WHY THE MACDONALD PROJECT AND THE MACDONALD STATUE MUST GO

The Macdonald Project in Prince Edward County is not about communicating history, as its creators and supporters suggest. Rather it is about obliterating factual history and Indigenous realities that contradict the white settler colonial narrative.

The Macdonald Project’s most potent tool is the controversial statue itself situated in front of the public library on the Main Street of Picton. The statue plays on public trust in the integrity of community leaders. The subliminal logic goes like this: a sane, moral and honest group of people would never erect a statue of a genocidal racist. Therefore John A. Macdonald could not possibly have been a genocidal racist, and there could not possibly be anything too wrong with his legacy. Sadly, some non-Indigenous people, including those who run the local mass media, do not need any more convincing than this.

But for those who do, the Macdonald Project creators, in conjunction with an unquestioning media, offer fragments about Macdonald’s legacy, and biased interpretations, that work to obliterate the most important truths about it.

An examination of a few “factoids”, and a Macdoanld quote from project leader David Warrick, in a Countylive article (https://www.countylive.ca/will-verdict-youll-never-die-sir-john-crumble-in-2020/comment-page-1/) give ample proof of this.

1.) “Warrick’s presentation to Rotarians noted Macdonald negotiated purchase of Rupert’s Land, from the Hudson’s Bay Company for $1.5 million in 1869...‘There would be no Canada without this purchase. The U.S. would be the largest country in the world today,’ (Warrick said)

The sale involved roughly a quarter of the continent, but failed to take into account existing residents – mainly Indians and Metis. But Warrick noted the U.S. treatment of its Indigenous citizens was even more horrific.”

What this factoid fails to mention is that the Hudson’s Bay Company was not the rightful owner of Rupert’s Land. Rupert’s Land rightfully belonged to the Indigenous nations and people (including the Siksika, Piikani,Kainai, Dakota, Stoney Nakoda, Cree, Assiniboine, Metis, and Inuit people)who inhabited it, and had exercised sovereignty on it at the time of its “purchase” for the most part, for thousands of years.

The Hudson’s Bay Company’s claim to sovereignty and ownership of the land derived from its receiving a charter from the British monarchy, who conceived themselves as the owners of Rupert`s Land by virtue of what is basically a figment of white European colonial imagination. Known as the Doctrine of Discovery, this proclamation was originally issued by Spain in the sixteenth century to justify Spanish expropriation of resources, and genocide of Indigenous people, in the Americas. Very simply, the doctrine granted title to any and all land in the world not occupied by Christians to whatever white Christian European nation “discovered” such land, on the invented basis that only Christians could hold title to land.

Rightfully, traditionally, morally, and inherently, Rupert’s Land was, and continues to be, the sovereign domain of its original Indigenous nations. The machinations of various colonial power groups have never legitimately extinguished Indigenous sovereignty in Rupert’s Land, to say nothing of the rest of Canada.

All this is minimized to the point of dismissal by the Countylive article’s note that “the sale failed to take into account existing residents”. The sale was based on a doctrine that was, and continues to be, used as a pretext for genocide; Warrick’s statement that “the U.S. treatment of its Indigenous citizens was even more horrific,” based on the kindergarten logic of “but he did it too, and he did it worse!” does nothing to change the facts.

2.) “Macdonald did not start the residential schools that are so heavily criticized today.” “the first Industrial School was created in Brantford in 1828 called the Mohawk Institute – when Macdonald was 13, and in a grammar school...When it became a residential school in 1834, Macdonald was 19 and studying for his law exams in Picton...In contrast to compulsory public schools, the schools for Native Canadians were voluntary under Macdonald’s term in office, despite pressure from government to make them mandatory.”

These statements from David Warrick are aimed at obliterating the truth about Macdonald’s role as the primary architect of Canada’s residential school system. Here is what Warrick’s comments leave out: In the late 1870’s Macdonald conceived of the residential school system as a means to disrupt Indigenous people’s ability to maintain their lifeways and project their nations and their control of the land into the future, and Macdonald was completely explicit about this. He subsequently appointed his friend Nicholas Davin to study the aggressively genocidal American residential school system. Davin published his report in 1879 and Macdonald adopted its recommendations to create a similar system to deal with the “Indian problem”, explaining the project thusly in 1883: “When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write … [T]he Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.” And he followed up his talk with action. During his second term in office 34 new residential schools were established across the country, increasing their number from 15 in 1878 to 49 by 1891.

