Aboriginal sports get boost

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Former Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller (second from left) walks with her child Sunday at the Duckworth Centre. (DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

The Assembly of First Nations wants to keep more kids in the classroom and out of trouble with a major sports programming initiative announced Sunday morning at the University of Winnipeg.

AFN National Grand Chief Shawn Atleo was at the Duckworth Centre to announce IndigenACTION, a sprawling two-year, three-phase program to identify gaps in aboriginal sports, fitness, and health and wellness. The announcement comes two days before AFN's annual general assembly begins in the city.

Flanked by one-time Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller and ultra-marathon runner Ray Zahab, and dozens of supporters, Atleo said aboriginal communities can't thrive without a dramatic increase in supports for fitness and sports.

"Sports could very well be the turning point in our communities," Atleo said. "Healthy communities are thriving communities."

Despite a huge, unseen and unknown sports movement in aboriginal communities, programs are suffering while infrastructure is either inadequate or non-existent, Atleo said.

"Kids in villages and reserves, the likes of which I lived on as a kid, they just get out and do what they can with what they've got. Very often it's not very much," he said.

"We know that there are 60 schools needed across this country in First Nations communities. It doesn't take that much to figure that means we have 60 communities without gymnasiums as well, and probably without sports and recreation directors."

The first phase of the initiative starts this fall, with roundtables across the country with community leaders and sports organizations. A report will be presented at the National First Nation Sport, Fitness and Wellness Conference in fall 2011, with a national strategy and governing body established in fall 2012.

"We're engaging in roundtables so we can understand all that's happening in the area of sports and recreation," Atleo said. "We want to reach out and support and work with existing initiatives so that we're not duplicating efforts or taking away from anybody's energy. We want to only add to that.

"We want to be careful not to rush forward and just launch specific programming without making sure that we're doing it in the right places," he said.

The overall goal is to increase fitness programming to combat disease, improve academic performance and lower crime and incarceration rates.

Horn-Miller, who co-captained Canada's water polo team in the 2000 Olympics, said sport gave her the discipline to stay out of trouble and become an Olympian. It also allowed her three sisters to become a doctor, a Gemini-award-nominated actress, and the other to graduate with a Ph.D.

"My mother invested in putting us into sports and I cannot tell you how much it impacted my life," Horn-Miller said after a brisk walk with her baby around the track at Duckworth Centre. "It taught me about working with others, to push myself above and beyond. And through me and my sisters, it has all given us that foundation of how to work hard and how to go after what we want.

"You have to give people hope," she continued. "And hope is like gold. If we're building something where people are developing self-worth, self-confidence, respect, and they see opportunity, it transfers for the rest of their life."

The AFN's general assembly runs in the city from July 20 to 22; it is expected to draw 6,000 people to the city and pump $2.5 million into the economy.

matt.preprost@freepress.mb.ca

"I started playing hockey on a grass field. I was trying to push the tennis ball through the grass. I've seen first-hand the lack of recreation centres for youth. Sport is like family. It keeps us away from the drugs, the alcohol, and the gangs."

-- Joshua Gottfriedson, AFN Youth Council co-chair

With this beginning we can develop the sporting capabilities of our people and in doing so achieve a high level of sport. It's a building of character, of self-esteem, self-respect and self-sufficiency."

-- Billy Two Rivers, AFN elder from Kahnawake, Quebec

"There are no boundaries to what kids are able to accomplish, they just need to have the right seeds planted. And this is one of those programs that helps provide that. It provides hope, it provides action, it's real and you can sink your teeth into it."

-- Ray Zahab, former pack-a-day smoker turned ultra-marathon runner who ran through the Sahara Desert in 2007

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 19, 2010 A4