Tuesday, May 17, 2016

For Mi’kmaq people, Edward J. Cornwallis is like the Confederate flag

After a heated debate, Halifax city council has opted to maintain avowed racist Edward J. Cornwallis in various positions of glorified prominence. 

Anyone who has spent time in Halifax knows how much stuff there is in the Nova Scotia capital named after the governor and military officer who “founded” Halifax in 1749 – a street, an armed forces base, a school (until recently), and a park in which is located a majestic statute of himself.

But the man so honoured was no friend of the Mi’kmaq people. In fact, he was a proponent of the genocide of the original inhabitants, notably in the form of a bounty for the scalps of Mi’kmaq people.

Jon Tattrie, author of Cornwallis: The Violent Birth of Halifax, told CBC that the aim of Cornwallis was the genocide of the Mi’kmaq people, and that his letters speak of rape and murder as legitimate weapons of war.

For all that, Halifax city council voted 8-7 this month against appointing experts to evaluate the use of Cornwallis in public names.

Predictably, the opponents of such a move argued that it would be tantamount to rewriting history. If we started with him, where would it end? “He is the founder of this municipality, we can’t escape that,” one city councilor said.

This kind of argument is sadly familiar to other attempts to correct misinformation about the past – “you can’t rewrite history.”

That’s what African-Americans heard when they tried to have the Confederate flag removed from state legislatures in the U.S. South. It’s our history, whether you like it or not.

But who is it who is “rewriting” history? Those who argue for keeping Cornwallis on public buildings and streets are in effect maintaining a version of history in which the crimes of the past are obscured in the glorification of the present.

It is not the rewriting of history that we seek. It is the recovery of the truth of our past, and all of the crime, violence and brutality that went down.