A group of more than 130 historians and politicians are claiming Canada’s first prime minister is being judged too harshly for his role as architect of the residential school system, in a statement Indigenous scholars say amounts to whitewashing.
The statement, titled In Defence of Sir John A. Macdonald and His Legacy, says the prime minister’s racism towards Indigenous peoples must be weighed “against an impressive record of constitution and nation-building, his reconciliation of contending cultures, languages, and religions, his progressivism, and his documented concern for and friendship with the Indigenous peoples of Canada.”
