We either care about reconciliation or we don’t

I’m baffled that this conversation is still taking place. To some of our fellow Canadians—the ones who were here long before anyone else—this statue represents a genocide of their people and is deeply painful. Showcasing it in front of a public library (?!) on a Main Street (?!?!) sends a pretty clear message: this public library where learning is supposedly democratized was not made with you in mind. In fact, this Main Street, and this town were not made with you in mind. All of it was made by white people for white people, and even when you beg us to acknowledge that your feelings are deeply hurt by one extremely easy-to-address thing, many of us insist history is more important than your feelings, and you should “get over it” when we’ve never atoned for “it” in the first place. If this is even one small step towards reconciliation, why would we not take it? The only logical answer is: we don’t care to reconcile. I’m not sure how team “history is too important” was raised, but I was raised to understand people are unquestionably more important than things. Get your priorities straight and put this thing in a museum already, because acting like there’s any other way to look at this is just embarrassing.