MPPs schooled over tarnished statue

First Nations consultant scolds committee hearing about Macdonald sculpture

- ROB FERGUSON

The warning was frank.

Four years after a Queen's Park statue of founding prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald was boarded up for protection from vandals, a committee of MPPs slowly gathering input on its future has been scolded and schooled by a First Nations equity consultant.

It was a delicate moment, symbolic of the challenges of reconciliation, as debate simmers over what's next for the image of a historic figure whose legacy is tarnished by his role in creating residential schools, where thousands of Indigenous children died in tragic and brutal circumstances.

"Many protocols have been broken so far about everything that this meeting is about," Terri-Lynn Brennan, a Mohawk who specializes in cultural planning and engagement, said bluntly as a recent hearing got underway in Kingston.

MPPs had hoped to get Brennan's ideas on what she would like to see done about the statue, but the hearing quickly headed in a different direction.

She urged a collaborative approach respectful of Indigenous and ceremonial traditions, that would not just seek opinions but offer genuine involvement as partners in the decision-making process.

"It's not meant to be a formal grilling when we have conversations," she added, noting the hearing format felt like "colonial-expectational oppression."

Brennan explained that's why an elder known as Grandmother Blue Skies decided the night before not to appear.

"How you do things is just as important as the questions you ask when you work with Indigenous Peoples not just through your process, but through their process," she told MPPs.

"These things are important to know, but as someone who's not Indigenous, you won't know them." Ontario's lone Indigenous MPP, New Democrat Sol Mamakwa (Kiiwetinoong), is not assigned to the standing committee on procedure and house affairs.