Waneek Horn-Miller, Canadian Olympian, makes mark on Pan Am Games

Every bead represents a positive thought, of resilience, of strength, of health.

Together the hundreds of intricately-woven beads in Waneek Horn-Miller's medallion are "good medicine."

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When the Olympic water polo player and proud Mohawk was selected as an assistant chef de mission for the Pan American Games, she wanted to incorporate her culture into the Games.

So she asked her friend Roberta Anderson, a Cree and residential school survivor, to create jewellery for the occasion.

Anderson created 13 different medallions. Horn-Miller wears one, and she has so far given one to chef de mission Curt Harnett, her co-assistant chef Elise Marcotte, and paddler Mark Oldershaw, who wore it when he carried Canada's flag into the opening ceremonies.

"When you bead something special for someone, you're supposed to think a special thought for each bead, like: be strong, be powerful, be safe. And that's what Roberta did," Horn-Miller said. "When she knew who she was beading for, the [Pan Am] team, she was so excited, and she thought all good things.

"So when I gave it Mark [Oldershaw], I said 'This is thousands of good thoughts.' And he was like 'Wow.' So it's a little bit of good medicine. Not good luck because it's almost more than good luck. We call it good medicine in our culture."

Horn-Miller was one of Canada's most inspirational stories at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Ten years earlier, as a 14-year-old from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, she was stabbed in the chest by a bayonet during the final days of the Oka Crisis. The injury nearly killed her, and the photo of her tearfully clutching her four-year-old sister remains one of the most memorable of that violent summer.

She went on to co-captain Canada's women's water polo team that won gold at the 1999 Pan Ams, finished fifth in Sydney where women's water polo made its Olympic debut, and won bronze at the 2001 world championships.

Beaded medallion

The beaded medallion Horn-Miller wears — she also has matching beaded earrings —is different from the other 12. The border is not symmetrical.

"[Anderson] said 'I made you this one because nature is never symmetrical, it's always sort of off and different.' But she said that's the power of it, the power of nature and why it's strong is that it's not perfect," Horn-Miller said. "And as an athlete it's not about perfection, it's about being strong in all elements of what you are."

Anderson grew up on Gordon's First Nations in Saskatchewan, where she was kept in the residential school and wasn't permitted to visit her family across the bay.

"I'm really proud and honoured to have Roberta bead this stuff for me. Her art and her spirit and her resilience, for someone who went through residential schools, she represents this incredibly resilient woman and that resilience is built into this too," Horn-Miller said. "It's a little bit of that resilient power. Athletes need that, to be able to overcome and go beyond. That's one thing that indigenous people are able to do."

"I really wanted that spirit to be brought into this team. And it's in a positive way, it's taking something negative and turning it into a positive. That's what I did with my career, I really empowered myself and my team with who I was as a native person. . . this (artwork) just makes me giddy with happiness."