Regina Leader-Post

Removing statues won’t wipe away legacy of racism

- DOUG CUTHAND

Last week the city of Victoria removed a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald from outside its city hall. The reason given was that John A. was the leader in the “violence against Aboriginal people.”

Earlier in Halifax the statue of General Cornwallis was removed because of his genocidal policy toward Aboriginal people. Cornwallis implemente­d a bounty on Micmac men and women and paid it based on the number of scalps that were collected.

Meanwhile the Langevin Block in Ottawa has been changed to “the office of the Prime Minister and the Privy Council.” The building was originally named after Hector Louis Langevin, who was secretary of state for the provinces and was one of the architects of the residentia­l school system. When he spoke to the issue in parliament he reflected the spirit of the country when he stated that children must be removed from their parents to prevent them from remaining savages.

It will no doubt continue as Canada’s colonial and racist past is cleansed, but how much cleansing will be required? Canada has a racist past and to simply erase a few individual­s in the name of political correctnes­s is downright disingenuo­us.

These people didn’t exist in a vacuum; they had supporters who were like-minded. The churches lobbied government for the opportunit­y to implement a system of boarding schools that would spring up in Indian country like fast food franchises.

While it was John A.’s dream to clear the west of Indians and open it for settlement, he wasn’t alone. He was flanked by politician­s, railway barons, land speculator­s, missionari­es and bureaucrat­s. John A. and many of his friends were members of the Orange Lodge that was pro-protestant, anti-catholic and staunchly pro-british.

The Orange Lodge was an important fixture in pre- and post-colonial Canada and many of the fathers of Confederat­ion on the English side of the country were members.

If the United States was built by slave labour on stolen land, Canada was secured by cheap Chinese labour on swindled Indian land. Labourers were brought over from China to build the railway through the mountains to satisfy British Columbia’s terms of confederat­ion. In the process it is estimated that one Chinese life was lost for every mile of track that was laid.

After their work was done the Canadian government implemente­d a head tax only on Chinese immigratio­n, thereby preventing families from being reunited.

Canada was supposed to be a white nation from sea to sea and when the west was opened up to homesteade­rs, immigratio­n officials rated the newcomers according to their race and perceived farming ability. British settlers were favoured, followed by white people from other western European countries. Black people, Chinese people and Jews were discourage­d or outright denied entry.

But the enormous amount of land to be settled called for more wide ranging immigratio­n policies and land was opened up for settlers from eastern Europe such as Ukraine and Russia.

The push back came in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, which was the Orange Lodge on steroids. This group was anti-catholic and feared that immigratio­n would affect the purity of the “Anglo Saxon race.”

The Klan caught on big time in Saskatchew­an, with an estimated membership of 40,000 in 1927 and has been credited with the defeat of the Liberal government of Jimmy Gardner in 1929.

So, John A. is just a small part of Canada’s racist history.

As a member of a First Nation that was starved out of the Cypress Hills during his watch, I don’t have much sympathy for the removal of a few statues.

But papering over a few cracks in the concrete doesn’t fix the structural problems.

Canadians have to take a serious look at their history and realize that First Nations and people of colour were marginaliz­ed and discrimina­ted against.

Canadians like to foster an image of internatio­nal Boy Scouts, but we have a past that belies that smug image. We see ourselves as morally superior to the Americans, but the reality is that we are not far behind.

Reconcilia­tion just expanded to all people of colour.

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