Are woke zealots plotting to ‘cancel’ our most revered female missionary?
SHE is the humble Scots mill girl still revered in Africa as the ‘Mother of all the Peoples’ more than a century after her death.
Mary Slessor travelled to Nigeria and endured hunger and sickness while battling to save children from starvation and ritual slaughter as she spread the Gospel.
The Clydesdale Bank even put her on its £10 bank note.
But in light of the Black Lives Matter campaign, the legacy of our most famous female missionary is being ‘reviewed’ by the council in her home city of Aberdeen.
Following the death in May of George Floyd, 46, in the US state of Minneapolis, many museums have been re-examining the content of their collections and the history of the people on display.
Officials in the North-East now fear Slessor could be ‘problematic’ because she ‘imposed her Christian views’ on African natives.
They have expressed concern about how her treatment of local people may be viewed before they feature her in a new exhibition in the city’s Provost Skene’s House.
The decision has outraged the Mary Slessor Foundation, which carries out relief work in Nigeria.
Douglas Binnie, who recently y retired as the charity’s chairman, n, said: ‘It is incredibly sad and hugely y disappointing that someone could d possibly describe the life of Mary y
‘She helped to save the bairns out there’
Slessor as something that “could be problematic” in the context of Black Lives Matter.
‘I was asked, a couple of years ago, to speak at a gathering of people during Black History Month to raise awareness of the work and phenomenal achievements of Mary Slessor, which is the exact opposite of the message being alluded to by Aberdeen City Council.’
Mr Binnie said he was sure that Dr Lawrie Mitchell, who began the Foundation and died last month, h, would be ‘abhorred and annoyed’ d’ by the council officials’ remarks.
Similarly, an academic who has s written about Slessor says the e council’s words are ‘a bit harsh’.
Professor Donna Heddle, director r of the Institute of Northern Studies s at the University of the Highlands s and Islands, said: ‘I realise museums are looking at how they curate the slavery story.
‘A lot of people don’t like to think Scotland was involved in the slave trade. It does not sit comfortably with who we think we are.
‘But we have to look at things in the context of when they happened. Mary Slessor thought she was doing the right thing; that she was doing good. It was her job as a missionary. That was what she trained to do. She helped to save the bairns out there and gave them something to eat.
‘She had the respect of the people she was trying to help.’
When she arrived in Calabar, Nigeria, in September 1876, Slessor was as much motivated by humanitarianism as by evangelism – intervening to stop acts of cruelty and settling disputes among tribes and neighbours. She also found that human sacrifice was rife. When a chief died, all his wives and slaves were killed to keep him company in the afterlife.
Twins were considered evil and left abandoned to die. Slessor saved many twin children by adopting them and giving them her name.
At only 5ft tall, she stood up to chiefs and witch doctors. When she died in 1915, aged 67, Nigeria gave a state funeral to Eka Kpukpro Owo, ‘Mother of all the Peoples’.
The Aberdeen City Council review emerged from a freedom of information request.
A local authority report from the summer stated: ‘There are some individuals who are due to feature in the new displays at Provost Skene’s House that could also be considered problematic.’ Among them was Slessor, a ‘female missionary who imposed her Christian views on the local population’.
In a document from the museums department, an official whose name was redacted said of the review: ‘Cynically, it could also be seen as a way to demonstrate our diversity ‘‘credentials’’.’
A spokesman for Aberdeen City Council said: ‘The gallery team is reviewing all the historic figures
‘A way to demonstrate our diversity credentials’
represented in Provost Skene’s House in the context of decolonisation and in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
‘There is no plan to remove Mary Slessor. Gallery staff were posing the question, to themselves, about whether the legacies of people represented in the city’s collections in general should be reconsidered.
‘The phrase “could also be considered problematic” was used only as staff tried to consider viewpoints that may be held elsewhere.’