Dreschel: Is slave owner Joseph Brant next?
Calling for schools to be renamed leads to some uncomfortable questions
It never fails. When the United States sneezes, the world catches a cold.
No sooner do Americans start toppling and removing Confederate statues for being pro-slavery symbols, presto, cultural sensitivities in other countries are stirred and awakened by the example.
In Britain they’re earnestly debating a suggestion to tear down Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square because in the eyes of some the naval hero is now seen as a “white supremacist.”
In Canada, the Ontario elementary teachers’ union wants to rename schools named after Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, because he allegedly was the “architect of genocide against Indigenous Peoples.”
Based on that interpretation of history, it’s a safe bet some think the Macdonald statue in Hamilton’s Gore Park should be removed as, doubtless, should the nearby monument to arch imperialist Queen Victoria
But why stop there if we’re reassessing the past by today’s ethical standards?
Consider: There’s a big government-funded facility in the Hamilton area named after a famous historic settler who was an unrepentant slave owner. Shouldn’t the name be changed to reflect today’s sensibilities?
I’m speaking of course about the great Haudenosaunee war chief Joseph Brant whose name adorns Burlington’s Joseph Brant Hospital.
Many people don’t realize that when Brant moved to this area he came with several black slaves in tow and apparently had little patience with anti-slavery efforts.
And yet Brant (or Thayendanegea) is one of the giants of Native American history. There’s a statue of him in the City of Brantford and there’s another life-sized one in Ottawa, which is part of the “Valiants Memorial,” a collection of monuments commemorating important Canadian military figures.
Should those statues be torn down to help expunge the sins of the past?
Brant wasn’t the only slave owner in early Upper Canada, of course. Historian Alan Taylor estimates the colony had about 300 slaves at the time, mostly taken from rebel settlements during the American Revolution by Indians and loyalist raiders.
The fact is, slavery and slave trading was practised by many Indigenous groups prior to and after European contact. Should we now scrutinize and reassess all our Native memorials and place names in the harsh light of our current values?
At this rate there’ll be no end to the revisions. We’ll certainly need to change the name of countless schools, including Earl Kitchener elementary in west Hamilton, named after the imperial British general whose ruthlessness included using concentration camps during the Boer war in South Africa.
I understand of course that perceptions of the past are changeable and prone to fluctuations. But whenever people start imposing today’s values on another age, I respectfully suggest we remind ourselves of historian Marc Bloch’s cautionary words about not being too quick to adopt “angelic airs.”
“Are we so sure of ourselves and of our age as to divide the company of our forefathers into the just and the damned?” Bloch asked.
In other words, who knows what future generations may say about some of the moral ambiguities and flaws of our own self-absorbed time.
How can it be that with all our affluence more than 3 million children under the age of five still die from preventable diseases each year?
Why do we idly place a greater value on cheap consumer goods than on the lives of millions of people, including children, who toil in sweatshops in undeveloped and developing countries?
How can we stand by and let brutal dictatorships repress, imprison, torture and kill our fellow human beings?
And how will the ever mutable future view our present positions on assisted suicide or late-term abortions or our treatment of the elderly and mentally ill?
Whatever future critics may say about us, hopefully it will be more informed by an understanding of our collective lives and times rather than a contemporary sense of outrage and superiority.