Reference no: EM133400595

Question: In recent years, the city of Halifax decided to remove a statue of Edward Cornwallis from one of its parks, an Ottawa faith group and cemetery agreed to update a plaque highlighting Duncan Campbell Scott's contributions to Canada by noting his role in cultural genocide, and Queen's University removed the name John A. Macdonald Hall from one of its buildings. When these and other similar decisions are made, critics typically claim that authoritarians are trying to erase history.

When it comes to law and politics in the Canadian context, nationalist sentiments and dogmatic statism generally, and white supremacy in particular, risk biasing historical and present-day accounts of Indigenous struggles. Ideally, decolonization involves addressing problematic accounts, assumptions, and biases that reinforce the colonial line. A few years ago in the UK, the Universities Minister compared 'decolonisation' of history to 'Soviet Union-style' censorship:

A Facebook friend of mine calls this "[m]ore historical ethnic cleansing courtesy of the liberals and academia." What is going on here? What place or role does fear, ignorance, tyranny, and intolerance have in such debates? If Cornwallis, Scott, Macdonald, and other so-called founding fathers of the Canadian state advocated genocide, should not that be part of our historical curriculum and consciousness? Are debates like this about better and worse ways to pursue reconciliation or are they about opposition to updating, reforming, or replacing colonial apologetics with more accurate, balanced, and critical accounts of history? Is this an academic conspiracy to brainwash students and disrespect history? Is this classic Orwellian doublespeak, in which the traditional erasure of violence against Indigenous peoples (aka whitewashing) is assumed to be 'proper' history, while efforts to include Indigenous perspectives and a greater understanding of the truth is charged with rewriting and/or villainizing history? What are your thoughts?