A new event for traditional games in the NWT has been in the works for the last little while but it’s now a reality.
The Aboriginal Sports Circle of the NWT has officially taken the cover off of the Indigenous Summer Games, a brand-new event which will be for those 13 years of age or older. The logo was released Wednesday morning with a logo reveal on the Sports Circle’s Facebook page and it’s hoped that it will be a celebration of culture and Indigenous peoples.
Carson Roche, the Sports Circle’s events manager, has been working on getting everything together and in an interview with NNSL Media this past October, he said it was a true grassroots idea.
“The first one will be important so we can get an idea on how it goes, how we would improve on it and so on,” he said at the time.
The event is designed as a way for those who are interested in traditional games to keep on competing after aging out of the Traditional Games Championships, which is only open to those between the ages of 10 and 12.
Roche also said back in October that the idea for this came after Shawna McLeod, the Sports Circle’s community development manager, attended the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics (WEIO) in Alaska, one of the largest traditional games events in the world, to see how that event is run.
“For the kids who turn 13 or 14 after the Traditional Games Championships, we want to let them know that there will be something for them,” he said. “The championships have been a huge success but they fall in love with it and then they have nothing except the Arctic Winter Games. We want to give them a chance to compete beyond that.”
The dates for the new event and the details of what will be a part of it have yet to be finalized but the Sports Circle said more information will drop in the upcoming weeks.