Canada's slavery secret: The whitewashing of 200 years of enslavement
Hiding two centuries of slavery requires some effort, and it is a collective silence that historian Afua Cooper calls the 'erasure of blackness.'
Why is it common knowledge that we saved runaway slaves from the United States, but few know that Africans and Indigenous peoples were bought, sold and exploited, right here?
In part one of a two-part series, contributor Kyle G. Brown asks how slavery was allowed to continue for some 200 years, and be one of the least talked about aspects of our history.
----The 'erasure of blackness'----
Canada's towns, parks and universities are abound with statues and street signs that have immortalized our "founding fathers." But there is no sign of the men, women and children that some of these powerful men enslaved.
Small wonder then, that many of us today are unaware that Indigenous and African peoples were forced into bondage across colonial Canada.
Hiding two centuries of slavery requires some effort, and it is a collective silence that historian Afua Cooper calls the "erasure of blackness."
There's perhaps no better symbol of erasure than an invisible cemetery.
----An invisible cemetery----
Every year the Black Coalition of Quebec organizes a grim pilgrimage to an unmarked grave. About an hour from Montreal outside the village of Saint Armand, close to a dozen slaves are said to be buried near a large whale-shaped boulder.
Little is known of the people enslaved by the Luke family — loyalists who fled the United States in the 1780s. And while the family cemetery still stands — its tombstones bent with age — their slaves left behind a trail of disappearing clues.
Ploughing these fields in the 1950s, a farmer's tractor ground to a halt — on human bones. Elsewhere, they might have been studied and carefully preserved. But these remains were tossed aside and lost.
Oral history has it that they are the bones of the Luke family slaves. This is backed by the preliminary findings of Quebec anthropologist Roland Viau.
Once pointing to these vast rolling fields was a sign that read "Negro Cemetery." It too is now gone. The sign was removed, replaced, and removed again, as though to extirpate the remnants of an embarrassing past.
Beyond the thick woods of Saint Armand, our history has been camouflaged across the country.
"Canadian slavery transpires over 200 plus years."
--Charmaine Nelson, McGill Professor of Art History--
Slavery is seldom featured in Canadian museums, except to extol the virtues of Canadians who helped runaways escaping north. The theme gets short shrift even at a museum named after the owner of at least 17 slaves: François Baby House in Windsor.
A 19th century Upper Canada official, François Baby is among hundreds of slave owners listed in the Dictionnaire des Esclaves by late historian Marcel Trudel.
Conventional texts tell at length of the swashbuckling heroes of colonial conquest, but say little of the people they colonized and enslaved.
Or they showcase the Underground Railroad — networks of activists who provided safe houses to those fleeing plantations in the American south for free states and colonial Canada, where slavery was abolished by the British Empire in 1833.
The Railroad then lasted some 30 years, succeeding a longer and less glorious era.
"Canadian slavery transpires over 200 plus years," says Charmaine Nelson, an art history professor at McGill University. "So what does it take to erase 200 years of history from the collective consciousness of a nation, but to enshrine three decades?"
----Slavery is Canada's best-kept secret----
Canada has burnished its reputation as the Railroad's central station, the saviour of runaway slaves. Generations of Canadians have grown up with the idea that slavery somehow stopped at the American border. As we hear, a surprised former prime minister never knew it happened here. Another former PM said famously that Canada has "no history of colonialism."
As Afua Cooper says, slavery is Canada's best-kept secret.
What Nelson calls our "strategic ignorance," harks all the way back to slave-owners themselves, whose selective diaries were replete with euphemisms like "servants" and extended family.
The slaves themselves were silenced. They worked so hard that they died at 20 years old or so. If ever they had time to collect their thoughts, they could scarcely record them for posterity. Masters often prohibited them from speaking their own languages. They stripped them of their original African and Indigenous names, and assigned French and English names, effectively wiping out their identity.
Now a small but growing number of scholars is unearthing court records, local registries and a host of archives to get a glimpse into the less luminous chambers of our past.
Thanks to a new generation of historians — building on the work of pioneers like James Walker and Marcel Trudel — at least part of the injurious erasure is being reversed.
