I can purchase and use these representations of Indian-ness to construct and validate my own understanding of Canada and its colonial history. What is not made clear to me, the tourist, is that in this place where native culture and identity are appropriated to define what Canada is and is not, “the social reality of many indigenous peoples belies the sanitized images of their lives and cultures which feature so prominently in tourist and related advertising and marketing” (Meekison 2000:110).  Gastown actively resists its proximal connection to the downtown eastside, Canada’s poorest postal code, a part of Vancouver known for poverty, addiction, and prostitution.  Its tourist shops and galleries curate representations that do not disrupt non-native assumptions about First Nations people. These popular, commodified stereotypes “fail to challenge the fundamental power relations between peoples of privilege and peoples of disadvantages” (Godwell 2000:243).  As I walk back on the street, I have no idea that today, for a moment, this will change.