SYDNEY, N.S. — The same day a Membertou elder successfully lobbied to have Cornwallis street signs in Sydney removed, an elder in Halifax received a hate-filled email.
Danny N. Paul, 80, received the email Sunday morning, the day after Indigenous Peoples Day. It was so hate-filled, he shared it with his nephew Chief Terry Paul of Membertou with the heading “White Supremacist Hate Mail.”
In it, the author calls L’nus (Mi'kmaq) “jealous” of inventions made by caucasian people and this is the reason Indigenous people in Nova Scotia “want anything to do with colonialism taken down.” The writer speaks of his perceived injustice L’nu people are perpetrating against the memory of Edward Cornwallis, a British colonizer who encouraged the scalping of Aboriginal people in Nova Scotia and paid a bounty for it. The email also includes many other racist remarks.
Terry Paul spoke to his uncle after reading the email and said he was “horrified” and couldn’t believe someone could “stoop that low and be that hurtful.”
“He agreed we had to make this public, to show people how Mi’kmaw people in Nova Scotia are subjected to this (type of racist beliefs)... My 80-year-old uncle didn’t deserve this,” he said.
“(My uncle was) very disappointed. It’s not the first time he’s gotten a letter like this but it’s the most horrible.”
For the past 30 years, Danny N. Paul and his friend, Membertou elder Danny J. Paul, have been fighting to have statues of Cornwalls and street signs dedicated to him removed. On the same day Danny J. Paul lobbied to have the Cornwallis Street signs in Sydney removed, his friend received the hate-filled letter. Both believe the effort to remove the Cornwallis signs in Sydney sparked the person to write the email.
Both elders and the chief believe removing these monuments help educate people, teaching them history from a non-colonial perspective.
“(People like the author of the email) are the ones who think we are people who started scalping,” said Danny J. Paul who said he feels sorry and prays for people with racist views.
“It wasn’t us. It was John Gorman… who got Cornwallis to continue doing it. If the Mi’kmaw started doing this, it was because we learned it from them.”
Another reason both elders and other L’nu want the monuments to historical figures like Cornwallis removed is that they are a painful reminder of atrocities against Mi'kmaw people.
“Why do we have to commemorate people with a history like this? Why not commemorate our own people,” said Terry Paul.
“I don’t want my grandkids learning about Cornwallis and see this sign and say, 'Why do they have this here for him with all he did?' I did this for them, for all the children,” said Danny J. Paul. “We don’t want to rewrite history… We want to be consulted when it’s being written so it can represent all sides of history.”
