The Olympics are Political
A blog post from an indigenous writer, scholar, story-teller & spoken word artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson:
Here is the part that I need to say out loud even though it’s neither new or profound: every aspect of the Olympics is political – who is there, who is not there, where they are held, where they are not held, the sports that are involved, the sports that are not involved, the sports women are allowed to compete in and those we are not, the basic human rights of transgender athletes, whose history is told and celebrated and whose is silenced, the privileging of the competition of able bodied athletes and the fact that the social costs of the games fall squarely on the backs of the economically poor.
As she puts it:
As all Native parents know, the colonialism talk makes the sex talk look a lot like a platter of cupcakes with a chaser of ice cream cones.
Read the rest here: http://leannesimpson.ca/2012/07/31/on-the-olympics-being-indigenous/
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