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The genocide defender has logged on
95 Plays3 years ago
University of Manitoba history professor Sean Carleton joins us to break down Jason Kenney's long history of defending the genocidal legacy of Canada and its first prime minister John A. MacDonald, whether Canada Day is cancelled (it is) and the pros of tearing down the statues of the architects of genocide.
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Transcript
Introduction to Harbinger Media Network
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The Progress Report is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network. There's a new pod out on the network that I want to talk about, and it's the latest from Habib
Interview with Vincent Bevins on Indonesian History
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Tipliz. Hosts Nashwa Khan and Shari Ali interview Vincent Bevins, the author of the book The Jakarta Method. That's actually a book that I'm reading right now, and it's really interesting. It's all about how the kind of murderous anti-communist violence of 1960s Indonesia was instrumental in shaping the world we have today.
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Get exclusive supporter-only content, and just go and support a great project at harbingermediannetwork.com. Now, on to the show.
Show Introduction by Duncan Kinney
00:00:49
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwachibwa, Skigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory on the banks of the Kasiscasa, Mississippi, or the North Saskatchewan River.
Sean Carlton Joins the Discussion
00:01:02
Speaker
Joining us today is a human of many talents, and someone who I am a big, big fan of, and I'm very pleased to have him on the show. We've got Sean Carlton, history professor at the University of Manitoba, as well as an editor at activehistory.ca, and an editor and columnist at Canadian Dimension. Sean, welcome to The Progress Report.
00:01:19
Speaker
Hey, thanks for having me. So I don't know what your exact kind of term was at Mount Royal, but I did graduate from there. That is my alma mater. I don't know if you ever crossed, uh, if we would have ever kind of seen each other in the hallways. Like I graduated in 2008, but did we miss each other? We did. Yeah. I started at Mount Royal, um, in 2016 and I was there until just last summer in 2020. I really enjoyed my time there though. And, uh, and being in Alberta and, uh, made lots of friends and comrades out that way.
00:01:49
Speaker
It is a fun, weird little kind of commuter campus out there in the Southwest. You know, I was there right as it was transitioning to a university and they were like, do you want to stick around and get like a real bachelor's of communications? I was like, nah, nah, I'm good.
00:02:07
Speaker
I'm good. It's not like journalism is not something where you need. It's not like you're not an engineer. It's like the credential is pretty incidental. But it really was a shame that you left Alberta for the sunny climbs of Winnipeg, Manitoba. But as a professor, moving around is kind of par for the course, right? It is, yeah.
Sensitive Topics: Genocide and Residential Schools
00:02:27
Speaker
Well, uh, so, you know, I want to thank you for coming on first of all, and just to give a content warning to, to the folks that are listening, we are going to be talking about genocide, both historical and ongoing. We are going to be talking about residential schools as well as people who kind of like deny the facts and the impacts around residential schools. So if that is going to bother you, if you're going to be, um, um, if that is not going to be a fun experience for you to listen to, don't listen to it, but just a content warning off the top.
00:02:56
Speaker
But the way I think I want to get into the conversation, Sean, is a quote. And I found this quote online from a leftist podcaster. But I don't know, I think this aphorism is kind of very useful and can be applied to a lot of different contexts. And it's, once you learn a sufficient amount of history, you must choose to become either a Marxist or a liar.
Canadian History and Nationalist Narratives
00:03:18
Speaker
And there must be like a Canadian history version of that one, right? Yeah, I mean, I think
00:03:26
Speaker
The best way that I can describe it, I think, is that once you learn the non-whitewashed patriotic propaganda version of history, kind of used to whip up Canadian nationalism, it's kind of hard to continue to be constantly tethered to kind of a toxic nostalgia.
00:03:47
Speaker
And so with a different version of history, you begin to see yourself and your relationship to these lands and the original peoples of them very differently. And I think that that's in many ways what non-Indigenous people are reckoning with, certainly since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report, but also in the wake of recent events.
Cultural Exceptionalism and 'Maple Washing'
00:04:10
Speaker
I think most countries are fake, and a country like Canada is especially fake, especially when the signifiers of what is Canada, what we think Canada is, were mostly created out of whole cloth in the 50s and 60s by the Liberal Party of Canada. We just did an episode on maple washing with
00:04:33
Speaker
Luke Savage, writer with Jacobin. The history there of Canada's own weird sense of cultural exceptionalism is another podcast in and of itself, and we did it already.
Kamloops Discovery and Its Impact
00:04:45
Speaker
The reason why I brought you on, Sean, is because the discovery of the mass grave of 215 children found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, this is obviously
00:04:58
Speaker
A tragedy. Canada is mourning. This is making international news. This is the first of what I expect to be many more mass graves of this nature that will be found across Canada, and especially here in Alberta, considering how many residential schools there were here.
00:05:14
Speaker
Before we get into who the odious people are that are defending this, I think it's appropriate to set aside a bit of time and space to reflect on what this means to us as two settlers, as a white person to have to sit down
00:05:32
Speaker
And think about what it means that, you know, I live on land that was cleared for my purpose by putting indigenous children in mass graves. And like you and I are a part of this, right? Yeah, it's an uncomfortable realization that, you know, residential schools are part of the larger project of colonization and nation building that that brought many non-indigenous people to these lands. And I think
00:06:02
Speaker
you know, the realization that this is both not about our community, but is very much connected to the history of our communities, you know, can be an unsettling one, but it can also be an opportunity to kind of reflect and, as I was saying earlier, change the way that you see yourself in these territories.
00:06:25
Speaker
Exactly. And I think it's something that a lot of white people and a lot of settler folks are starting to kind of sit down and have this kind of self-same conversation, right?
