Liberal Apologies for the Hanging of Louis Riel
Manitoba Métis Federation's annual commemoration of Louis Riel's
at his grave site on the anniversary of his death, November 16,
2018. (Manitoba Métis Federation)
The 134th anniversary of the cowardly hanging of the great
leader of the Métis people, Louis Riel in 1885 once again brings
to mind the hyprocrisy engrained in the minds of those who seek
to defend Canada's liberal democratic institutions under whose
aegis crimes were committed in the past in the name of high
ideals and national interest and continue to be committed today
in the name of high ideals and the national interest. Just as in the
1870s and 1880s, the Métis nation was fighting for its
sovereignty, which clashed with John A. Macdonald's vision of a
Canada stretching from sea-to-sea-to-sea, so too today, the
demands of the Canadian people and Indigenous nations clash with
the Trudeau government's vision of Canada as the private property
of supranational oligopolies, the U.S. imperialists and its NATO
war-mongering military alliance. At the time of the Métis
Rebellion, Manitoba served as the gateway to the settlement of
the West and a hub of the transcontinental railway. The "founding
fathers" created the North-West Mounted Police, later the RCMP, to
suppress the nation led by Louis Riel, giving Manitoba the
dubious honour of contributing to the establishment of the forces
of "law and order" in Canada.
During the week of December 9-13, 1996, the federal parliament
debated Bill C-297, a bill to revoke the conviction of Louis
Riel, who was hanged for "treason" following the defeat of the
1885 North-West Rebellion. The private member's bill, introduced by MP Suzanne Tremblay
(Bloc Québécois: Rimouski-Temiscouata) on October 21, 1996, was
narrowly defeated. Tremblay had introduced a similar bill in
November, 1994 but it too was defeated. In fact, the defeat in
December 1996 was the seventh time since 1983 that such a bill
had been introduced in Parliament and defeated.
When the bill was defeated for the seventh time, most Liberal
MPs voted against it. Not a single Cabinet member voted for the
bill and several prominent Liberal ministers were reported to
have run up the stairs to avoid having their vote recorded. Among
those voting against the bill were several Liberal MPs from
Manitoba. One of them, John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James), was
asked why he had voted against the measure, despite almost
universal support amongst Manitobans. He stated that he did so
because the Bloc Québécois had a "hidden agenda" in introducing
the bill and intended to use it to generate support for
"separatism." He went on to claim that the Liberal government
would be reintroducing a similar bill in the next session, one
which would clearly identify Louis Riel as a "Father of
Confederation" and a defender of Canadian unity.
TML Daily wrote at the time:
"Louis Riel was not a 'Father of Confederation.' Far from it,
he spent most of his life opposing the Confederation and the
attempts of the Anglo-Canadian state to extinguish the Métis
nation and the hereditary rights of Aboriginal peoples. Within
the historical conditions of the times, he stood for the
sovereignty of the peoples and fought for the unity of the Métis,
Natives and settlers against the Anglo-Canadian colonial state.
He actually led the peoples of the West to establish their own
state to defend their interests against both the westward
expansion of Canada and the northward expansion of the United
States. To suggest that Riel stood for Confederation or for some
abstract 'Canadian unity' is to distort history and to completely
negate Riel's contribution to the struggles of the Métis and
other Aboriginal peoples for their rights.
"Louis Riel would certainly make a strange 'founding father,'
a 'founding father' hanged by other 'founding fathers' and their
descendants! The disgusting behaviour of the Liberal government,
which continues to defend the colonial legacy of the Canadian
state, the murder of Riel and the devastation of the Métis nation
under the hoax of someone else's 'hidden agenda,' proves that
this government cannot even reconcile itself to the best that the
nineteenth century had to offer, let alone lead Canada into the
twenty-first century."
On January 7, 1998, the government finally issued a "Statement
of Reconciliation," which read: "No attempt at reconciliation with
the Aboriginal people can be complete without reference to the
sad events culminating in the death of Métis leader Louis Riel.
These events cannot be undone; however, we can and will continue
to look for ways of affirming the contributions of Métis people
in Canada and of reflecting Louis Riel's proper place in Canada's
history."
The statements about Louis Riel made in 1996-97 clearly
exposed the fact that it was the Chrétien Liberals who had the
hidden agenda. TML Daily concluded at the time by pointing
to the pathetic nature of attempts by the Liberal Party to
distance itself from empire-building because it is not
"politically correct," while maintaining the policy of colonial
rule. The Liberal policy is no different today under
Justin Trudeau. To this day, the Liberals cannot face the modern
world of democratic renewal. In Canada, their high-sounding words
about reconciliation and restoring nation-to-nation relations are
to cover up maintaining the colonial relations enshrined in a
Constitution which does not vest the decision-making power in the
citizenry. It can be seen in
the heinous racist acts committed by Canada to dispossess the Indigenous peoples at home and, abroad, to overthrow the
Plurinational State of Bolivia where the first Indigenous
president restored the dignity of the Indigenous peoples after
centuries of discrimination and oppression under the aegis of
racist Indian Acts.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 27 - November 16,
2019
Article Link:
Liberal Apologies for the Hanging of Louis Riel
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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