----Additional note: A word on 'Canada'----
This documentary chronicles slavery as it occurred "in Canada" prior to Confederation and refers to the birthplace of Canada or colonial Canada. Since the 16th century, settlers, officials and historians have used the term "Canada" — often interchangeably with other names, from New France and British North America to Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
CBC - Ideas
Host Paul Kennedy
Guests:
Afua Cooper
Brett Rushforth
Camille Turner
Charmaine Nelson
George Elliott Clarke
Michael Farkas
June 28, 2018
CBC Radio - Ideas
https://www.dal.ca/faculty/arts/soc...gy/faculty-staff/our-faculty/afua-cooper.html
https://history.uoregon.edu/profile/bhru
camille turner
https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/people-contacts/faculty/nelson
https://lop.parl.ca/About/Parliament/Poet/former-Poet-laureate7-e.html
Clarke
http://s//moishistoiredesnoirs.com/en/mhn-2018/mot-du-president
https://liguedesnoirs.org/en
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-nigger-rock-name-change-black-coalition-1.3787740
https://www.citywindsor.ca/resident...mmunity-Museum/Pages/François-Baby-House.aspx
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionnaire-esclaves-propriétaires-français-Histoire/dp/2890458334
https://www.reuters.com/article/col...to-be-canada-insists-pm-idUSTRE58P05Z20090926
Part I of II
(Flash Audio)
Canada's slavery secret: The whitewashing of 200 years of enslavement | CBC Radio
Part II of II
Slavery's long shadow: The impact of 200 years enslavement in Canada
Is there a connection between the enslavement of African-Canadians and their overwhelming presence in the criminal justice system today? The United Nations has sounded the alarm on anti-black racism in Canada, stating it can be traced back to slavery and its legacy. In Part 2 of this series on slavery in colonial Canada, Kyle G. Brown explores the long-lasting ramifications of one of humanity's most iniquitous institutions.
For years, activists have been demanding reparations for centuries of injustice — which they say didn't end with abolition.
----The many faces of racism----
From racial slurs to microaggressions, racism remains entrenched in Canadian society, and its root cause may reach further back than we think.
In Nova Scotia alone in recent years, there has been a cross-burning on the lawn of a mixed race couple, racist graffiti on the campaign signs of minority candidates in provincial elections and a noose tied to a black teacher's classroom door.
Figures released last year revealed that hate crimes across the country rose for three years in a row, with crimes targeting black populations being the most common.
For historians like Afua Cooper at Dalhousie University in Halifax, these phenomena are all part of the legacy of slavery in colonial Canada.
"What slavery did in Canada was it made [the concept of] race," she says. "If we are looking at one of the legacies of slavery in Canada, it made white people white and black people black. And in doing so, it created black inferiority, black subjugation, white supremacy and white hegemony that we are still living with to this day."
A number of measures casts this inequality into sharp relief. In Ontario, black women are likelier than whites to be unemployed, despite having higher levels of education. Black children are more likely to be in foster care.
----'Policing arose out of slave patrols'----
Investigations of the Toronto and Halifax police forces found that African-Canadians are stopped and searched three times more often than white Canadians.
"Black people are being surveilled and over-policed and carded at a rate that is disproportionate to other people, especially white citizens."
--Charmaine Nelson--
Some historians trace this trend back to slavery and segregation.
"Policing arose out of slave patrols," says Professor of Art History at McGill University, Charmaine Nelson. "Black people are being surveilled and over-policed and carded at a rate that is disproportionate to other people, especially white citizens."
"So we're still subjected to a heightened surveillance on the basis of our race, and where does that come from? This is slavery," she says. "How do you think they could catch fugitives, if not to have networks of people who were willing to put their necks on the line to catch people for a reward?"
A 2017 report by the United Nations Human Rights Working group called on Canada to recognize the lasting damage done by slavery and segregation.
It said these systems "lie at the core" of persistent, structural racism, which took hold in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. French settlers and white Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, received plum political posts and large land grants, and their wealth and influence passed down from generation to generation. Most of the first black people living in colonial Canada were enslaved, and even after abolition, they were landless and poor.