Personal and National History: Colonization
00:06:36
Speaker
Like, you know, utter normies, like people who, you know, what, were brand on Ivison's campaign are like, Canada Day was my favorite holiday. And now I don't think I'll be celebrating it. And we're going to get into that later. But like,
00:06:50
Speaker
you know, the conversation amongst yourselves, like my family and my dad specifically has kind of done the digging on like our ancestors and like, it's, it's a very common story, right? Like my father's side of the family fled England for North America, you know, three, 400 years ago, you know, religious extremists, uh, kind of who came over pretty early on in the colonization project. And they were big, dumb, strong Protestant farmers and lay preachers who, you know, were always willing to move West to get quote unquote, you know, free land.
00:07:20
Speaker
And there are Kinneys and Olmsteads and the Dakotas and Manitoba, Saskatchewan, all over Western Canada and the Midwest. And even on my mom's side, there were immigrants from England, but even then, they still benefited from the fact that what Canada is, what Canada was, was created to benefit people like them, right? Absolutely. And I would imagine, like many of your listeners, my story
00:07:48
Speaker
is different but quite similar. Colonization has shaped a lot of my own family's history. I'm English and Irish. So those tensions, England learned how to colonize around the world first at home in terms of its expansion into Wales and Scotland and in particular Ireland.
00:08:11
Speaker
And then the conditions of British imperialism in part of where my family is from, created the conditions where they sought to move elsewhere, to create a better life for themselves and their families. And they did so by then joining the colonial project here in Canada, particularly in Western Canada, first in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and then my family,
00:08:38
Speaker
traveled to the west coast in British Columbia where where I lived and grew up. And so, you know, I was raised as a non indigenous kind of Anglo Protestant and very much insulated from critical conversations about Canadian colonialism.
00:08:55
Speaker
That wasn't until I went to university and started to learn history from a non-nationalistic perspective.
Privilege Shaped by History
00:09:03
Speaker
And I met my partner whose father-in-law is a Kokokiwak survivor of the Eller Bay Residential School off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. And I started to become more cognizant of how Patrick and I's similar but overlapping histories
00:09:24
Speaker
set us up for very different kinds of lives and made me more committed to understanding, you know, both the history of that relationship and what it would take to change that relationship. And so, you know, I think understanding that Canadian history is not just some abstract subject, it is also, you know, it shapes our personal privileges and perspectives, you know, is a really important way to start this conversation.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, and I think what this means to me is that I feel that it is part of my job to do what I can to educate my fellow white folks and settlers about this throne of blood that we all sit on, that our class position and our wealth and our status.
00:10:10
Speaker
is predicated on the literal child kidnapping and child murder of the indigenous folks who lived here before my ancestors got here, and that it is not only our job to do the education part, but it is our job to tear down those structures and systems that led to these atrocities happening in the first place and to build new structures and systems that both recognize our sins and help us all flourish together.
00:10:35
Speaker
And I think it's important, uh, you know, to discuss how people like you and I benefited from this, you know, Canada as a genocidal stealing product present tense, not past benefit in the past, but benefit present tense.
Ongoing Colonial Projects and Shared Responsibility
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, and that it's not just the fault of long ago politicians, or a lot of people these days are trying to externalize this onto the Catholic Church, or the United Church, or Duncan Campbell Scott, or pick your sociopathic bureaucrat, that this is an ongoing project that's happening today. And that's why I think it is so disgusting when someone like Jason Kennedy gets up on his hind legs.
00:11:18
Speaker
and delivers that unsolicited seven minute soliloquy defending. I mean, he wasn't really defending Sir Johnny McDonald. He was just kind of like spraying a wide swath at a wide swath of other historical villains. But he was trying to obviously deflect attention from
00:11:37
Speaker
Sir Johnny McDonald. And that clip that was just from a week or two ago, it's where we're
John A. Macdonald's Controversial Legacy
00:11:43
Speaker
going to talk about it. I'm going to play it, or at least a portion of it. But there is a clip from 2017. This issue of Sir Johnny McDonald and defending the legacy of Sir Johnny McDonald, this is not a one-off for Jason Kenney. This has been a project of his, again, for a long time now.
00:12:00
Speaker
And since this video is literally from 2017 when he was just coming on the scene, just to set the stage, he is in front of Sir Johnny McDonald Jr. High in Calgary. He has his famous blue truck behind him, and he is cutting this video.
00:12:16
Speaker
I'm here at Sir John A. Macdonald, junior high school in Calgary. There's a campaign afoot to remove John Macdonald's name from this building. It all started down in Ontario, where a teacher's union is campaigning to remove the name of our founding prime minister from schools all across Ontario. Now there's copycats in Calgary demanding the same thing. In fact, there's somebody in the Calgary Herald.
00:12:40
Speaker
who's campaigning to remove his name saying that basically John A. McDonald is the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler because he was associated with the residential school system, which it is argued is somehow the moral equivalent to Hitler's Holocaust?
00:12:56
Speaker
Folks, we're getting our moral categories all confused here. Now let there be no mistake. The residential school system was a terrible injustice. And many evil things happened within it. And Prime Minister Harper was right to apologize for it. And there's an ongoing need for reconciliation with our First Nations people.
00:13:14
Speaker
But to make that the moral equivalent of an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish people of Europe, the murder of six million people and industrialized killing, this suggests, I believe, that political correctness has gone way too far.
00:13:32
Speaker
Listen, John A. Macdonald was not a perfect man, but he was still a great man. As his modern biographer, Richard Gwynn has said, quotes, No Macdonald, no Canada. In other words, John A. Macdonald's audacity of vision is partly what made confederation possible 150 years ago. It required bringing together all sorts of different factions that were going in their own direction
00:13:58
Speaker
It required incredible patience and a bold vision.
00:14:03
Speaker
which he made reality with the creation of this great northern dominion from sea to sea. And so we must honor his vision, his central role in the creation of what has become one of the greatest, freest, and most prosperous democracies in all of human history. As I say, John McDonald wasn't perfect, and neither were the times in which he lived and governed, but nor is Canada perfect today. The point is we always strive to do better.
00:14:32
Speaker
But I reject this campaign of total defamation of historical vandalism being directed at our founding prime minister. You probably didn't know, but John McDonald in 1885 actually called for extending the vote to women. He was 30, 40 years ahead of his time on that and so many other issues.
00:14:58
Speaker
And he was a classic Canadian in that he was a man that overcame tremendous adversity to become Prime Minister, born in a poor immigrant family, pulled himself up by the bootstraps. Much of his education was just through his own personal efforts, and he had the vision to build this dimming in. So what concerns me?
00:15:21
Speaker
is that the campaign to remove John McDonald's name from this and other schools across Alberta and Canada is being animated by the same philosophy which characterizes the Alberta NDP's new social studies curriculum.
00:15:37
Speaker
You know, if you go and read the outline, and we'll post a link below here, it's all about the history of Canada, the history of oppression and injustice and colonialism. No presentation about Confederation or Canadian history or our founding fathers.
00:15:55
Speaker
Listen, I believe that we ought to face up to the darker moments in our history. As Minister of Immigration, I included many of those injustices in the guide for new Canadian citizens called Discover Canada. But we should teach those dark moments in a broader context, in the context
00:16:12
Speaker
of having created this remarkable free and prosperous democracy, which would not exist were it not for the leadership and vision of John McDonald. So I say, let's stop the historical vandalism. Let's stop this radical out of control political correctness. You get the point there. Sean, is that essentially genocide denial?
00:16:37
Speaker
There's a lot going on in that particular quote. A lot of deflection, a lot of downplaying, a lot of denying. And essentially Kenny, like other politicians, including Aaron O'Toole and others, are using those kinds of denialist talking points to score some cheap political points to gain some momentum
00:17:02
Speaker
from a very narrow political base. And much of it is unfortunately propagating some mistruths and very hollow and shallow understandings of Canadian history that frankly are not helpful to be able to meet this particular moment.
00:17:28
Speaker
Well, he spent four minutes talking about Sir John A. McDonald and his dark, quote, unquote, dark moments. What exactly are Sir John A. McDonald's dark moments? They're pretty fucking dark, aren't they? Well, I mean, I think the way that I would, as a historian, approach Kenny's speech there, which is very similar to the kinds of talking points he's used recently,
00:17:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah, like, like, four years later, he was like, pretty much he was stealing from himself from like, four years ago. And, you know, every year he sends out a message on his on his website, on Sir Johnny McDonald Day, which is one of his political pet projects to make a thing. And it's very, you know, the talking points are very,
00:18:10
Speaker
standard. So let me maybe go through a little bit and help provide listeners with a different understanding, a bit more balanced understanding so that they can make up their minds about how we deal with people like McDonald and, you know, politicians like Kenny who uncritically defend them. So, you know, Richard Gwynne, one of McDonald's biographers, you know, has this quote that people like Kenny like to cling to, and it's no McDonald, no Canada.
00:18:36
Speaker
And actually, I'd like to suggest that in some ways that formulation is true, but it is also unhelpful. So let me tackle the issue this way. John A. McDonald certainly was a nation builder, right? He played a prominent role in diplomacy and bringing together a variety of colonial interests in the 1860s.
00:19:00
Speaker
to establish the Dominion of Canada? No question. As the country's first prime minister, he plays an instrumental role in a number of different national projects. He was, you know, in his second time as prime minister, that is, you know, after he gets kicked out for corruption and trying to build the railway, he continues with the national policy
00:19:26
Speaker
which focuses on finishing the transcontinental railway settlement of the West, particular kinds of tariffs that help build up Canada. And so in many ways, this is what a lot of non-Indigenous people will have learned in their social studies curriculum, right? McDonald as the sort of founder of the country, as an important nation builder.
00:19:50
Speaker
But what we need to remember is that, you know, McDonald certainly didn't pull himself in Canada up by its bootstraps, right? The other side of all of those different things is that they are predicated on ongoing settler colonialism and indigenous genocide, right? So McDonald is both a nation builder from one perspective, but also a nation destroyer.
00:20:13
Speaker
from another perspective. That is, you know, Kenny says, oh, in 1885, McDonald extended the vote to women. Well, in the same year, 1885, he goes to war against the Métis and a number of different indigenous allied communities, essentially to arrest the West and control over it and its resources for the benefit of ongoing settler colonialism and nation building. In the same year, he
00:20:40
Speaker
He institutes the illegal pass system, which illegally restricted indigenous communities onto very small reserves so that they could not interfere with the expansion of the West and new kinds of settlement.
00:20:54
Speaker
In the 1880s, he helps amend the Indian Act to ban particular kinds of cultural ceremonies, whether it's the Sundance on the prairies, the Potlatch on the West Coast that are very much in keeping with kinds of cultural genocide, and
00:21:14
Speaker
He, people need to remember that McDonald as prime minister, you know, prime ministers get to choose a portfolio for themselves. When Trudeau Jr. was first elected, he chose the Ministry of Youth, right? That was his sort of portfolio. What did John A. McDonald choose to be his key priority, right? He chose to be the superintendent general of Indian affairs to essentially quarterback Canada's colonial project. And in that role, he did all of those other things, but he was also the central architect
00:21:44
Speaker
of the residential school system. He listened to a number of different advocates in the church and he initiated an independent commission where he staffed with Nicholas Flood Daven, his sort of supporter, that called for the establishment of a national system of residential schools premised on the manual labor schools for indigenous children boarding schools that existed
00:22:10
Speaker
And, you know, even as the first trial schools got started in the 1880s and we started to see poor conditions, disease, poor conditions, you know, he continued to defend that project as a key pillar of Canada's colonial project. And so, you know, I hear Kenny in the statement saying, you know, we need to understand his vision, his central role in nation building. And that's true. But we also need to understand that
00:22:40
Speaker
part of that vision and that central role also meant that he was a nation builder, but he was also an architect of genocide and of Canadian colonialism at the same time. That's the part that Kenny and defenders of people like McDonald deliberately leave out to kind of protect McDonald as sort of a mythological figure that legitimizes ongoing colonialism in Canada.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah. And when Kenny says that line from the biographer, no McDonald, no Canada, he really is threatening me with a good time. I think we've got enough evidence to show that Canada has been built on a foundation of
00:23:25
Speaker
you know, land thefts and indigenous genocide that like maybe it might be time to start having that conversation about what what wrapping up Canada might might be. So I don't know. I don't think that's the conversation Kenny wants to have. Obviously, all of his kind of proto separatist meanderings aside, I think he's still very much invested in Canada continuing as a political project. But it does raise the question, right? Yeah, I mean, it raises the question.
