Powerful New Documentary, Inside the Statue Wars,  Delves into the Nationwide Battle Over Public Statues and Asks if Reconciliation is Possible While They Still Stand

21 September 2023

Produced by Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Media production company, the new documentary premieres on CBC Gem and CBC’s The Passionate Eye on October 4 at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT)

WATCH TRAILER  HERE 

(TORONTO, ON) September 21, 2023 – From students toppling and beheading the statue of Egerton Ryerson to protestors tearing down monuments of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth and Sir John A. Macdonald, the summer of 2021 ignited an era of reckoning and re-evaluation of our past. Commissioned by the CBC and produced by Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Media production company, Inside The Statue Wars is a powerful new documentary that examines these events and offers compelling perspectives on how these statues could symbolize dreams or nightmares, depending on your point of view. The documentary premieres on The Passionate Eye,

Inside the Statue Wars hears from the key players on the front lines, many of whom are sharing their stories for the first time, including: The History Buff who is a staunch defender of John A Mcdonald; The Professor who explains people’s attachment to the monuments; The Statue-slayer who beheaded Egerton Ryerson’s statue; The Poet who posed in provocative photos with Ryerson’s head; The Artist, a renowned Cowichan/Syilx First Nations artist who is also a survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential School; The Photographer whose work challenges the messages statues send about identity, power and belonging; The Activist, the face of a powerful Indigenous youth movement that is challenging colonial narratives; and The Land Defender a multi-hyphenate, young, Indigenous land defender, singer and award-winning actress from Tla’amin Nation. 

This documentary explores the why behind these events and gives voice to the two sides: sovereignty and equity-seeking communities who say it is a long overdue reckoning and argue that statues are relics of a racist era that must be removed before we can reach reconciliation; and those who say statue toppling is vandalism and based on a dangerous distortion of history.

For many, the statues glorified individuals who had caused enormous harm to Indigenous communities in particular. In Canada, many of the locations of former statues became make-shift memorials for Indigenous children. More than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from across the country were separated from their families and communities, forced to attend Indian Residential Schools, often located far from their homes, and many never returned home. 

Full release on Blue Ant Media.

Note from Michael Yellowwing Kannon, Photographer

I want to thank Elizabeth St. Philip and the wonderful production crew of Blue Ant Media. Together they created a powerful accounting of all these statues toppling. I encourage everyone to watch Inside the Statue Wars to better learn the perspectives of the people of Indigenous Nations. Here are the four photographs appearing in the footage documentary.

This fifth photograph is of Sadie Lavoie being filmed by the Inside the Statue War production crew. The documentary tells her perspective in the toppling Queen Victoria Statue. If we look closer in this fifth photograph we can see that the statue in the back right is Lord Nelson. His military actions had ensured the supremacy of Queen Victoria. July 1 2021 the people of Indigenous Nations toppled that supremacy.