Statues require historical context

Re: We should not sanitize our history (June 13)

This writer frets that removing statues will “sanitize history.” It is precisely because these statues “sanitize” and whitewash history that many people are advocating a variety of ways to address these concerns.

One suggestion is for the statues to be relocated to museums where a more accurate account can be provided; for instance, statues of Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, could be placed next to ones that represent his role in the Chinese Head Tax, the execution of Métis leader Louis Riel, and his genocidal policies toward Indigenous peoples.

Macdonald’s sadistic policies included starving Indigenous people in order to force them onto reserves, draconian pass laws that governed people’s movement, criminalization of Indigenous spiritual practices and Canada’s infamous Indian Residential School system that decimated families, languages and communities.

Others have advocated for tearing down and destroying statues that honour those who actively participated in racist violence against enslaved, displaced, starved, abused and murdered men, women and children as part of nation-building. It is an egregious sanitization of history to let these statues stand outside of the context of these facts.

If the letter writer is worried about the sanitization of history, I would imagine they would support rather than denounce actions to relocate, tear down, dump into the river, smear with fake blood or other creative alterations to these representations of Canada’s racist and colonialist past. I know I do.

Vilma Rossi, Hamilton