Native Totem Set on Fire, Suspected Retaliation for Statue Destruction

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A local totem pole was set on hearth on Canada’s Vancouver Island in what’s suspected to be retaliation for the destruction of a statue of Captain James Cook.

The Salish Bear Pole was seen smouldering on the summit of the Malahat Highway hours after a mob ripped down a statue of the British explorer within the provincial capital of Victoria, took off its head, and “drowned” it within the Inner Harbour.

The hearth brigade had been in a position to convey the fireplace beneath management, leaving the totem largely intact however its decrease sections charred and blackened.

“The quick thinking of the passing motorist likely saved not only the totem pole, but also a forest fire,” mentioned Sergeant Tim Desaulniers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Detachment Commander for Shawnigan Lake.

“This was a very dangerous act that could have had far reaching consequences. We will be working with partners along the Malahat for video and dashcam footage in an effort to identify suspect(s),” he added.

“Fresh graffiti was also located at the scene, speaking to recent events in Victoria where a statue of James Cook was pulled down and thrown in the Victoria Harbour, based on what was written, we feel the two incidences are related,” the policeman mentioned. The phrases ‘ONE TOTEM – ONE STATUE’ had been scrawled in entrance of the burning totem in black spray-paint.

This is Captain Cook in Victoria, British Columbia, torn down and thrown into the ocean. See how this isn’t about Residential Schools. It’s something British. It’s Canada itself. pic.twitter.com/QQF5vbxArq

— Save Our Statues – Robert Poll (@_SaveOurStatues) July 2, 2021

Captain Cook’s statue shouldn’t be the one monument to have been focused by woke mobs, with a big, enthroned statue of Queen Victoria being hauled from its pedestal in entrance of the Manitoba Legislature in broad daylight on Canada Day, or Dominion Day.

The statue was extensively vandalised and its head indifferent and thrown in a river, with a smaller statue of Canada’s reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II — who’s head of state in Canada as within the United Kingdom and several other different Commonwealth realms — additionally being torn down.

Perhaps probably the most dramatic facet of the continuing dysfunction is the wave of church arsons sweeping the nation, with a outstanding variety of historic Anglican and Roman Catholic church buildings having been burned to the bottom.

The violence is linked to the invention of unmarked graves — wrongly described as “mass graves” by a number of information retailers — on the websites of former Indian Residential Schools. These establishments had been sometimes run by church buildings and native kids had been required to attend, in what’s now typically thought to be a misguided try and combine them into the cultural mainstream.

As the colleges, date from the 1800s, not less than a number of the graves now inflicting competition used to be marked, with the BBC reporting that “Burial plots used to be marked with wooden crosses that crumbled over the years” at one web site.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has referred to as the church assaults “unacceptable” however added that he “understand[s] the anger that’s out there against the federal government, against institutions like the Catholic church; it is real and it is fully understandable given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware of”.

He additionally insisted that the “terrible intergenerational trauma and present-day realities of suffering” is one thing “that we are all collectively responsible for”.