Phillip Coutu
Publishing date: Sep 03, 2022
Publishing date: Sep 03, 2022
Artist Ken Lum created The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader Bronze sculpture intended to be installed beside the new Walterdale Bridge in Edmonton. The city has decided not to install the art work. The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader features two 13-foot bronze sculptures intended to highlight the history and impact of the fur trade in Edmonton. The City's decision rests on the potential for the artwork to be misinterpreted as a celebration of colonization.
PHOTO BY SUPPLIED /City of Edmonton
From 2000 to 2005, a small group of descendants of Fort Edmonton played an integral role in the preservation of the Fort Edmonton burial grounds.
It was a good start on a long road to reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples, but we were discarded in favour of a Wicihitowin process which was primarily led by Mr. Lewis Cardinal. Despite a lot of unfinished business, nothing has happened since that time. Consultations with a privileged few while avoiding the most knowledgeable, simply has not worked. As a Metis who has lived and worked with Indigenous people my whole life, I wish to say that reconciliation needs to be seen to be done and the Rossdale Flats is an ideal location to reimagine our relationship with First Peoples.It begins with allowing Cree, Metis and others in the plains culture to talk to each other in a consultation process that honours its oratory nature. I am very saddened by the recent art installation debacle which featured a buffalo fur trader and a buffalo but excluded any acknowledgement that the Metis existed here for 100 years. Worse, it confuses our history. We are the children of the fur trade who hunted buffalo and viewed them as a gift from the creator. This art did not reflect our history. It reflected American history where buffalo herds were slaughtered for their pelts and their carcasses left to rot on the plains.
I believe the bronze buffalo belongs at the entrance of the burial grounds so all who drive down River Valley Road would be reminded of the power of our buffalo culture. The Metis often say we are like the buffalo, who stand to face the cold north winds. I believe other descendants would support this idea as this buffalo, like us, has been discarded from the flats.
A beautiful act of real reconciliation would be to create another bronze statue of a real fur trader being greeted by perhaps his Indigenous wife, holding their child and standing next to her father. The north end of the bridge is a very special place for us Metis. It is the historic landing where after months of travel with the brigade, voyageurs were reunited with their loved ones. This was the rendezvous — a celebration of culture.
A second step to reconciliation is to define the sacred grounds — our burial grounds. If not, the gondola debacle shows us that if it is all sacred, nothing becomes sacred and the flats will remain as abandoned lands. Hudson’s Bay Company diagrams and a documented history of desecrations confirm burials extended into the transformer yard but not much further. It must be removed as Epcor’s persistent repairs using a hydro-vac methods to dig, sends our ancestor’s remains to the sewer system. Spiritually, the above situation brings disharmony to us all and is an affront to our dignity.
A third step to reconciliation is to return the nearby baseball field to First Nation peoples to use for cultural purposes. These were their ancient sundance grounds which were taken from them to create a horse track and later the exhibition grounds. It’s time for the city to return what is not theirs.
A fourth step which might be considered is to use the large brick building as a venue to display large black and white pictures of the First Nation peoples and their trauma in the residential schools. Edmonton cannot be a great city until it finds the courage to embrace its past. It begins with allowing the Rossdale Flats to return to its rightful place as a great gathering place of all cultures.
Phillip Coutu is a retired psychologist, author and direct descendent of Marie Anne Gaboury and Jean Baptiste Lagimodiere who lived on the Rossdale site from 1808 to 1811. They are the grandparents of Louis Riel.
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