00:23:54
Speaker
I'll maybe go off script for a minute and quote Conrad Black. It got somewhat out of keeping, but Conrad Black in defending McDonald has said, well, if you attack McDonald, if you attack the legitimacy of McDonald, then you attack the legitimacy of Canada.
Debating Canada's Legitimacy
00:24:17
Speaker
And I think in that Conrad Black is correct. In that part of what is happening is challenging a certain
00:24:28
Speaker
way of operating of Canada, right? That Canada says it is, you know, a great multicultural, peaceful, tolerant country, but for Indigenous people, they have constantly said this. This isn't a new revelation. You know, the people that were fighting against Canadian forces in the War of 1885, we're making that quite clear, that as Leanne Simpson has said, Canada has always been a death dance for Indigenous people.
00:24:56
Speaker
in various ways. So the idea here is very much challenging what Canada currently is and how it operates, and perhaps giving it an opportunity to do differently, to live up to some of its commitments in a bit of a different way, but we can certainly get into that in a bit.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, if the sunny, rosy Canada that this image that it has of itself, if you want to make that real and turn Canada into the nation that talks about itself and what it sees in the funhouse mirror, then great. But we have 150 some years of evidence to show that it definitely does not operate as that kind of country.
00:25:35
Speaker
And, you know, that clip that I originally played, that's from twenty seventeen. But again, he really kind of stole from it and and reused a lot of those talking points from his again, his unsolicited seven minute soliloquy defending Sir Johnny McDonald by kind of casting aspersions and everyone. And I think this is a useful clip for a couple of reasons. One, let's talk about these other historical figures. But two, it's what he brings up at the end to about the curriculum. I think Canada is worth
00:26:04
Speaker
I think Canada is a great historical achievement. It is a country that people all around the world seek to join as new Canadians. It is an imperfect country, but it is still a great country, just as John McDonald was an imperfect man, but was still a great leader. If we want to get into canceling every figure in our history who took positions on issues at the time that we now judge harshly and rightly,
00:26:34
Speaker
in historical retrospective. But if that's the new standard, then I think almost the entire founding leadership of our country gets cancelled. Tommy Douglas, who recommended the use of eugenics to sterilize the weak, as he said, to, if we talk about members of the famous five,
00:26:57
Speaker
and the fight for equality for women. Some of them were advocates of eugenics that we would now regard as deplorable. So if we go full force into
00:27:14
Speaker
most, if not all, of our history. Instead, I think we should learn from our history. We should learn from our achievements, but also our failures. Canada is doing that, just as Prime Minister Harper made the official apology for the terrible injustice of the Indian residential school system, just as the Government of Canada
00:27:35
Speaker
of Canada provided over $3.5 billion in compensation to residential school survivors as a symbol of restitution. And just as Canada has addressed other historic injustices, which we seek to
00:27:55
Speaker
K-6, pardon me, social studies curriculum in far more profound ways than ever before. So I think it's much better that we learn from our history, including those periods of great injustice, without seeking to cancel our history. I think we need to know more about it.
00:28:14
Speaker
So just to be clear, I am fully prepared to cancel both the Famous Five and Tommy Douglas. We have a statue of Emily Murphy in this town. She is an absolute supervillain, one of the most evil white supremacists to be ever given a massive media platform, literally like the proto-Faith Goldie of her day.
00:28:37
Speaker
Tommy Douglas wasn't just a big believer in eugenics. He ran roughshod over First Nations and Métis sovereignty in Northern Saskatchewan when he was premier there. He's generally credited as this person who brought universal healthcare to Canada, but it really couldn't have been done without Ukrainian communists across the Paris, who definitely do not get a big enough chunk of the credit there.
00:28:59
Speaker
But Sean, the reason why I think that that club is important is Kenny gets into it, right? He, he talks about curriculum and how, you know, how he and the UCP are allegedly going to do a better job of teaching K to six students about residential schools. Sean, who is, is Chris champion and what is he currently doing for the Alberta government? Yeah, just, just a couple of quick points. I mean, the first, you know, is that Kenny's talking about canceling people. Um,
00:29:26
Speaker
canceling McDonald. And I think actually, you know, what's going on is that there is an opportunity to not uncritically celebrate people like McDonald in public, right? And to give them sort of honorific titles and statues and memorializations and commemorations. That's what's happening. You know, McDonald isn't being canceled from history.
00:29:51
Speaker
It's not even about erasing history. If a McDonald's statue comes down or a school named after a McDonald is renamed, I don't stop talking about these people in my classes. Same with other kind of complicated figures in history, be it Emily Murphy or Tommy Douglas, Wilford Laurier. As a historian, my job isn't to pass judgment necessarily. It is to teach sort of a wholesome understanding
00:30:19
Speaker
maybe not wholesome, a fuller appreciation of the past and its complexities. And I think that for so long, that has not been the way that people like Kenny understand history, right? That for them, history is a tool of propaganda and patriotism and nation building.
00:30:36
Speaker
And that doesn't jive with complicated appreciations and understandings of different figures. And so one of the things that you see in the curriculum is that Kenny has surrounded himself
00:30:53
Speaker
you know, like with a variety of other kind of nefarious figures that are dealing in kind of more white supremacist understandings of history and the uses of curriculum, certainly in line with sort of a Trumpian approach to patriotic education, as he would call it. And you start to see people like, before we get to Chris Champion, let's talk about Paul Bunner for a second, because,
00:31:20
Speaker
Kenny said in that last clip, just like Stephen Harper apologized for in terms of the residential school system. Well, Harper didn't write that speech, right? Paul Bunner did, right? He was his personal speechwriter, who then became a personal speechwriter for Kenny, who in the last couple of years, it's come to light in comments that Bunner made on record himself.