Post abolition it was the slave-owners, not the slaves, who were awarded compensation — for "lost property." The ramifications of both the trauma of slavery and the massive wealth gap it created have reverberated across the generations.
Campaigners demand compensation to address the deep socio-economic divide. And in early 2018, black history experts told a Senate Committee on Human Rights that the government should apologize and pay reparations to descendants of slaves. This gesture, they say, would pave the way for the kind of reconciliation that has begun with First Nations.
Canadian governments have issued apologies and compensation to LGBTQ communities, victims of Japanese internment and families affected by the Chinese Head Tax.
Ottawa has yet to respond to demands by slaves' descendants for reparations.
Host Paul Kennedy
Guests:
Afua Cooper
Brett Rushforth
Camille Turner
Charmaine Nelson
Cikiah Thomas
George Elliott Clarke
Natasha Henry
Vanessa Fells
July 05, 2018
CBC Radio - Ideas
http://www.dal.ca/faculty/arts/soci...gy/faculty-staff/our-faculty/afua-cooper.html
http://history.uoregon.edu/profile/bhru
camille turner
http://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/people-contacts/faculty/nelson
https://www.facebook.com/Global-Afrikan-Congress-International-116805252888
http://lop.parl.ca/About/Parliament/Poet/former-Poet-laureate7-e.html
Clarke
Ontario Black History - Home
| Black Loyalist Heritage Society
N.S. man guilty of hate crime in cross-burning | CBC News
N.S. couple shaken by cross burning | CBC News
UPDATE: Election signs defaced with racist graffiti on election day | The Chronicle Herald
South Shore Regional School Board deals with racially charged incidents | CBC News
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171128/dq171128d-eng.htm
A/HRC/36/60/Add.1 - E
https://sencanada.ca/en/sencaplus/news/black-history-experts-call-for-apology-reparations
(Flash Audio)
Slavery's long shadow: The impact of 200 years enslavement in Canada | CBC Radio
Canada's slavery secret: The whitewashing of 200 years of enslavement
Hiding two centuries of slavery requires some effort, and it is a collective silence that historian Afua Cooper calls the 'erasure of blackness.'
Why is it common knowledge that we saved runaway slaves from the United States, but few know that Africans and Indigenous peoples were bought, sold and exploited, right here?
In part one of a two-part series, contributor Kyle G. Brown asks how slavery was allowed to continue for some 200 years, and be one of the least talked about aspects of our history.
----The 'erasure of blackness'----
Canada's towns, parks and universities are abound with statues and street signs that have immortalized our "founding fathers." But there is no sign of the men, women and children that some of these powerful men enslaved.
Small wonder then, that many of us today are unaware that Indigenous and African peoples were forced into bondage across colonial Canada.
Hiding two centuries of slavery requires some effort, and it is a collective silence that historian Afua Cooper calls the "erasure of blackness."
There's perhaps no better symbol of erasure than an invisible cemetery.
----An invisible cemetery----
Every year the Black Coalition of Quebec organizes a grim pilgrimage to an unmarked grave. About an hour from Montreal outside the village of Saint Armand, close to a dozen slaves are said to be buried near a large whale-shaped boulder.
Little is known of the people enslaved by the Luke family — loyalists who fled the United States in the 1780s. And while the family cemetery still stands — its tombstones bent with age — their slaves left behind a trail of disappearing clues.
Ploughing these fields in the 1950s, a farmer's tractor ground to a halt — on human bones. Elsewhere, they might have been studied and carefully preserved. But these remains were tossed aside and lost.
Oral history has it that they are the bones of the Luke family slaves. This is backed by the preliminary findings of Quebec anthropologist Roland Viau.
Once pointing to these vast rolling fields was a sign that read "Negro Cemetery." It too is now gone. The sign was removed, replaced, and removed again, as though to extirpate the remnants of an embarrassing past.
Beyond the thick woods of Saint Armand, our history has been camouflaged across the country.
"Canadian slavery transpires over 200 plus years."
