This event occurred on October 14th 2020, as an Anchor project of Nocturne Halifax.

Meeting Waters: Cross-Cultural Collaborations on Environmental Racism with Ingrid Waldron was an online event centering Black and Indigenous solidarity through cross-cultural exchanges on environmental racism in Mi’kma’ki. Speakers and performers were brought together to share stories and experiences of environmental racism through storytelling, dance, spoken word, song, and graphic art. Collaborators describe their experience and presented their original creation in the form of a Zoom event followed by a panel discussion presented in partnership with Visual Arts Nova Scotia.

Featuring collaborations:
Africville – Irvine Carvery and Rebecca Thomas
Pictou Landing First Nation – Michelle Francis-Denny and Kwento
Sipekne’katik – Dorene Bernard and Liliona Quarmyne
Shelburne – Vanessa Hartley and Leelee Oluwatoysi Eko David
Design and graphic recording by Bria Miller

With support from Lindsay Dobbin & I’thandi Munro.

0:11 LINDSAY CORY

Kwé and Hello. Welcome to Meeting Waters: Cross Cultural Collaborations on Environmental Racism. My name is Lindsay Cory, I’m the director of Nocturne and before we begin I would like to acknowledge that I am an uninvited guest to K’jipuktuk here in Mi’kma’ki. While this event is taking place virtually the Nocturne: Art at Night festival takes place in K’jipuktuk, the ancestral and unceded lands of the Mi’kmaq people. This land, and the waters that surround it, are covered by the Peace and Friendship Treaties signed between the British Crown and the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy peoples in 1725 to 1779. The 1752 rendition of that treaty is what governs K’jipuktuk, where I am coming from today. We are all treaty people. That means that we have a shared responsibility to uphold the agreements laid out in those treaties. Furthermore, we have a responsibility to stand in solidarity when those treaty rights are in question.

I also want to acknowledge the significant foundations in infrastructure and culture that Black and African Nova Scotian communities have played in building this province and country. Nocturne stands with Mi’kmaq grandmothers, land and water protectors, and social justice seekers. As I learn more about this place I am committed to using my platform through Nocturne to amplify, connect and collaborate with the many art communities that live and work here in Mi’kma’ki.

Nocturne is also dedicated to providing safer spaces at our events and gatherings – even the virtual ones. Our aim is to host spaces that are widely accessible, amplify marginalized voices and leadership, and actively prioritize anti oppressive principles wherever we can. That said, we can’t promise a totally safe space for all tonight. If you are experiencing any difficulty or need support, you can reach out directly to me in the chat and my name is Lindsay Cory again.

We also have a technical support assistant you can access and their name in the chat is TECH SUPPORT. You can message them directly if you are having issues connecting and they can try to help. If you can’t find TECH SUPPORT, then message me and I’ll try to help you as best as I can. We are also very grateful to Karen Staples and Ayoka Junaid, our ASL interpreters, for their work this evening and prior to in preparation for this event. Let us know if there is anything else we can do to make your access to this event more barrier free. Where possible we’ll be adding text to the projects that you’ll be witnessing tonight in the chat so you can access those, all. If you want to move your chat to the side of your screen for better viewing you can do so by turning off your fullscreen if you’re using a desktop and that should move it to the side for you. If you’re looking for the chat button it’s right at the bottom in your toolbar.

Your host tonight is Dr. Ingrid Waldron. Ingrid is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University, the Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities, and Community Health and the director of The ENRICH Project. Her research, teaching, and community leadership and advocacy work in Nova Scotia are examining and addressing the health and mental health impacts of structural inequalities within health and mental health care, child welfare, and the environment in Indigenous, Black, immigrant, and refugee communities. I wanted to thank Ingrid for her leadership in this project and her guidance throughout the whole process.

Lastly, I’d like to thank our curator, Lindsay Dobbin who collaborated with Ingrid to conjure up this expansive project. I also want to thank our project coordinator, I’thandi Munro, who has been a dedicated collaborator throughout the process. Each of the speakers you will hear from tonight will be introduced by Ingrid and they have brought so much grounding and passion to the process. I really just want to thank you all for working through this with us.. And with that, I am very pleased to welcome you to Meeting Waters: Cross Cultural Collaborations on Environmental Racism. I’ll pass it over to Ingrid.

5:20 INGRID WALDRON:

Good Evening everyone. I would like to welcome you to Meeting Waters: Cross-Cultural Collaborations on Environmental Racism.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Mi’kmaq peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations. We acknowledge this land not only in thanks to the Indigenous communities who have held relationship with this land for generations but also in recognition of the historical and ongoing legacy of colonialism.

The collaborative pieces between speakers and performers that you will see this evening ask an important question: How do we forge meaningful relationships and build solidarities across differences by listening and through self-reflection to create the necessary partnerships that allow us to challenge environmental racism and other land-based struggles that have harmed the land, our communities, and our well-being?

