Lederman: Welcome to the slavery memorial. Enjoy the beautiful view

Sadly, all too true:

…The placement of these Orwellian signs follows Donald Trump’s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” part of the President’s crusade against wokeness. The new signs also encourage visitors to report any information that fails to “emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” Be complimentary, or else.

Rather than rat out tour guides or wall plaques, visitors are being urged by the NPCA to use their voices to tell the government to stop meddling. And good news: The publication Government Executive reports that almost all of the nearly 200 submissions received in the first few days urged the government not to censor history. 

In Canada, we are learning the value of telling history accurately, in particular the history of Indigenous people. The Truth and Reconciliation process has been bumpy at times, sure, but it has exposed this country’s real history to many Canadians (not just students) who simply didn’t know about the harms of colonialism, including residential schools.

We are seeing this reflected in school curricula, at museums, on the calendar (we mark National Indigenous Peoples Day on Saturday) and, consequently, in the zeitgeist. That’s how it works.

“If our country erases the darker chapters of our history, we will never learn from our mistakes,” said Ms. Pierno in a news release. Exactly.

What if they did this in, say, Germany – where monuments and museums tell the country’s chilling Nazi history, along with tens of thousands of Stolpersteins (literally “stumbling stones”), small brass plates marking places from which people were deported? (Memorials that speak to the despicable actions of past governments of that period are also prominent in Hungary, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and France.)

Imagine if, in an effort by a hypothetical German government to avoid casting shade upon its history, those sites were watered down. What if Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was renamed to play down the murder part? Any thinking person would be outraged – even much of the MAGA set, too. 

Picture Minidoka, currently billed as “An American Concentration Camp,” instead being described as “a unique visiting experience in the scenic Gem State, along the refreshing waters of Clover Creek with its fine fishing?” What an insult to the memory of all who suffered there. What a disservice to any visitor.

This move to sanitize historic sites is a testament to the idiocy of this U.S. administration – as history, one hopes, will show.

Source: Welcome to the slavery memorial. Enjoy the beautiful view