Published: 2010-04-25
Hair ad raises ire of Mi’kmaq
Photo insensitive, Dan Paul says
By JON TATTRIE Special
A Halifax business is apologizing to Mi’kmaq people after running an
advertisement featuring models holding human hair extensions in front of a statue of Edward Cornwallis.
Kevin Stanhope, the owner of Hairdressers’ Market Inc., said he had no idea that Cornwallis, the Englishman tasked with founding Halifax, offered a bounty for the scalps of Mi’kmaq men, women and children in 1749 and 1750.
"Whose statue it was, we knew nothing about. Absolutely nothing," he said Thursday.
Hairdressers’ Market sells hairdressing supplies and its ad in the April edition of Faces Magazine showed four young women laughing and holding packets of human hair.
Stanhope only discovered Cornwallis’s grisly past when Mi’kmaq people contacted him to ask him what he was thinking.
Stanhope, who is from New Brunswick, said he got the models to pose at the statue because it had multiple levels and was near his south-end business.
"Who would suspect? It’s a public park. If there’s such an offensive connection to it, why’s it there? Why aren’t there warning signs on it?" he asked.
Kyle Turk, publisher of Faces, likewise pleaded ignorance.
"I didn’t even know what that statue was. Obviously, we wouldn’t have published it if we had known."
He said the ad has been pulled from the May edition and would be taken off the website.
Dan Paul, Mi’kmaq historian and the author of We Were Not The Savages, was one of the people who contacted Stanhope. He said he was appalled when he saw the photograph and wanted to find out if it was created out of ignorance or racism.
After exchanging emails with Stanhope, he believes no racism was involved.
"I think it exemplifies the ignorance of Nova Scotia’s history," Paul said. "It was the actual hope of Cornwallis to wipe out the Mi’kmaq population on the mainland of Nova Scotia, which at the time included New Brunswick. You’re talking about most of the Mi’kmaq population."
Paul, who has long campaigned against the statue in Cornwallis Park near Halifax’s train station, described the governor’s explicit targeting of women and children as "sick in the extreme."
The plaque on the statue briefly outlines Cornwallis’s short career in Halifax but says nothing of the scalping proclamations.
Paul said that’s indicative of Nova Scotia’s "hidden history."
He compared it to the 1946 incident in which Viola Desmond was arrested for sitting in the whites-only section of a New Glasgow theatre.
The Dexter government gave Desmond, who was a beautician, a posthumous pardon this month.
"How many Nova Scotians knew that had happened? I would say very few, (outside of) the black population," Paul said. "Nova Scotia has diligently crafted an image that it is and has been for some time a racially equal society, which it wasn’t and to a large degree still isn’t. If it was, you wouldn’t see Cornwallis’s statue down at the end of Barrington Street.
"I’m not trying to erase his name from the history of this province. You can’t erase Hitler’s name from Germany’s history either but to continue to honour him is almost impossible to believe."
Paul said the incident points to a failure in the province’s education system.
"Are we doing a good job of teaching history to our children here in Nova Scotia? The answer is no. If you want to prevent the wrongs of the past from happening again, you have to teach the population about the past," he said.
Stanhope said he agreed with Paul. He’s ordering a copy of We Were Not The Savages and has signed Paul’s online petition calling for the removal of the statue.