It’s the privileged ignoring First Nations history

Postmedia’s Brian Lilley has argued that while the discovery of a mass grave at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School is understandably causing outrage, the “desire by some to channel that anger by tearing down names, statues and buildings is the wrong path.” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney made similar comments in order to push back against “cancel culture.”

Buried inside these comments is an insidious and insulting message. It’s that First Nations activists, survivors and family members, students and young people, and everyone who has wanted statues taken down or institutions changed are misguidedly destructive at best or cowards at worst. They don’t want to let history anywhere near them. But nothing could be further from the truth, and a moment’s thought should lead anyone to that conclusion.

I shouldn’t and most certainly can’t speak for First Nations people themselves, and so I urge everyone to read and listen to what’s been said by First Nations people on the issue of Canada’s history, and also how people in positions of power have responded to calls for change. The Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, in particular, released a statement detailing why it is dissolving its agreement with the Alberta government over Kenney’s comments.

But in terms of the argument that activists are refusing to “look hard at history,” as Lilley claimed, think just for a second about what has to happen for activists to come forward and speak about the experiences of their ancestors, or, in many cases, even their own childhoods. It's impossible, logically speaking, to seek a remedy for historical injustice while simultaneously avoiding a deep, and often painful, look into the past. Your past, it should be said: not just a collection of words whose impact can always be lessened by distance, but an inescapable event that you either directly experienced, know someone who directly experienced it or are part of the same group that had this experience forced upon them.

The survivors of the residential school system who are still with us today, and their families and friends and community members, do this every time they describe their experiences and how their lives were upended, all while the sheer dehumanizing effects of cultural genocide continue to leave scars for generations to come.

It’s also impossible to claim that those who wish to seek justice for historical atrocities are the ones who refuse to “look hard at history” when so much energy has been spent trying to get apathetic or even actively hostile governments to simply listen. Indigenous activists have fought for decades against systems dedicated to wiping them out, let alone have these systems be recognized by those with power as criminally inhumane. How they could do all this without staring down the past and challenging a country on the wrongs it still must right is mental gymnastics of the highest order.

And this thesis that it’s activists and allies who refuse to see history can’t be saved by saying that we need historical monuments for educational reasons, either. History textbooks, which for many generations skirted over the darkest parts of our past like it was buried under ice, aren’t going to drop John A. Macdonald’s name from the ledger. Nor are communities going to stop telling their experiences, or their ancestors' experiences, to audiences who are willing to listen. Historical monuments serve to valorize the past, not preserve it, and so it hardly counts as historical revisionism to wish to change the name of a school.

Every single one of the actions we take throughout our lives impacts other people in possibly quite profound ways, with people at the helm of powerful institutions creating even larger ripples. Understanding history means looking as closely as possible at these ripples and trying to chart their effects in the present and future.

That the actions of past institutions are still impacting people today means that refusing to recognize the extent of their influence by moaning about “cancel culture” or declaring a name change to be the death of history itself is as simple-minded an approach as one could take. It’s also a guarantee that the tragedies will never stop; a far cry from “honouring the victims,” to say nothing of trying to finally make amends with the people Canada has harmed.

It isn’t activists or the oppressed who are ignoring history. In terms of who’s letting the nastiness of history pass them by, the apologists and the privileged have always had a monopoly on that plot of land.

Andrew Kemle is a master's student in political science at the University of Calgary, specializing in political theory and political economy.