Statues need an expiry date. Will humans let that happen?
Lately, my pandemic reading has included Decolonizing Wealth, a provocative analysis of privilege, philanthropy, wealth, and power by Edgar Villanueva. In it, he paints a picture of how legacies are immortalized and remembered through places, houses, and philanthropic entities, and how Indigenous wisdom can heal divides.
That reading has a resonance with current events. Ever wondered how humans sometimes choose to forever remember the good that people do? There is a practice of naming things after them — the natural environment, the built environment, college programs, awards, funding programs, scholarships, and much more. Beyond naming things, humans also build statues — many of them are built on commission to commemorate a historical event, or the life of an influential person.
Are statues history?
In the past week, statues of historical figures, including Captain George Vancouver, slave traders like Edward Colston in the UK, and confederate statues in the US have been vandalized and toppled — part of the weeks of protests of systemic, structural, and institutional racism in the US and around the world.
These acts are merely the latest in a succession of recent episodes that have fuelled heated global debates over the purpose of statues and public monuments in society. On college and university campuses, South African students started the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement — which began at the University of Cape Town back in 2015 and then spread to University of Oxford the following year — protesting against statues of the colonialist Cecil Rhodes on both campuses. You may have heard of Rhodes by way of Rhodes Scholars, perhaps the most prestigious international scholarship program to study at Oxford. But you might not know as much about the person the scholarship is named after.
According to art historian Erin Thompson, who studies what it means when people destroy icons of heritage, “a statue is a bid for immortality. It’s a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people — in public places. It’s about the point of view they represent. So, these statues are claiming that this version of history is the public version of history.”
Statues should have expiry dates by default, with the possibility of extension.
Here’s why: Statues tend to commemorate historical figures for their positive actions, and omit their controversies. As an example, Edward Colston in the UK was a generous philanthropist who gave away huge sums of his wealth to causes in Bristol before his death. However, his involvement in the slave trade through the Royal African Company was the source of much of his wealth. I used to live in Bristol, UK and I have seen this Edward Colston statue numerous times. The plaque on the statue’s plinth read: “Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city AD 1895.”
In Canada, statues commemorating historical figures have sparked debate and action over the past decade. When I used to go to the office every day, I would pass by statues of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, and the person who commissioned residential schools. In Nova Scotia, where I grew up, Halifax recently removed a statue of Edward Cornwallis, who founded the city, over his proclamation offering a bounty to anyone who killed a Mi’kmaq person. There are now calls to rename Dundas Street, a major thoroughfare that crosses Toronto and other cities, named after Henry Dundas, an 18th-century politician who delayed Britain’s abolition of slavery. Thousands have called for the renaming of Ryerson University, named after Egerton Ryerson, who aided the Canadian government in the creation of the residential school system.
To add to all of this, on a walk in downtown Ottawa this past winter, my five-year-old daughter very astutely noticed and brought up the fact that there are lots of statues of men — and that she hasn’t yet seen a statue of a scientist or a nurse or a farmer. She has even begun to question the types of people in society we choose to remember. Well said by the next generation.
Now what?
Since statues are symbols of ideas of a particular point in time, the least we can do is to openly give permission to our children and grandchildren to critically revisit our symbols and rewrite the stories we tell.
The current attacks on statues are a sign that what’s in question is not just our future but our past, as a country, and as a society. The protests show how racism is rooted in all our institutions and that we need to question everything about the way we understand our world, even the past, in order to get to a better future.
And by the way, if any group deserves a public monument after the pandemic, it’s all the people, both paid and unpaid, who are caring for their families, their communities, and the most vulnerable.
Vinod Rajasekaran
Publisher & CEO
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