Excavation: Here, We Are Here
Excavation: Here, We Are Here, is the fourth iteration of an organic multi-media installation first titled Excavation: A Site of Memory, when originally mounted at the Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax in 2013. It uses a personal and collective frame within which to view and explore the complex, linked concepts of memory, place and history in the African Nova Scotian community. It includes wall texts, still images, physical objects, memorabilia and audio-video elements. The exhibit evolves and changes as it is mounted at different sites. When installed at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in 2014, elements related to the Black Refugees of the War of 1812, were incorporated. The 2015 iteration at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario, integrated artifacts from the Buxton Historical Site and Museum. Buxton was established in 1849 as a haven for those fleeing slavery in the United States.
This fourth iteration at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, the first non-gallery/museum to host this project, features new work that considers laws and covenants and their relationship to African descended people in Nova Scotia and Canada. It is timed to coincide with the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) as declared by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who in announcing the decade said: “We must remember that people of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education." This announcement builds on the UN General Assembly Resolution 62/122 (17 December 2007) that declared March 25, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TAST). A day marked for annual observance.
Historians report that 15 million women, men and children were trafficked over a 400-year period during the TSAT. The population of Moscow, Russia is 15.5 million; Los Angeles, USA,14.9; Zambia,15; Cambodia, 15.4. Half of Canada's population is 17.7 million. The UN estimates that there are about 200 million people in the Americas who self-identify as being of African descent; millions more live in many regions of the world beyond the African continent.
What does all of this have to do with Nova Scotia, Canada's Ocean Playground?
Everything.
Nova Scotia’s historic African descended population is linked across borders and time to people in West Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States because of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It is our legacy.
The Evidence:
On March 18,1898, Nova Scotian historian T. Watson. Smith, D.D., presented a paper titled, "The Slave In Canada" to the Nova Scotia Historical Society. His preface makes his intent clear. This is
"...an attempt to supply a missing chapter in Canadian history — a sombre and unattractive chapter, it may be, but necessary nevertheless to the completeness of our records. If instances given seem too numerous, it must be remembered that the scepticism of many of the best informed Provincials as to the presence at any time of Negro slaves on the soil of Canada has challenged the production, on the part of the author, of more repeated facts than he would otherwise have deemed necessary."
This vital, foundational text was published the next year as Volume X of the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society For The Years 1896-1898.
Historian Marcel Trudel, a noted authority on the history of New France, wrote L’Esclavage au Canada Français: Histoire et conditions de l’esclavage, which was published by Les Presses Universitaires Laval in 1960. He uncovered evidence of enslaved Indigenous and African peoples in New France. In 2013, it was translated by author and journalist George Tombs and published by Véhicule Press under the title, Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage.
My Testimony
Smith and Trudel provide the documentary evidence and history I did not learn in high school, a time when student councils held 'slave auctions' as fund-raisers. Students bid on and 'bought' another student who would be their 'slave'—carry books, buy lunch, or carry out other tasks at the owner's bidding. University was no better; slavery in Canada was apparently not on the record, yet I lived in the shadow of its inheritance.
During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815) thousands of enslaved African people became Freedom Runners, my preferred term: at great risk, they escaped from plantations in a quest for freedom. During both periods, thousands, known as the Black Loyalists and the Black Refugees, sailed to Nova Scotia. They laid down tenacious roots here.
I am their witness.
My ancestors were part of the migration of 2000 Black Refugees from the War of 1812; although they were subjects of the British Crown, government officials, including the Lieutenant Governor, and the wider public, did not welcome them into the British colony of Nova Scotia. George Ramsey, the 9th Earl of Dalhousie, who was the Lieutenant Governor from 1816 to 1820, held them in contempt.
The Black Refugees were people with courage, feelings, imagination and great ingenuity. They had to be ingenious in order to survive. They had agency, a sense of themselves, and something beyond themselves. This installation stands in opposition to the paternalism and racism that tried to shape their experiences and their identity. It stands in opposition to the language used at the time to describe African people. I remind myself: they were not the language. They were people.
Historian H. Amani Whitfield writes that while Lord Dalhousie set up plans to remove the Black Refugees, he had no firm idea of where he would send them, perhaps to the West Indies, or to the West Coast of Africa. He explains that
"Dalhousie even wanted to enter into a treaty with the United States, as 'it would be most desirable to restore {the Refugees} to their masters in America.' " Dalhousie's many efforts were largely unsuccessful; only 95 people took up his offer to re-locate to Trinidad in 1821. (Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees of British North America 1815-1860, 2006, p 59-60) He underestimated their will, their steadfast desire for freedom and their determination not to be re-enslaved.
This work talks back to and asks questions of the historical record and its legacies. It is underpinned by ideas of resistance, resilience and defiance as evidenced in the lives of African people in this place. We were here. We are here. And I am here, because they were here.
In Here We Are Here, I engage three overarching legal documents that are part of our Canadian historical legacy: the 1833 Act to Abolish Slavery in the British Empire; the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); and the Constitution Act, 1982, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The latter came into effect during my lifetime, while the two previous in the lifetimes of my parents and great, great grandparents. The 1833 Act and the Charter appear as annotated wall texts while the UDHR is found in the video projection I Am A Witness.
I am thinking about their meaning and significance for me and other African descended people. How do we understand them as they are thrown in stark relief against our lived experiences in this second decade of the New Millennium? How do we think about, and relate to them as fundamental tenets of our democracy? Is it safe to take them for granted as others might? Do the rights apply to us?
Here we are here. I am who they imagined.