While many of my “progressive” friends don’t seem to be aware of this, their Ideology entails the demonization of everything Western Civilization has accomplished throughout history. This assault is rooted in 2 grossly simplistic Delusions. The first is the absurd Neo-Marxist notion that Success is always the result of Oppression rather than Intelligence, Hard Work and Accomplishment. The second is Post Modern Relativism which avers that Western Science and Reason are really no more valid than Feelings and Superstitions as the arbiters of Man’s Cultural Values. Given this perspective, “enlightened” politicians, media commentators and “intellectuals” habitually re-write history in their attempt to display what they consider the truly horrific effects of “White Supremacism” throughout the past. This disdain for Historical Facts which typically informs their arguments was exposed recently in a National Post article of Nov. 22 concerning the 18th Century struggle between Nova Scotia’s British invaders and their Indigenous opponents. While the latter, given the bias of this era, are typically portrayed as mere innocent victims of Western Oppression, the facts support a more complicated narrative that exposes the utter superficiality of the Leftist world-view.
The Post article is an excerpt from Jerry Amernic’s book “Sleepwoking” which, among other things, attempts to expose the absurdity of the “cancellation” of Edward Cornwallis, the first Governor of Nova Scotia and the founder of Halifax, whose name has been more or less banished due to his apparently horrific treatment of the province’s Indigenous in the mid 18th century. The Facts, of course, hardly seem to justify his portrayal as a racist monster!
When the British conquered it in 1710, what they re-named Nova Scotia was already occupied by both French Acadians and the Indigenous Mi’Kmaqs. We can of course demonize the British for their Imperialist Colonialism, yet the simple fact is that the Indigenous of the Americas were themselves no less prone to conquering their neighbors out of sheer self-interest. While the Brits were hardly genocidal in their approach to the local Indians, they spent half the 18th Century enduring attacks led by the French who cynically enlisted the Mi’Kmaqs to unleash some truly vicious assaults on various settlements. The arrival of Cornwallis with over 2000 new settlers in June of 1749, incited a significant increase in such attacks throughout 1750. The town of Dartmouth, for example, was assailed repeatedly throughout that year and endured what was called a Massacre in May of 1751. As Amernic cites in his opening paragraph, a contemporary eye-witness, John Wilson, testified that the Mi’Kmaqs had scalped and murdered 20 of the town’s residents in the most horrific way imaginable. The victims of such atrocities, apparently, often included Women and Children.
What is utterly appalling is that the French were paying bounties to the Mi’Kmaqs for the bodies and/or scalps of their British victims! It was in response to this that Cornwallis, in Oct. of 1749, announced to his citizens that they too would be rewarded for producing Mi’Kmaq bodies and/or scalps. Women and children, however, were to be spared and, as per British policy, simply taken into custody. In 2008 an American historian, John Grenier, wrote a book on the conflict in question, stating logically: “It is important to look at the context in which Cornwallis and other Anglo-Americans made the decision to issue the scalp proclamation. The Mi’kmaqs were certainly not innocent, passive victims in that train of events.”
In 1993 Daniel Paul, a Mi’Kmaq elder, wrote a book entitled: “We Were Not the Savages.” His vision of his own tribe is perhaps best expressed in the following: “Civility and generosity were so ingrained in Mi’kmaw society that to be rude or mean was unthinkable.” I have no doubt there were wonderful individuals amongst the Mi’Kmaqs, but the irrefutable facts of history show that they and many other Indigenous tribes were capable of some truly barbaric behavior. Paul’s vision is simplistic and utterly biased. Yet Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with most of the Anti-Western Left, takes great joy in reviling even figures such as Canada’s John A. McDonald who, unfamiliar with Post-Modern Relativism, had the audacity to suggest that a Civilization which had produced Socrates, Plato, Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, Democracy, etc., was in fact more “civilized” than all of the Americas’ Indigenous. Apparently peoples prone to removing the scalps of living human beings, including Women and Children, are Not Barbarians!