The issue of memory and forgiveness has occupied our thoughts lately. In the United States, a movement has begun to remove the hundreds of statues honouring the legacy of Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee. The Confederate flag has already bitten the dust (except in the minds of unrepentant racists) and the removal of statues celebrating Civil War bigots that wanted to perpetuate slavery seems reasonable in a time when we are struggling with yet another blip in the rise of white supremacy.
The reaction from racists, bigots and white supremacists is as expected. Removing their icons is tantamount to a declaration of war. The riot in Charlottesville, Va., by neo-Nazis began ostensibly over the removal of one of these statues and more followed.
Of course, not all who demand the status quo of Confederate symbols and statues are white supremacists. Many are simply plain old bigots who have not moved into the 21st century. Still others question the need to play with history, suggesting that nation-changing events like the Civil War have their place in the commemoration of a nation.
It is indeed a complex issue, one that we are also grappling with here in Canada. The decision, for example, to change the name of the federal Langevin Block building in Ottawa because of the role played by Hector-Louis Langevin in designing the residential school system springs to mind.
Langevin was certainly not a minor player in the ensuing cultural genocide that had its catalyst with the forcing – some would say kidnapping – of aboriginal children to residential schools usually hundreds of kilometres from their homes and families.
Yet, in this light, what does one do with our founding prime minister, John A Macdonald?
‘imagine you’re an indigenous person and your child has to walk through the doors of a school that bears the name of a man who advocated for the genocide of her ancestors’
I have written often about this conundrum over the last five years. I noted in the case of our first prime minister that he was instrumental in shaping Canada into the vibrant country it is today. Macdonald was the engine that built a national railway from coast to coast. It was his vision that brought Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick together in 1867 to form Confederation. Later, he brought Prince Edward Island, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories into the Canadian family. He was revered for his ability to balance English and French rights. Many also suggest that it was Macdonald’s deft ability as a negotiator that brought much of the northeast into the fold.
However, I also noted that Sir John A. Macdonald was an unrepentant racist, far beyond even the tenor of his time. Macdonald disdained Chinese rail workers, the very same men who helped build his national dream, by imposing a discriminatory head tax on each of them. And it was Macdonald’s policies of forced starvation that helped clear First Nations from the prairies in order to build that railway.
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Indeed, James Daschuk from the University of Regina argues quite cogently in his book Clearing the Plains that Macdonald’s starvation policies led to the deaths of thousands. As Daschuk explains: “For years, government officials withheld food from aboriginal people until they moved to their appointed reserves, forcing them to trade freedom for rations. Once on reserves, food placed in ration houses was withheld for so long that much of it rotted while the people it was intended to feed fell into a decades-long cycle of malnutrition, suppressed immunity and sickness from tuberculosis and other diseases. Thousands died.”
One of my Facebook friends made a very strong point when she identified Macdonald as the true architect of indigenous cultural genocide.
She wrote, “Now imagine you’re an indigenous person and your child has to walk through the doors of a school that bears the name of a man who advocated for the genocide of her ancestors.”
As we enter our own season of repentance and forgiveness, can there really be forgiveness for the pain, death and loss these leaders engineered on indigenous people? My heart says no.
