I don't like the new logo. It's simple in design. Boring, static.
I'm not the only one disappointed. Some West Coast natives are not happy they went with a stylized Inuit symbol.
From the Globe and and Mail
Native groups not happy QUOTE
Grand Chief Edward John of the First Nations Summit said some native leaders were so upset with the logo they were prepared to walk out of an unveiling ceremony Saturday night at GM Place.
Chief Stewart Philip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, was blunt in his criticism of the stylized inukshuk the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) will use as its logo.
\"I can't help but notice the remarkable resemblance it has to Pac-Man,\" Philip said.
\"The First Nations community at large is disappointed with the selection. The decision makers have decided not to reflect the First Nations and the Pacific region in the design of the logo.\"
John said while the inukshuk is a symbol of Canada's north, there are many other images that better represent B.C.
\"With no disrespect to the Inuit, given that the West Coast has produced some world class art forms and artists who are First Nations, you would have thought there would have been some effort to reflect that in this [logo] and it isn't,\" John said.
And from the National Post: inukshuk vs innunguait
new symbol QUOTE
Because if anything is clear from the inukshuk's recent rise in the public mind (...) it is that no one really knows what an inukshuk is, except that it is Canadian.
The Olympic press release said the humanoid stone structure \"has become a representation of hope\" and \"a uniquely Canadian symbol of friendship, hospitality, strength, teamwork and the vast Canadian landscape.\"
Only vague -- and not fully accurate -- reference was made to its origins as a \"directional marker\" for Inuit hunters and travellers.
Norman Hallendy, 73, an Arctic ethnogeographer who wrote the first academic paper on the inukshuk, laughed aloud when he heard about Canada's new Olympic logo.
\"It's not an inukshuk,\" he said yesterday, meaning that it should properly be called an inunnguaq. \"The two objects are very different.\"
he says, the inukshuk is at best misunderstood, and at worst misrepresented.
it was described as \"a well-known symbol in Canada of northern hospitality and friendship.\"
But an inukshuk is no such thing, says Mr. Hallendy, who is a fellow of the Smithsonian Institution and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. It is not even uniquely Canadian, at least according to archeological field work in Patagonia, Mongolia, Iceland and the Sahara.
The word inukshuk (plural inuksuit) means \"that which acts in the capacity of a person,\" and comes from the word inuk (plural inuit), which means \"person.\" It refers to the stones stacked by Inuit on the land to remind themselves and instruct others about all sorts of things: danger, a safe crossing, a spring of fresh water, thin ice, deep snow, or that travellers should go this way as opposed to that.
\"A stoplight or a stop sign is an inukshuk, because it acts in the capacity of a person telling you to stop,\" Mr. Hallendy said. \"It reminds you of something. It's like the string that you tie to your finger to remind you that you gotta go to the dentist.\"
The most prominent type of inukshuk is a single upright stone, whose Inuit name translates as ''de-confuser,\" but the popular incarnation of the inukshuk is more elaborate, with stones representing arms and a head, just like on the Olympic logo. That makes it an inunnguaq, not an inukshuk, Mr. Hallendy said, and their story is very different.
A well known collection of inunnguait (plural of inunnguaq) were at Pelley Bay, and were built under the direction of a missionary priest, which makes their resemblance to a cross no mere coincidence. There is even strong debate over whether Inuit made humanoid rock piles before the arrival of Christian Europeans. Mr. Hallendy also pointed to the use of inunnguait to inform European whalers, known among Inuit as \"men of spring,\" that an Inuit village was nearby, or to mark the place where women had been swept out to sea.
So, whereas the inukshuk took the place of a person for the mundane necessities of Arctic travel, an inunnguaq actually referred to a person, with all the spiritual gravity of a tombstone. (The Olympic logo is explicitly designed as a person. Its name, Ilanaaq, means \"friend\" or \"companion\" in Inuktitut.)
That ticket distribution system seems to be fair, though.