--Charmaine Nelson, McGill Professor of Art History--
Slavery is seldom featured in Canadian museums, except to extol the virtues of Canadians who helped runaways escaping north. The theme gets short shrift even at a museum named after the owner of at least 17 slaves: François Baby House in Windsor.
A 19th century Upper Canada official, François Baby is among hundreds of slave owners listed in the Dictionnaire des Esclaves by late historian Marcel Trudel.
Conventional texts tell at length of the swashbuckling heroes of colonial conquest, but say little of the people they colonized and enslaved.
Or they showcase the Underground Railroad — networks of activists who provided safe houses to those fleeing plantations in the American south for free states and colonial Canada, where slavery was abolished by the British Empire in 1833.
The Railroad then lasted some 30 years, succeeding a longer and less glorious era.
"Canadian slavery transpires over 200 plus years," says Charmaine Nelson, an art history professor at McGill University. "So what does it take to erase 200 years of history from the collective consciousness of a nation, but to enshrine three decades?"
----Slavery is Canada's best-kept secret----
Canada has burnished its reputation as the Railroad's central station, the saviour of runaway slaves. Generations of Canadians have grown up with the idea that slavery somehow stopped at the American border. As we hear, a surprised former prime minister never knew it happened here. Another former PM said famously that Canada has "no history of colonialism."
As Afua Cooper says, slavery is Canada's best-kept secret.
What Nelson calls our "strategic ignorance," harks all the way back to slave-owners themselves, whose selective diaries were replete with euphemisms like "servants" and extended family.
The slaves themselves were silenced. They worked so hard that they died at 20 years old or so. If ever they had time to collect their thoughts, they could scarcely record them for posterity. Masters often prohibited them from speaking their own languages. They stripped them of their original African and Indigenous names, and assigned French and English names, effectively wiping out their identity.
Now a small but growing number of scholars is unearthing court records, local registries and a host of archives to get a glimpse into the less luminous chambers of our past.
Thanks to a new generation of historians — building on the work of pioneers like James Walker and Marcel Trudel — at least part of the injurious erasure is being reversed.
----Additional note: A word on 'Canada'----
This documentary chronicles slavery as it occurred "in Canada" prior to Confederation and refers to the birthplace of Canada or colonial Canada. Since the 16th century, settlers, officials and historians have used the term "Canada" — often interchangeably with other names, from New France and British North America to Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
CBC - Ideas
Host Paul Kennedy
Guests:
Afua Cooper
Brett Rushforth
Camille Turner
Charmaine Nelson
George Elliott Clarke
Michael Farkas
June 28, 2018
CBC Radio - Ideas
https://www.dal.ca/faculty/arts/soc...gy/faculty-staff/our-faculty/afua-cooper.html
https://history.uoregon.edu/profile/bhru
camille turner
https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/people-contacts/faculty/nelson
https://lop.parl.ca/About/Parliament/Poet/former-Poet-laureate7-e.html
Clarke
http://s//moishistoiredesnoirs.com/en/mhn-2018/mot-du-president
https://liguedesnoirs.org/en
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-nigger-rock-name-change-black-coalition-1.3787740
https://www.citywindsor.ca/resident...mmunity-Museum/Pages/François-Baby-House.aspx
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionnaire-esclaves-propriétaires-français-Histoire/dp/2890458334
https://www.reuters.com/article/col...to-be-canada-insists-pm-idUSTRE58P05Z20090926
Part I of II
(Flash Audio)
Canada's slavery secret: The whitewashing of 200 years of enslavement | CBC Radio
Part II of II
Slavery's long shadow: The impact of 200 years enslavement in Canada
Is there a connection between the enslavement of African-Canadians and their overwhelming presence in the criminal justice system today? The United Nations has sounded the alarm on anti-black racism in Canada, stating it can be traced back to slavery and its legacy. In Part 2 of this series on slavery in colonial Canada, Kyle G. Brown explores the long-lasting ramifications of one of humanity's most iniquitous institutions.
For years, activists have been demanding reparations for centuries of injustice — which they say didn't end with abolition.
