The images that flood the mass media typically depict Canada's native population as being the victims of housing or health-care crises and show them struggling with poverty or hidden behind masks in confrontation with authorities.
But headed into the 2010 Olympics the Four Host First Nations have released a new video they hope will recast the face of Canada's aboriginal cultures and inspire a whole generation of young people.
"I hope it will make not just first nations proud - I hope it will make all Canadians proud," said Tewanee Joseph, CEO of the Four Host First Nations.
The video - a rapid montage propelled by a percussive, driving beat - shows native people in a very different way than Canadians are used to seeing them. All the images are positive, dynamic and upbeat.
"I want straight emotion and inspiration for three minutes. And I want to break stereotypes," was the way Mr. Joseph put it when he first outlined the project to the video production team.
And in an interview yesterday after the video was first posted online, he said the creative team delivered.
"I had seen it frame by frame in the editing studio before, but I only got to see the complete version for the first time Friday," Mr. Joseph said.
"It knocked me out. It was hard for me to hold my feelings back because it captures everything we are putting into the Games. It says: This is our people. This is who we are. This is what we're bringing."
The 2010 Olympics are the first Games at which organizers have signed a partnership protocol with aboriginal groups. The Four Host First Nations represent the four bands in whose traditional territory the Games are being held, and they are co-ordinating native involvement from across Canada.
Mr. Joseph said when he saw the first 2010 videos that hyped the Games, with inspiring images of athletes intermixed with Canada's dramatic landscapes, he felt native people needed to make their own bold statement in film.
"We don't very often celebrate success in our community. I don't know why that is, but if the images you see about yourself are always negative, you begin to think things are impossible," Mr. Joseph said. "You see your people as being victims all the time, that's how you start to see yourself, and that is very limiting. It's why, as a lacrosse player when I was younger, I was reluctant to go outside my community. You just didn't feel you could take on the world."
He does now, as do a lot of native people, and the Games are going to be their stage.
There is a native art theme to the medals, an aboriginal pavilion is getting ready to open in downtown Vancouver, a new cultural centre is already open in Whistler, information signs along the Sea-to-Sky Highway are in both English and native languages, and hundreds of aboriginal artists are coming to perform and show their work.
"There's a pretty simple concept behind the video," Mr. Joseph said. "We're just saying, 'We're here, we're part of the Games.' And the other thing it's doing is just showing a lot of positive images to Canadians, and to the world."
Mr. Joseph said the short video is not meant to deny the problems aboriginal people face on a daily basis in Canada, but rather it is to show there's another side to the picture.
"Usually what you see in the media is always about the struggles, it's about this going wrong and that going wrong. This is about what's going right in our culture," he said.
The video, titled Four Host First Nations Welcome, can be viewed online at YouTube.com. It will also be shown at the Aboriginal Pavilion during the Games.
The video is produced by creative director David Martin of Hyphen Communications, and the music is arranged by Sal Ferreras, dean of the Vancouver Community College school of music and director of the Four Host First Nations venue at the Games.
Mr. Martin has worked on creative campaigns for corporate clients that include Sunlight, Cadbury, Labatt's Breweries and Mercedes-Benz.
Mr. Ferreras started an aboriginal music program at Vancouver Community College and in 2007, on behalf of the Four Host First Nations, he directed a Salish ceremony in front of about 10,000 spectators at Pacific Coliseum.
Online, Mr. Ferreras said he views the Olympics as "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show the world how dynamic and alive [native]culture is and how tradition and the contemporary coexist."
Mark Hume