raps VANOC's 'authentic' Aboriginal art

A North Vancouver artisan has launched a petition to get Olympic organizers to remove the term "authentic" from some of its Aboriginal line of Games merchandise.

A lot of what is being sold with the Olympic logo is anything but authentic, Shain Jackson said.

"Here's a case in point," Jackson said, pointing to a plastic luggage tag decorated with an Aboriginal salmon design and bearing the official Olympic trademarks. It's identified as an "Aboriginal luggage tag" and on the back, it says it was designed by VANOC — the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee — and made in China.

Jackson says that is unfair to Aboriginal companies such as his firm Spirit Works Ltd., which creates and sells Aboriginal products from a warehouse on Squamish lands.

"Aboriginal producers of authentic Aboriginal products — those designed, produced and distributed by Aboriginal companies employing Aboriginal people here in Canada — are being hurt by this," Jackson said.

VANOC, which is marketing products ranging from change purses to passport holders and labelling them as authentic Aboriginal art, has defended the merchandise.

The committee says its partners, the four host First Nations, say those items are part of its product line "featuring authentic Aboriginal artwork," and that "these products are then produced by our licensees, some with facilities here in Canada, others off-shore."

That's cold comfort for Jackson.

"It's tough out there," Jackson said. "It's very tough out there. And when you take a term like 'authentic Aboriginal products' and make it mean what the Olympics has made it mean, you're misleading people."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/12/24/bc-aboriginal...