When we talk about John A Macdonald and genocide, it's essential to make it clear that we're not just talking about residential schools, though he was the key architect of that decidedly genocidal institution.

The scale of Indigenous death on the Prairies during his time as both Prime Minister and Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs (1878-1888) is truly staggering. Look, for instance, at these tables put together by Maureen Lux.

What's perhaps most terrifying about these tables showing population declines of between 26% and 56% is that they start in 1884 and, therefore, only capture a fraction of the total death toll of Macdonald's starvation policies during this period.

Then when you add in residential schools—some of which had student death rates as high as 69% by 1907—the portrait is a damning and devastating one. It is a portrait of a Canadian genocide and the architect of that genocide was Sir John A Macdonald, a so-called "man of his times"

Rob Innes provides some vital context for understanding what's at stake in this debate about Canada's founding. "The genocide that took place in the 1880s in Saskatchewan has been erased from the provincial and national historical consciousness." https://shekonneechie.ca/2018/06/21/historians-and-indigenous-genocide-in-saskatchewan/#_ftn4

For comparison: here are statements by both Liberal and Conservative Prime Ministers memorializing the the Holodomor—which saw an estimated 13 percent of the population of the Ukraine perish as a result of Stalin's forced collectivization policies.

What would it mean, then, for Canadian politicians to start talking about what happened on the Prairies in the 1870s and 1880s the same way they talk about the Holodomor? And why is one policy of forced starvation considered a genocide and the other the "birth of a nation"?

For too long, the popular perception of what happened on the Prairies in the 1870s and 1880s has been what I would describe as the "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" school of history.

We need to start replacing that with the Willie Dunn school of popular history

Or, better yet, the Buffy Sainte Marie school