Chris Champion's Influence on History Education
00:31:45
Speaker
that they made the apology hoping that the situation would go away and that he personally feels residential schooling is a bogus genocide. That's from the person who wrote Canada's apology, okay? And Kenny surrounds himself with people like this. Another one is Chris Champion, who holds similar beliefs to Bunner and Kenny and kind of works as sort of a, not to be confused with the pro wrestler, Chris Champion,
00:32:15
Speaker
He's kind of like a pseudo historian, right? He's the founder of the Dorchester Review, a non-peer reviewed popular history journal that kind of caters to a kind of far right audience and sort of propagates many of these different talking points. And he's essentially Kenny's brain worker.
00:32:35
Speaker
It's funny that Kenny in the first clip that you played, he says he was writing Canada's citizenship guide, Discover Canada. That was actually Chris Champion's kind of brainchild that he worked with Kenny while Kenny was the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. And if you read Discover Canada, you can Google it. It's really available. It's essentially, unsurprisingly,
00:33:01
Speaker
a kind of very sugar-coated rose-colored glasses view of Canadian history that tries to minimize any of the story of colonization, right? And it kind of promotes Canada as this like two founding nations coming together to overcome obstacles, to build a great country and says little about the fact that that was also predicated on slavery.
00:33:27
Speaker
and the enslavement of African people as well as ongoing settler colonialism. So again, these folks have a long track record of presenting pretty wacky and misleading and one-sided views of Canadian history as tools of propaganda and patriotism. And it is Chris Champion who Kenny brought in to help revamp the Social Studies curriculum, the K-4 curriculum.
00:33:57
Speaker
which again is very Trumpian, very patriotic, motivated in a way to downplay the kind of unsavory nature of Canadian nation building, right? As I was saying before in the McDonald, my kind of framing of McDonald, it's really presenting that one-sided version of Canadian history.
00:34:19
Speaker
rather than a kind of fuller appreciation of really what happened, giving people the truth so that they're better prepared in the present to do the work of building a better society for the future. That's certainly not what Kenny and conservative ideologues like O'Toole, Champion, Bunner, et cetera, want to do. And so they're using the curriculum revamp as an opportunity to kind of restructure it in a way, unfortunately for Albertans, that will prepare them
00:34:49
Speaker
will not prepare them to deal with the very pressing problems in indigenous settler relations today. Yeah. And the reason why I also bring up Chris Champion is that under the handle of the historical journal that he runs, you mentioned it, the Dorchester Review, he replied to a new story about the 215 dead children found in a mass grave at a residential school by saying, quote, the cause of death was usually tuberculosis or some other disease.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, you know, here we kind of see a denialist talking point, in the sense that many indigenous children did die of tuberculosis, and tuberculosis was a common way that many Canadians died, this is sort of what he's doing. The problem of course is that he's using that piece out of context.
00:35:38
Speaker
Indigenous children often died of tuberculosis at the rate of almost 20%, which was 19%, I think as much as 19% more than the mortality rate in the rest of the population, because for the most part, non-Indigenous people weren't inmates against their will in residential schools.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, like why were so many indigenous children getting and then dying of tuberculosis at rates well above the background rate of the population? Well, yeah, like you said, they were kidnapped and put into terrible conditions by the state, right? Yeah, and those conditions were very well known. If anyone looks at the Department of Indian Affairs records from 1883 to the 1910s, they will see the constant references to death
00:36:24
Speaker
and disease related to poor conditions. Even the Department of Indian Affairs own medical officer, this guy named Dr. Peter Bryce, tried to blow the whistle on these poor conditions and demand that the department do differently. And he was basically ignored, right? Because the department would rather focus on the well-intentioned nature of the system overall and the benefits that it was having in destabilizing Indigenous communities which supported
00:36:52
Speaker
continued colonialism and nation building. That was the whole thing, right? It's not like all of a sudden in 2015, people realized that residential schools were bad. Like the very first report on these trial schools in 1883, 84 talked about these issues. It's just that for the most part, Canadian officials had a vested interest in keeping these schools going as one part of the larger colonial project. And so it's somewhat repugnant to me
00:37:21
Speaker
that people like Champion, who again is in church, curriculum revamp in trying to get children to learn about the past. I mean, it's subsequently come out that they don't wanna focus on the negative, it's too sad, right? These again are ways of integrating denialism, residential school denialism into Alberta's curriculum.
00:37:49
Speaker
Uh, to me, uh, it is unconscionable. Yeah. I mean, for research purposes, I went and looked at, you know, this guy's Twitter account and it's like, it's like if like a 4chan dude like ran, uh, like a history journal, like it seems to exist to primarily trigger the libs, uh, not as a, as a, you know, something that is interested in a full and thorough examination of the history of Canada. Um.
00:38:19
Speaker
You know, did you know about this guy before he was selected by the Alberta government to advise on curriculum? Had you run into him in like historical circles? No, I mean, I don't, I don't think he's really involved in historical circles. I think, you know, he has a toehold, it would seem, as a visiting researcher at Queens. You know, I think Queens University probably wants to answer for that.
00:38:41
Speaker
I would stress and challenge them to answer why they would be having someone who's trolling dead Indigenous children on Twitter. I don't get it. I had heard of his name before. He is, as I said, part of this kind of conservative cabal of
00:39:02
Speaker
politicians who are trying to use a kind of white supremacist, overtly nationalist view of history as a political tool.
00:39:13
Speaker
And you see his names on all sorts of strange open letters defending pretty weird positions. I had heard of the Dorchester Review. They've published residential school denialism before. This is certainly not a new thing for the Dorchester Review.
00:39:34
Speaker
And, you know, I had heard that he was involved in trying to do some research about who created Discover Canada, you know, who was consulting on that particular project, because we need to remember that is still the official citizenship guide. Thanks, Liberals. Yeah, they haven't fixed today.
