THE DEATH OF HARIETT NAHANEE: COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF THE OLYMPICS

Chris Shaw

Who killed Harriet Nahanee? The casual reader of the Republic will,
I suspect, rapidly default to the politically correct version now
being touted in "progressive" circles: Harriet was killed by an
insensitive judiciary and a corporate government in cahoots with an
aboriginal band council hell bent on acting like white businessmen.
Her defiance of the Eagle Ridge injunction and subsequent
incarceration provoked pneumonia in a 70 year old body already
desperately ill from a lifetime of abuse and struggle. All of this
is true of course. Alas, it's not quite so simple. So who killed
Harriet? Consider this: Maybe you helped send her to her grave.

Before you choke on your latte, let me explain, starting with an
analogy: Say, hypothetically, that Jack Poole, VANOC Chairman, has
gone up on what used to be Eagle Ridge to start building the 1800
homes slated for the area. On purpose - or by mistake - he nudges
loose a boulder that careens down the slope and onto the highway
killing a carload of tourists driving by. Is he responsible? Yes, of
course he is. Let's also say that you had the opportunity to stop
the boulder, but didn't. Maybe you saw it as an act of God and
nature, something that you couldn't prevent. Maybe, you even saw some
benefit, some reason that you didn't want to stop the boulder in its
fatal path. Perhaps you even cheered it on as it went whipping on by
because, you never know, a boulder that size could generate jobs when
it comes to rest. Perhaps sculptors could use the fragments for their
art?

Harriet Nahanee had gone to Eagle Ridge last spring to stand with
those who tried to stop the government and Peter Kiewit and Sons from
blasting into dust one of the last arbutus forests on the coast.
Warrior flag in one hand, proclamation of 1763 in the other, Harriet
politely told the police that this was her land and that she had no
intention of leaving. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Betty
Krawczyk and a few dozen others and sang and prayed until West Van's
finest hauled them away. In court, Harriet refused to apologize to
Kiewit for ignoring the injunction and their bottom line. For this,
she got a sentence of 14 days in jail. For this, in the end, she
gave her life. So tell me: Were you at Eagle Ridge with her or did
you pretend the battle there was all about a bunch of spoiled rich
folks fighting a NIMBY issue? The latter, right? No solidarity with
the Eagle Ridge protestors because they weren't real social justice
types, certainly not like you. I guess this means you were at the
Art Gallery when some brave kids from the Anti-Poverty Committee,
DERA and the Native Youth Movement tried to shout down VANOC's
obscene Olympic clock unveiling? Or maybe you helped APC and DERA at
the squats where they tried to protect housing for the poor? No? Why
not?

It's all too easy to blame others for what happened to Harriet and
Eagle Ridge and for those arrested at the Art Gallery. It must be
Gordon Campbell's fault, or Kevin Falcon's, or Sam Sullivan's, and
again all of this is true - but only up to a point. All of them,
just like much of the NDP hierarchy, ditto COPE (aka the Coalition of
Pusillanimous Electors), and the unfunny joke of Vision Vancouver,
all are political creatures bought and paid for in various fashions
by the powers that control Vancouver and British Columbia. The
developers want the delivery of Southeast False Creek, Eagle Ridge
and the downtown Eastside for their pet projects and the politicians
snap to attention, knuckle their foreheads, and obey. Who cares
about thousands of homeless when there is a Senate seat up for grabs
for those who cough up the mega projects. Did you really think Larry
Campbell got his new job because of good looks? Blame them all you
like, but in the final analysis they are just doing what comes
naturally as creatures drawn to the power provided by those with
money. Want to blame the developers and speculators? Why? It's
their nature to be rapacious. What did you think they were like?

When the developers and their pals, hand-in -hand with the bought and
paid for politicians, wheeled the Olympic torch into view, didn't you
smell a rat? Maybe you did, but you shut up if you were union
because your bosses told you the Games would be good for jobs. You
probably never thought twice about your pension funds bucking up Jack
Poole's Concert Properties, certainly not with labour big wigs like
Ken Georghetti and Tony Tennessy on Concert's board of directors. If
you're in the arts community you shut up too. After all, with
funding so tight, maybe you prayed that some of the Olympic bootie
could be yours. Did you get anything yet? Nope, but hope springs
eternal: All you have to do is keep your mouth shut except to praise
the Olympics while discretely turning your eyes away from the war on
the homeless and the rape of nature at Eagle Ridge and the Callaghan.
Maybe you shut up because Jim Green's watch poodle, the IOCC (Impact
of Olympics on Community Coalition), and most of COPE told you that
the Olympic monster could be controlled. First Nations? Well, unless
you were on the side of Harriet Nahanee, or Rosalin Sam, Chief Gary
John and much of the St'at'imc, you figured that a few million bucks
to the band bosses with a native interpretive centre in Whistler
chucked in on the side was worth cutting the Callaghan and Melvin
Creek adrift. And don't forget about all those great jobs for band
members hauling trash along the Sea to Sky corridor while your kids
"showcase" native culture by dancing for foreign tourists.
Environmental groups: Barely a murmur once Poole and his pirate crew
promised the "greenest games ever". Who needs Eagle Ridge when the
Athletes' Village will have solar panels?

Every con needs two prime ingredients: a con man and a sucker. The
Bid Corp and the politicians supplied con men galore, some smooth,
others just slimy, but all remarkably glib. Olympic promises of fame
and glory fell like November rain, there in the distance was "our
time to shine", and smug, narcissistic Vancouverites - apparently the
easiest marks in the world - ate it up with a spoon and begged for
more. It was a pathetic spectacle that continues even now:
Vancouverites desperately wanting to believe that somehow, magically,
the Olympics will ease the perpetual angst that maybe we really
aren't "world class". Jack Poole astutely sized up Vancouverites as
prime suckers, even bragged about it, then branded and drove them
like cattle.

Once the deal went down, it was real estate heaven for the
developers, the world's snazziest Nigerian banking scam for
taxpayers, and the mother of all coyote dates for the rest. The
greatest scam ever run in Vancouver was made easy with Olympic fairy
dust and beads and trinkets for groups that need a sweetener.

Waking from the Olympic dream is going to be tough on lots of people
who should have known better. By the time they see it for what it
is, the party will be over and the Olympic circus will have hit the
road. In the post Games hangover, the best you can do is bite off
your own arm and hope the fiscal bleeding eventually stops. What you
can do to ease your conscience is another matter since Harriet will
still be dead, Eagle Ridge and the Callaghan will still be gone, the
poor and homeless still dispersed.

The Olympic fight was winnable back in 2002. It's harder now by
several orders of magnitude not only because of time and Olympic
momentum, but also due to the sad fact that progressives in this city
have gone so long without a real "win" that they've forgotten what
one looks like. Add the endless bickering between groups to a
parochial mind set that states that if you aren't exactly like "us",
then you are ritually unclean and we can't work with you, and you get
the predictable outcome of self-imposed defeat.

Harriet Nahanee's death was part of the collateral damage of the
Olympics. So, dear Reader, if you let the Olympic boulder roll on by
and couldn't be bothered to lift a hand as it destroyed everything in
its path, you know the answer to the question. Who killed Hariett
Nahanee? You did.






















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Ian Gregson
Dept of Archaeology
Simon Fraser University
604.291.3135
iang@...

"emotion without action is irrelevant"
Jody Williams - Nobel Laureate
Anti Landmine Activist