----The many faces of racism----
From racial slurs to microaggressions, racism remains entrenched in Canadian society, and its root cause may reach further back than we think.
In Nova Scotia alone in recent years, there has been a cross-burning on the lawn of a mixed race couple, racist graffiti on the campaign signs of minority candidates in provincial elections and a noose tied to a black teacher's classroom door.
Figures released last year revealed that hate crimes across the country rose for three years in a row, with crimes targeting black populations being the most common.
For historians like Afua Cooper at Dalhousie University in Halifax, these phenomena are all part of the legacy of slavery in colonial Canada.
"What slavery did in Canada was it made [the concept of] race," she says. "If we are looking at one of the legacies of slavery in Canada, it made white people white and black people black. And in doing so, it created black inferiority, black subjugation, white supremacy and white hegemony that we are still living with to this day."
A number of measures casts this inequality into sharp relief. In Ontario, black women are likelier than whites to be unemployed, despite having higher levels of education. Black children are more likely to be in foster care.
----'Policing arose out of slave patrols'----
Investigations of the Toronto and Halifax police forces found that African-Canadians are stopped and searched three times more often than white Canadians.
"Black people are being surveilled and over-policed and carded at a rate that is disproportionate to other people, especially white citizens."
--Charmaine Nelson--
Some historians trace this trend back to slavery and segregation.
"Policing arose out of slave patrols," says Professor of Art History at McGill University, Charmaine Nelson. "Black people are being surveilled and over-policed and carded at a rate that is disproportionate to other people, especially white citizens."
"So we're still subjected to a heightened surveillance on the basis of our race, and where does that come from? This is slavery," she says. "How do you think they could catch fugitives, if not to have networks of people who were willing to put their necks on the line to catch people for a reward?"
A 2017 report by the United Nations Human Rights Working group called on Canada to recognize the lasting damage done by slavery and segregation.
It said these systems "lie at the core" of persistent, structural racism, which took hold in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. French settlers and white Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, received plum political posts and large land grants, and their wealth and influence passed down from generation to generation. Most of the first black people living in colonial Canada were enslaved, and even after abolition, they were landless and poor.
Post abolition it was the slave-owners, not the slaves, who were awarded compensation — for "lost property." The ramifications of both the trauma of slavery and the massive wealth gap it created have reverberated across the generations.
Campaigners demand compensation to address the deep socio-economic divide. And in early 2018, black history experts told a Senate Committee on Human Rights that the government should apologize and pay reparations to descendants of slaves. This gesture, they say, would pave the way for the kind of reconciliation that has begun with First Nations.
Canadian governments have issued apologies and compensation to LGBTQ communities, victims of Japanese internment and families affected by the Chinese Head Tax.
Ottawa has yet to respond to demands by slaves' descendants for reparations.
Host Paul Kennedy
Guests:
Afua Cooper
Brett Rushforth
Camille Turner
Charmaine Nelson
Cikiah Thomas
George Elliott Clarke
Natasha Henry
Vanessa Fells
July 05, 2018
CBC Radio - Ideas
http://www.dal.ca/faculty/arts/soci...gy/faculty-staff/our-faculty/afua-cooper.html
http://history.uoregon.edu/profile/bhru
camille turner
http://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/people-contacts/faculty/nelson
https://www.facebook.com/Global-Afrikan-Congress-International-116805252888
http://lop.parl.ca/About/Parliament/Poet/former-Poet-laureate7-e.html
Clarke
Ontario Black History - Home
| Black Loyalist Heritage Society
N.S. man guilty of hate crime in cross-burning | CBC News
N.S. couple shaken by cross burning | CBC News
UPDATE: Election signs defaced with racist graffiti on election day | The Chronicle Herald
South Shore Regional School Board deals with racially charged incidents | CBC News
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171128/dq171128d-eng.htm
A/HRC/36/60/Add.1 - E
https://sencanada.ca/en/sencaplus/news/black-history-experts-call-for-apology-reparations
(Flash Audio)
Slavery's long shadow: The impact of 200 years enslavement in Canada | CBC Radio