00:39:52
Speaker
No, and it continues to kind of misrepresent Canadian history and ensure that new Canadians are not prepared to deal with revelations like what happened in Kamloops last week. Because we don't know, they're not being taught about these kinds of things, right? If Canada is just like this rosy country, then why are all of these issues continuing to come up, right? So I think that
00:40:22
Speaker
Folks like Champion are playing an unfortunate role in ensuring that Canadians, in this case, Albertans specifically in the curriculum, are kind of at a disadvantage in terms of being aware of Canada's history and how that history can be used to create a better province. And that is unfortunate.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and he just continued to double down, you know, in his, you know, he, he tweeted, you know, quote, in many cases, their parents wanted them there, there being residential schools. That's why this should be based on research, not the politics and cashola of the truth and reconciliation commission. Yeah. I mean, you know, undercutting the truth and reconciliation commission is also another denialist kind of a fascination. We saw that with people
00:41:09
Speaker
like Lynne Baik, right, who even as she was resigning or retiring, sorry, from the Senate in January,
00:41:17
Speaker
kind of said, no, I stand by the fact that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission doesn't talk enough about the good things about residential schools. What a wild argument. We need to be talking about the positive things of a genocidal school system. Again, that's just trying to misrepresent particular aspects of what was going on
00:41:39
Speaker
to delegitimize truth and reconciliation, to insulate themselves from participating in the hard work of decolonization and reconciliation, which again, they're trying to protect the colonial status quo. That is their goal. They're using history and curriculum to kind of insulate themselves and others to ensure that that doesn't gain any momentum.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah. So speaking of protecting the status, the colonial status quo, we can't have this conversation.
The Role of Statues in Historical Memory
00:42:11
Speaker
And you know, I know you're a history professor, Sean, you probably read books.
00:42:14
Speaker
to learn about history, but I'm just a fucking idiot podcaster and I learn most of my history through statues. So could you perhaps maybe inform me and my audience about why it's so important that we preserve the statues of these colonial founders of Canada as important educational tools?
00:42:39
Speaker
Right. I mean, as a historian, I have a troubled relationship to statues. I know you're being facetious, but I do think that a lot of people make a key mistake, that they assume that statues are history.
00:42:59
Speaker
when in reality, history and statues are very different, right? Statues are commemorations of the past. There's supposed to be things that people look up to, but in reality, statues and commemorative practices like naming streets and schools and things are really just snapshots, right? But as historians like Cecilia Morgan have shown us, commemorations
00:43:26
Speaker
change over time as society changes. The values that we hold and want to pass on to new generations and have people look up to, they change over time. Just like our understandings of history change over time. You can't change the past, but history is really a recording and interpretation of the events of the past that change. And I know that I teach that in my classes, but I know that there's sort of a disjuncture between
00:43:55
Speaker
how many people who don't get to come and take my classes or the classes of my colleagues understand history and the way that the historical community understands history. And so I think we just need to kind of tease out history from statues.
00:44:10
Speaker
And that's what I said is like if a McDonald's statue comes down, you know, he doesn't get erased from history. I still teach about him. But that deliberate commemoration, that lionization of McDonald as an uncomplicated figure worthy of, you know, uncritical celebration, that's what we're challenging, right? And I think that, you know, in this moment when a lot of statues are coming down, you know, it's an opportunity
00:44:37
Speaker
to reflect and rethink. And here I want to actually give some credit to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They talk about this, right? Like this isn't coming out of nowhere. In Volume 6 of the TRC's final report, they say, quote, we believe the true reconciliation can take place only through a reshaping of a shared national collective memory of who we are and what has come before.
00:45:03
Speaker
the youth of this country are taking up this challenge. They certainly are, right? As we're seeing, you know, day after day, every time I refresh my browser, you know, young people are kind of re-articulating what they want that collective memory of their university or of their city, of their town square looks like. So the TRC continues, they say, reshaping national history is a public process, one that happens through discussion, sharing and commemoration.
00:45:30
Speaker
As Canadians gather in public spaces to share their memories, beliefs, and ideas about the past with others, and their politics too, I would argue, our collective understanding of the present and future is formed. So public history, they say, is dynamic. It changes over time as new understandings, dialogues, artistic expressions, and commemorations emerge. Although public history can simply reinforce the colonial story of how Canada began with European settlement and became a nation, which Kenny
00:46:00
Speaker
champion, bunner, etc. would defend. The TRC says the process of remembering the past together also invites people to question that limited version of history. And I mean, I think that's really at the heart of what we're reckoning with the last week. And in the years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you know, we now see these statues uncritically celebrating
00:46:24
Speaker
people like McDonald or Ryerson or other figures differently. And we're reflecting on whether we want to continue with that practice or whether we want to form a new kind of collective memory that gives us different values and aspirations to aspire to. And Sean, I know you're a historian, you're not like here for the like.
00:46:46
Speaker
direct action and praxis and stuff. But I think there is something I do want to say about this, which is that tearing down statues is, broadly speaking, a good thing. It obviously cannot be the only thing when it comes to reconciliation, if we want to use that word, or a meaningful relationship between white people and indigenous folks.
00:47:12
Speaker
I think I am all for statues being torn down. I think it is an important bit of norm breaking that shows that when people get together, they can just do shit and the potential to mobilize even more folks. Sean, what's your take on the kind of political tactic of tearing down statues? For me, I think the way that I try and come at this is that people will say,
00:47:38
Speaker
taking down statues are politically motivated. And I would just simply point out as a historian that the erection of statues and monuments and other commemorative practices are also politically motivated, right? And what's really going on is a grappling with and a reckoning of those political motivations. Do the political motivations of the sixties when Johnny McDonald statues were being erected to facilitate a kind of
00:48:07
Speaker
reconciliation, if you were between French and English, you know, tensions in Canada around the time of the centennial. Do those political motivations jive with, you know, the political motivations of today? And I would say priorities. And, you know, a continual reckoning.
