A monument’s moment

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/07/2021 (1147 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s late afternoon at the Manitoba legislature, inching towards evening. Under the summer sun’s fury, a man and a woman stroll over the grass around the building’s northern entrance, walking towards the great limestone block that sits squat at the heart of the grounds.

When they reach the stone’s edge, they pause. They circle it slowly, pointing out the scar where the base was shattered by the impact of something heavy. They look at the weathered shoes scattered around the stone, at the wreath that speaks of an old grief, at a poster pegged in the grass that declares a heartwrenching hope.

“Bring Them Home.”

The visitors murmur to each other, softly. They kneel on the grass and take pictures with their phones. In front of the stone, a sea of tiny orange flags writhes and snaps in the wind, the rhythm singing a lament for the hundreds of Indigenous children who were taken to residential schools and never came home.

It’s been a month since the statue of Queen Victoria that sat on that stone block was pulled down during a July 1 rally in memory of residential school victims. A month since rally participants covered the statue’s former plinth with handprints of red paint, left in a statement of solidarity, grief and resilience.

Since then, the site has drawn more attention than it once did. Every day, people walking by stop to gaze at the empty base. They point it out to a companion and take photos to post to social media or to save for themselves. The site has taken on a new life since the rally: now, it’s a place that starts conversations.

Lying in the grass, watching the orange flags dance, I think: it’s more beautiful now than it was before. The acts of July 1 imbued the site with a heart that beats with the passion of the people that shaped it; the new texture of the place tells a story about Manitoba that clipped lawn and old bronze never did.

I think about how, long before art galleries, before grandiose sculpture, before masterworks of paint on stretched canvas, some of the earliest art humans made was of their own hands, pressed onto rock and stencilled in ruddy ochre. It’s a deeply personal image, a message so simple it echoes clearly across millennia.

We were here, we were here, we were here.

And I think about how, on Alcatraz Island, site of the notorious former prison turned into a national park and San Francisco tourist attraction, the most striking sight isn’t Al Capone’s cell. It’s the messages of resistance painted by Indigenous activists after they occupied the island in 1969, in a landmark two-year stand for their rights.

On a water tower, the activists — more than 400 at the occupation’s height, and led mostly by women — painted a sign in tall red letters, a declaration of the thriving community they built in the bones of the former prison. “Peace and Freedom,” it read. “Welcome. Home of the free. Indian land.”

In 2012, with that sign faded, the U.S. National Park Service invited Indigenous people to come restore it, tracing over the exact outline of the original letters. Among them was Eloy Martinez, a Ute and Chicano man and one of the original occupiers, who for years visited the island to answer tourists’ questions about the signs.

The park’s supervisor told media that the signs — Martinez is adamant they not be referred to as “graffiti” — were restored because they are a critical piece of Alcatraz’s story, “what the park is all about.” Today, they are still the most moving part of the site, the letters standing as an invitation to know a complex and still-living history.

Sometimes, the most vivid pieces of art are the ones that belong to a moment, but last across time.

With all of that in mind, allow me to cast my vote for what should happen to the spot on the grounds of the legislature, where the statue of Queen Victoria used to stand. That vote is this: leave the plinth as it is. Let the statements made at the rally that day linger. Don’t put the statue back on its original base.

Instead, leave the squat block of stone as its own piece of art, made by Manitobans in a great cry of anger and sorrow, but also of love. Let wandering tourists see the scar at its base, and the imprints of hundreds of hands. Let them take solemn pictures as they reflect on the many truths of these lands.

As the years turn and the paint fades, let the community hold ceremonies there to renew and remember, placing hands on the stone to reaffirm a commitment that what happened to Indigenous children in those schools should never happen again. Let the hands of some future premier be among them.

Then, surround the site with other art and other monuments, crafted by Indigenous artists. Let the grounds of the legislature become a garden of many perspectives. Let it become a place where the community gathers to see a beauty that wells up from the roots of the grasses, not one that trickles down from the top of the dome.

As for the big statue of Queen Victoria, put it in a museum. Let school groups come to see it. Teach the history around it, and teach how that history surged into the events of July 1, 2021.

Let students learn it as a lesson in how the ebb and flow of power shape our built environment, and dictate who we formally remember.

Then you can take them to the legislature grounds. You can show them how, if you stand right in the middle of the driveway to the northern entrance, the building’s whole face shows itself more clearly now than it did when the bronze bulk of the queen on her throne sat there, partially blocking the entrance from view.

You can see the legislature’s front door from that spot now. You can see the way inside.

Sometimes, only empty space holds enough room for the loudest statements. So leave the space, and fill it with many voices. We don’t need the statue of a distant queen to tell us who we are as Manitobans. What we need is simply a place for the voices of now to leave a message for the next generations: we were here.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca