APTN News
An anonymous activist group calling themselves “anti-colonial zombies” has claimed responsibility for splattering orange paint on the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald in Montreal.
The statue, located in downtown Montreal, has been vandalized on several other occasions this year in hues of red, blue, and green, to demonstrate its “contested” status for those who believe it celebrates genocide.
A statement, released via Facebook by No Borders Media, says that the vandalism was left to the “sacred” day of Halloween in order to promote an eerie message about Canadian history.
“We are the dead that you have forgotten. Our skeletons, buried between 1799 and 1855, remain here in the thousands,” the statement reads.
“You have covered us in asphalt, concrete and colonial-themed parks. You have desecrated our memories with monuments to the architects of genocide, like the racist John A. Macdonald, who attacked the culture and traditions of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.”
APTN’s Lindsay Richardson reports from Montreal
MacDonald was the first prime minister of Canada and the man who approved the federal establishment of residential schools that sought to assimilate Indigenous children into mainstream society, and hanged Metis leader Louis Riel.
Montreal is built on unceded Iroquoian land.
The land where the Macdonald statue is located was constructed atop a historic burial ground, where victims of cholera and typhus epidemics were buried by the thousands in unmarked trenches.
“You, the living, have failed. You continue to allow the Macdonald Monument to stand in a prominent public location in Montreal, on our dead bodies, as a symbol of white supremacy and brutal colonialism.
“We have risen to attack the monument in orange paint. Orange represents both our sacred day, what you call Halloween, but it’s also an appropriate way to desecrate the Orangeman John A. Macdonald, who was a member of the racist and anti-Catholic Orange Order.
The group is threatening to target the statue again if it is not removed permanently.
“Happy anti-colonial Halloween!” the statement concludes.
No arrests have been made.