00:48:28
Speaker
The statues we put up today in 2021 might not work for us in 2031 or 2051. And there will be a reckoning of different figures at different times for different purposes, articulating different priorities. That's all OK. That's how commemoration works. That's how a mature understanding of how history functions. I mean, it changes over time as we
00:48:57
Speaker
as we learn new things as historians, like the role of the historian is to continuously advance knowledge about the past, learn different things. And as we learn different things and communicate that to wider audiences, we can have different feelings about history and subsequently commemorations and things like statues. So I'm certainly not opposed to the removal of statues
00:49:25
Speaker
I guess I would be remiss, you know, make sure everybody does it safely. And I think I posted on Twitter the popular mechanics article from last time about how to take down a statue safely with science. You know, and I think, you know, the people that are clutching pearls about statues to enslavers, imperialists and, you know, the architects of residential schools might want to look in the mirror about what those, what the defense of those statues says about them.
Reflecting on Historical Values and Commemoration
00:49:54
Speaker
and the kind of society they want to see. And that lively, healthy debate can actually be productive and helpful. And we will link to that handy popular mechanics guide on how to safely tear down a statue in the show notes. Excellent point there, Sean. I mean, there's a couple of statues in my town that in Edmonton that I think makes sense to have on the ground and thrown in the river. You know, you've got the very obvious one.
00:50:20
Speaker
of Winston Churchill and the town square being named after Winston Churchill, a man who was responsible for the murder and genocide of two to three billion Bengalis, as well as just being an overall kind of wretched person to anyone who wasn't white. We've got the statue of Emily Murphy. Again, proto-Faith Goldie, proto-white supremacist, propagandist, par-extremist in Winnipeg. Is there any statues you've got your eye on?
00:50:46
Speaker
Well, I mean, Winnipeg is an interesting city in the sense that it is a site of conflict and tension. You know, there are, as a newcomer relatively to Manitoba, you know, there are a lot of public commemorations of indigenous leaders, of Métis leaders like Louis Riel, for example. And yet there are also, you know, Bishop Grandin Boulevard,
00:51:11
Speaker
Um, and you know, schools named after, uh, Ryerson, um, neighborhoods named after Garnet Woolsey, uh, who was a British, um, uh, general who was sent out by McDonald to kind of oversee colonization, uh, uh, in, in, in, in Manitoba, uh, and to, to set the stage for westward expansion. Um, and so, you know, everywhere has, you know, history that needs to be reckoned with and for those who think
00:51:41
Speaker
You know, where does this stop, you know, it's a slippery slope. I mean, I think this is just like it's a constant process of reevaluating the past and its use in the present to aspire to different kinds of futures. That's all a good thing, actually. And the debates.
00:51:59
Speaker
that emerge out of them can be quite, you know, divisive at times. They can seem very emotional, but I think they're nevertheless important. And as I was saying, I hope it didn't get cut off there. That is what the TRC has asked Canadians to do, not just about residential school history, but about nationalist history generally, right? Like we basically can have a history that reflects what we want to aspire to.
00:52:27
Speaker
Or we can continuously be tethered to these kinds of toxic nostalgias that cling to colonial history in a way that tries to legitimize and shore up the privilege of the profit of the colonial status quo that is distributed very unequally to non-Indigenous people. I think this is a moment of reckoning, and reckoning doesn't have to be a bad thing.
00:52:56
Speaker
Yeah, this is a total aside, but one of the most like low key racist things that kind of exist as, as statues and commemorations is any commemoration of Canada's involvement in the Boer war. There's a, there's a statue in the Beltline in Calgary. There's a statue outside of the Nova Scotia legislature that also celebrates this. Like the Boer war on the English side was like literally the invention of concentration camps and the like murder of like what 30,000 Boers and their families and like 30,000
00:53:26
Speaker
uh, you know, black South Africans. Well, and I mean, you know, just while we're putting, you know, targets up on, on the board for, for reevaluation, I mean, even certain things, I mean, Cecil Rhodes, um, schools have been, have been, um, uh, identified, right? Things that uncritically celebrate British imperialism. And this is the hard part because British imperialism is very much connected to Canadian nationalism, right? Um, the way that, um, Canada's founding fathers, right? Um,
00:53:56
Speaker
legitimized establishing a new Canadian dominion was by linking it to the British empire. And so it's not uncommon to see statues of Queen Victoria, the British monarch at the time that Canada was founded and expanded in the mid to late 19th century. I'm thinking I just rode my bike the other day, passed the legislative building in Manitoba
00:54:23
Speaker
which has a statue of Queen Victoria prominently displayed outside. Again, these are deliberate symbols chosen to legitimize Canada's colonial project and to give it a kind of gravitas. And I think those kinds of symbols, uncritically celebrating that, are being reevaluated in this moment. And as I said, I think that that is a good thing. Yes.
Reevaluating Canada Day's Meaning
00:54:50
Speaker
I had this whole section in the notes on Canada Day and like is Canada Day canceled? And I think, I don't think we have to belabor the point here. I definitely am not going to be making any special effort to celebrate Canada Day this year, nor have I really kind of since Canada 150 and the counter programming that went on, but you know, in the wake of, you know, 215 dead children found in a mass grave. I don't think that that is a thing.
00:55:19
Speaker
that is worth getting excited about. Well, I mean, just quickly on this point, I mean, whether Canada Day is canceled is certainly not up to me. I do know that I don't know more, right? The group that kind of came to prominence in 2012, 2013 has called for that. There have
00:55:39
Speaker
been a number of different actions planned in and around Canada Day, particularly around Canada 150, kind of countering that kind of overtly patriotic, nationalistic kind of celebration. And I mean, it will be interesting to me how this gets handled. I'm certain that there will be some allies that choose not to mark Canada Day in the way that perhaps they have done in the past.