That Macdonald did not establish the first residential school does nothing to contradict his instrumental role in the creation of the national residential school system. The first residential school pre-dated the nation of Canada by over thirty years, and was one of only 7 residential school in this part of North America at the time of Confederation. These could hardly constitute a system, and none of them had anything to do with national government strategy, since no nation or national government even existed.

Warrick’s comment that “In contrast to compulsory public schools, the schools for Native Canadians were voluntary under Macdonald’s term in office, despite pressure from government to make them mandatory,” is not just disrespectfully worded (the term Native Canadian ascribes a national identity to Indigenous people that they rejected, and that most still reject), it is factually incorrect.

There may not have been federal legislation requiring residential school attendance but that likely had to do with the inability of the system to “accommodate” all Indigenous children at the time, not any aspect of John A. Macdonald’s character. And in fact, where the possibility of their attending the schools existed, attendance certainly was mandatory. A representative account of this, from the time of Macdonald’s second term in office, is recorded in the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, volume I:

“Daniel Kennedy, an Assiniboine man, recounted, ‘In 1886, at the age of twelve years, I was lassoed, roped and taken to the Government School at Lebret. Six months after I enrolled, I discovered to my chagrin that I had lost my name and an English name had been tagged on me in exchange.’ Until he went to school, his name had been Ochankuga’he, meaning “pathmaker.” The name honoured a trek his grandfather had led through a Prairie blizzard. The new name, Daniel Kennedy, referred to the Old Testament’s Daniel of the lion’s den. The school interpreter later told Kennedy, ‘When you were brought here, for purposes of enrolment, you were asked to give your name and when you did, the Principal remarked that there were no letters in the alphabet to spell this little heathen’s name and no civilized tongue could pronounce it. ‘We are going to civilize him, so we will give him a civilized name,’ and that was how you acquired this brand new whiteman’s name.’ Kennedy lost more than his name on that first day. ‘In keeping with the promise to civilize the little pagan, they went to work and cut off my braids, which, incidentally, according to the Assiniboine traditional custom, was a token of mourning—the closer the relative, the closer the cut. After my haircut, I wondered in silence if my mother had died, as they had cut my hair close to the scalp. I looked in the mirror to see what I looked like. A Hallowe’en pumpkin stared back at me and that did it. If this was civilization, I didn’t want any part of it. I ran away from school, but I was captured and brought back. I made two more attempts, but with no better luck. Realizing that there was no escape, I resigned myself to the task of learning the three Rs.’”

3.)Presumably at Warrick’s behest, the following quote from John A. Macdonald also appears in the Countylive article without any analysis or comment: “Whether it was conquered or ceded, we have a constitution now under which all British subjects are in a position of absolute equality, having equal rights of every kind – of language, of religion, of property and of person. There is no paramount race in this country; there is no conquered race in this country; we are all British subjects, and those who are not English are none the less British subjects on that account.” The logical inference here is that Warrick’s desire to have this comment by Macdonald publicized emanates from the belief that this statement is to Macdonald’s credit and illustrates something positive about his character.

That Warrick seem to be unable to discern the outrageousness of Macdonald’s statement speaks volumes about what guides the Macdonald Project and their insistence on the statue: blindness to anything but the dominant white settler concept of history.

To clarify the outrageousness, for people who conceive themselves to be British subjects, being referred to as such, and being subject to British rule and sovereignty is a matter of national identity. For people who belong to Indigenous nations and recognize their nation’s sovereignty on the land, being cast as British subjects and being forcibly subjugated to British rule on their own land is genocide.

The Macdonald Project, and the statue of John A. Macdonald constitute an affront to human decency, and attack on truth and reconciliation. The motivation for them is the desire to perpetuate white settler colonialism with all its attendant privileges, as well as all its attendant genocidal harms to Indigenous people. These things have no place in a caring and compassionate community. The statue needs to go!