Trustees vote to take apartheid architect’s name off Weston school

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This article was published 04/05/2022 (1252 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than 500 nursery-to-Grade 9 students in Weston will be headed to class at Keewatin Prairie Community School in the fall after Winnipeg School Division trustees officially gave the boot Wednesday to a colonial white supremacist and apartheid advocate.

Cecil Rhodes School will cease to exist, effective Sept. 1.

“We’re very pleased to have a name that was chosen based on careful consideration and acknowledgement of the Truth and Reconciliation process,” said board chairwoman Betty Edel. “We took the time necessary to ensure that changing the name of Cecil Rhodes was a community decision, and that the appropriate stakeholders were consulted and included in the choice of the new name.”

The new name is meant to honour the Cree and Ojibwe languages (Keewatin means “the land of the northwest wind” in both languages) while including the word “prairie” was a popular suggestion in the community.

A petition to change the name began in 2020 and received more than 1,700 signatures. The school, which has a student population of 520, put together a naming committee that received over 100 suggestions from students and people living in the community.

Rhodes was a British imperialist and politician who annexed swaths of land in South Africa and advocated for white supremacy. His policies influenced the racist segregation of white and Black South Africans.

Calls to remove monuments to Rhodes have rung out worldwide in recent years. Oriel College in Oxford, England, faced criticism last year after refusing to remove a statue of Rhodes on campus grounds.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca