Vbeacher Vbeacher:
You know, I used to have so much sympathy for natives. But every time I see crap like this I want to go punch one in the face. Mind you, I have a lot more contempt for those whimpering, sniveling, progressives who want to spend their lives on their bellies licking the shoes of any native that happens to wander by.
As much as I dislike this move (which I explain more of below) I have more sympathy for Natives when they have to deal with
shit like this:
$1:
Upon finding her car spray-painted, Spiller posted on Facebook she would "kill some Indians when I get home." She also proposed a "shoot a Indian day."
Chaisson responded, suggesting a "24 hour purge."
And this:
$1:
The Red Pheasant Cree Nation teenager's death was followed by a torrent of online hatred against Boushie, his friends and Indigenous people in general.
"Good for the punk," wrote one.
"He should have shot all five and (been) given a medal," wrote another.
A rural councillor and others posted that the only mistake was "leaving witnesses."
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Rather gutless, and won't win any favour of the First Nations anyways, in my opinion. I would argue that City Hall--the active, political entity that is part of the Crown, itself, would be more of a painful reminder of colonialism than Sir Johnny.
The problem I have with this is the more general implication it has-namely, that non-Native people shouldn't be allowed to take any pride in their heritage or identity. Given Old Tomorrow's fundamental role in Confederation and in building Canada, it's no surprise that a lot of people (including me) feel some kind of connection to the guy.
Notably, the Victorian politicians who voted to remove the statue talked about how to "recontextualize" Macdonald-and there is a way to do so, one that's been advocated by Indigenous people themselves. Namely, plaques describing the very complicated legacies of men like
Duncan Campbell Scott and
Edgerton Ryerson have already been placed with the full support of Indigenous activists like Ellen Gabriel and Cindy Blackstock.
There are two main problems here-the first, obviously, is that this risks just becoming a feelgood exercise for people to think that this is all that needs to be done to solve the problems we're currently dealing with, without the more substantive change that's needed.
The second is that this movement risks framing Macdonald as if he was some sort of lone mastermind who thought this whole ideology up on his own, when in fact it's part of a larger problem with Anglo-American political thought-namely, that the British and their cultural descendents came up with all these great ideas and principles, but only applied them very selectively to other white people. A perfect example is the U.S. Bill of Rights, written and ratified by many men who owned slaves. When people of colour have demanded recognition of the rights they too possess under these principles, the result has been the likes of Jim Crow and the Chinese head tax. I have a piece I plan to publish in
Policy Options sometime this month that'll examine this in more detail.