In defence of the Sir John A. statues
Victoria removed its John A. Macdonald statue on Aug. 11. A man is facing charges in Regina after a Macdonald monument there was vandalized last week. Now, Scotland — Macdonald’s native land — is removing all references to Canada’s first prime minister on its government websites.
But as far as Garret Smith is concerned, John A. can stay.
The Calgary-based First Nations advocate says the fight to purge public spaces of Macdonald’s likeness misses the point of reconciliation.
“Statues are at the bottom end of a list of things that we need to tackle,” said Smith, a Siksika (Blackfoot) man from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta. Focusing only on statues ignores the lived experiences of Indigenous people today, he said.
As founder and organizer of the city’s Mohkinstsis healing camp, Smith contends it’s more important to build bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
That includes providing ways to learn about Indigenous history and culture.
“For us, it’s very simple: Keep the statues, keep them,” Smith said. “But if you want to keep the statues, our point of view is erect monuments or statues of the children or of the First Nations leaders who were affected by those policies.
“Put a statue up next to John A. Macdonald, have the Indian Act right next to him and have a pile of children in a monument that were murdered right next to him,” he said.
In his 2014 book Clearing the Plains, University of Regina professor James Daschuk showed how Macdonald implemented starvation policies on the Prairies to clear out First Nations peoples and make room for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
“He was the longest-standing, basically the de facto, minister of Indian affairs,” Daschuk said.
“For at least a decade, he was the minister of Indian affairs at the time when residential schools were imposed, at the same time as the illegal pass system was imposed, and that kept incarcerated treaty Indians on their reserves up until the 1950s. He personally oversaw those programs.”
Calgarian Michelle Robinson, a Dené woman who’s a descendent of residential school survivors, takes the same approach as Smith.
She referenced the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action, starting at No. 79: “There’s a call to action for Canadians to properly memorialize in every single municipality and place Indian residential school survivors.
“It’s actually a great opportunity to fulfil those calls to action by adding those plaques (beside monuments), saying, ‘Hey, did you know that John A. Macdonald implemented (residential schools)?’ ” Robinson said.