00:56:06
Speaker
Um, you know, I'll point simply, uh, I don't know how many listeners are Winnipeg Jets fans. Um, but you know, just recently, um, you know, the way that they handled the announcement of the 215, uh, you know, the unearthing by the to come loops, uh, took us quite magnesium. Um, you know, they, they held a hockey game right on, on just Monday night. Uh, and they had, um, Don Amaro, a sort of indigenous country singer.
00:56:36
Speaker
give a very somber kind of haunting rendition of O Canada, which I thought was sort of an interesting way of kind of handling how do you make an announcement about what happened in Kamloops and then transition to the national anthem. And that was, you know, it was a moment of kind of unsettled awkwardness that I think, you know, Canada very much
00:57:01
Speaker
could benefit from having. But very quickly, Canada Day, I mean, just like John A. McDonald and all of these kinds of nationalistic things that people are defending to the death. I mean, Canada Day is actually a pretty recent event. People think, oh, Canada Day must have been celebrated from 1867 onwards. And in reality, just a quick comment. It originally starts as Dominion Day in 1879. It really doesn't get going.
00:57:31
Speaker
as a celebration. It's not really celebrated or marked again until 1917, in the midst of the war, where nationalism was used to kind of whip up and defend what was going on. And then it really wasn't until the 50s, specifically the 60s and the 1967 centennial of Canada, that Canada Day becomes a more regular activity, as a lot of historians have sort of written about. In fact, Canada Day, as we
00:58:00
Speaker
you know, have seen it being celebrated, really wasn't until, you know, renamed until 1982. And so when you think about it like that, that Canada Day, as a sort of like overtly nationalistic birthday cakes, you know, big celebration fireworks, you know, it's sort of a more recent tradition.
00:58:21
Speaker
I think that historical awareness lends a kind of credence to perhaps reflect on what its meaning is moving forward. And that I think is a productive and healthy conversation for people to be having, certainly. Yeah, though I'm sure. Aren't there like a bunch of weirdos who want to bring back Dominion Day?
00:58:43
Speaker
I would imagine Chris Champion, I think I saw him talking about wanting to bring back Dominion Day, which is kind of funny because it really wasn't, you're wanting to bring back something that wasn't really celebrated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I'm sure Jason, if I search Jason Kenny's Twitter history, he probably has called Canada Day Dominion Day. He loves using that word Dominion. It's one of his like $5 settler colonial words. Yeah, and because they want, they actually don't want it to sever that connection
00:59:12
Speaker
to the British Empire and British imperialism because they use it as a way of legitimizing the colonial status quo. That's why they're, you know, like why does Jason Kenny care about like Johnny McDonald?
00:59:24
Speaker
It's because they use those symbols and kind of mythologized version of history as a tool of legitimacy for political reasons. And yeah, they love Dominion Day, but they don't really know anything about it. It's not like it's some great deep meaningful event. It's just a cool political thing that they try and do to hearken back to a past that doesn't exist.
History's Use in Political Legitimization
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:54
Speaker
We should be wary of all those kinds of cheap tricks used to shore up the colonial status quo. And as we've been talking about, history is often misused for those purposes and has a lot of supporters amongst conservative ideologues, sure, but also people in the middle and some foggy people on the left too.
01:00:21
Speaker
It's a way of legitimizing positions rather than trying to learn honestly from what happened before so that we can try and do differently in the present. That's the kind of history that I'm trying to advocate for. I think our time here is going to soon come to a close, but I do have one last question for you. That's around your
01:00:45
Speaker
status as a settler or as a white person who does research and writing on indigenous issues.
Approaching Settler Colonialism with Respect
01:00:56
Speaker
And do you have advice for other historians or journalists or folks who want to write about Canada's settler colonial past and how we can approach and learn about this history in a respectful and authentic manner?
01:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I certainly want wouldn't want to present myself as someone who has it all figured out, or has a ready made blueprint for this. You know, I think, you know, the lessons that I've learned in working with, you know, indigenous community members and colleagues is to try to always listen and learn.
01:01:29
Speaker
right, commit to always trying to learn more and being open and realize that that kind of learning process can be pretty uncomfortable at times. And that's OK. That's OK. It shows you that you're actually learning new things. You're reevaluating yourself and your position in relationship to new knowledge. And modeling that, whether it be in our movements, in our classrooms, in our communities,
01:01:57
Speaker
is something that is certainly healthy and productive. And, you know, always, always learn Murray Sinclair, who is the chair of the TRC, said, you know, like education in terms of residential schools, you know, got us into this mess, but education is going to get us out.
Conclusion and Promotion of Sean Carlton's Work
01:02:17
Speaker
And I think that that requires people from all political spectrums on all sides of the political spectrum, to be honest, to commit to that kind of education and relearning
01:02:28
Speaker
their own history, as you started off by talking about, the history of Canada and colonialism in ways that can help bring us together to figure out what we want that present to look like and ideally what we want the future to be. And if we can do that, try and put our egos aside to the best of our ability and enter into building new relationships with people
01:02:55
Speaker
through learning and listening to each other. I think we're going to be much better off than if we are trying to double down on protecting the colonial status quo through investing ourselves in weird mythology like Jason Kenney and others are doing in the aftermath of what's been unveiled and understood in Kamloops this last week.
01:03:21
Speaker
Thanks for coming on, Sean. I'm a big fan of your work and this has been a great chat and a conversation that I'm really pleased that we had. How can people find you on the internet and follow along with the work that you do? I have a website. It's my name, Sean Carlton, S-E-A-N Carlton, C-A-R-L-E-T-O-N.com. And you can find me on Twitter at Sean Carlton.
01:03:49
Speaker
Great, so that's all for this episode, folks. I think we've gone a little long, so I won't belabor the point about asking for money, but if you like what we do, please support us. There's a link in the show notes, and it really helps us out. If I got something wrong or you need to get a hold of me, I'm very easy to find. I'm on Twitter, at Duncan Kinney, and you can email me at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks to Cosmic Family Communist for our theme. Thanks to Sean for coming on, and thank you for listening. Goodbye.