Over the next hour and half, we will centre Indigenous and Black solidarities through cross-cultural exchanges on environmental racism in Mi’kma’ki.

We bring together speakers and performers to share stories and experiences of environmental racism and other land-based struggles in Mi’kma’ki through storytelling, dance, spoken word, song, multimedia performances, and graphic art in four communities. These communities are: Africville, Pictou Landing First Nation, Sipekne’katik First Nation, and Shelburne.

Let’s begin with Africville. Irvine Carvery was born in Africville to a large family who were landowners and community leaders. He was the President of the Africville Genealogy Society. Under Carvery’s term, the Africville community received an apology from the city of Halifax for the razing of the area in the 1960s. The Africville church was also rebuilt.

Rebecca Thomas is an award-winning Mi’kmaw poet. She is Halifax’s former Poet Laureate (from 2016 to 2018) and has been published in multiple journals and magazines. I’m Finding My Talk is her first book. For Thomas, a Mi’kmaw woman whose father is a residential school survivor, poetry has served as a powerful tool for educating about the racism and the inequality that still haunts many Indigenous peoples in Canada. She has two books slated to be released in the fall of 2020.

I will read their piece. Their piece is called The Planning of Environmental Racism in Africville. This is a collaborative piece by Irvine and Rebecca. A fertilizer plant and city dump are just two examples of how the city of Halifax took the most harmful and unwanted pieces of infrastructure and placed them next to the vibrant community of Africville in a long legacy of environmental racism in Nova Scotia. From the chemical with water sprayed on the unpaved roads of the community to the unsafe levels of soil toxicity in 2020 from that very water, this legacy is one of Canada’s ugliest. However, the spirit of Africville lives on, its former residents and its descendants also live on. Irvine and Rebecca will deliver an oral history of and spoken word piece on Africville respectively. Welcome Irvine and Rebecca.

10:24 REBECCA THOMAS:

Hello, thank you for having me.

10:27 IRVINE CARVERY:
It’s a pleasure to be here indeed. Rebecca and I have worked together on this and I’ve agreed to go first. First of all I want to acknowledge the ongoing struggle of my brothers and sisters in the Mi’kmaq community. Tonight as we speak, they are exercising their rights for self government in declaring their own fishery and the establishment continued to deny their rights. We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters. It’s going to be a long struggle, but we will stay in the struggle with them, until self governance has been fully achieved by my brothers and sisters. The topic of Africville environmental racism and the reason why we use the title ‘The Planning of Environmental Racism’ is because that’s exactly what it was. In the mid 19^th Century, <inaudible> of slavery, there began a new type of discrimination and it was called scientific racism in which science was used to downgrade people of African descent to be less than white people. Planning became the focus point for, or it should have been the focus point for, the betterment of lives of people in Halifax in planning institutions, play spaces, recreational spaces. But because of this scientific racism, Africville was not considered to be important enough – or we were not considered to be on the same par as white people here in Halifax – so when planning for the unwanted services for the greater society, the placement of those services was put in and around Africville. Beginning in 1870, with the siting of an infectious disease hospital directly above Africville with its sewer line running down to the shores of the Bedford Basin in Africville, emptying at the high water mark. That was the beginning. The railroad went through Africville, dividing our community and taking our land, and all of the smoke and the filth coming from the railroad going through your community was inflicted upon the people of Africville. Slaughter plants. Fertilizer plants. And we know fertilizer is detrimental to the environment, all we have to do is look at the bombing with fertilizer being used as an explosive. There was a quarry built in and around Africville. The dumping of human waste was done above Africville, in Africville I say. All of these unwanted services for the city of Halifax, by the planning department, the planning department looked in their planning to better the lives of the citizens of Halifax. The planning department looked around the city of Halifax and many locations were rejected because of health concerns. Those same concerns were not afforded the people of Africville. They were placed in Africville. 1950. 1955. The city of Halifax had to relocate its open dump and again, once again, sites were looked at and rejected because of health concerns. That dump was placed in Africville 300 yards from the nearest home in Africville. People in Africville became sick from that dump. People from Africville died because of that dump. All of the toxic waste in Halifax, waste coming from not just residential areas but all of the industries, all of the hospitals, was dumped on that site 300 yards from the nearest home in Africville. My oldest brother was killed by a truck going to that dump in Africville. He was 12 years old. If the dump wasn’t there, my brother may still be alive today. Poison was brought to the dump in Africville and given to the men who worked on the dump. Those men took that poison home and mixed it with their seed beer and three of them died because it was poison. There was an inquiry held as to found out what happened. The inquiry concluded that it was not the makers of the poison who was at blame, it was not the deliverers who was to blame, but instead it was the victims who were to blame because there was a bylaw in Halifax that stated that people were not allowed on the dump. That was the findings of the inquiry. We’re talking about the 1960s, we’re not talking about the 1700s or the 1800s, we’re talking about the 1960s. You see, we as people of African descent in this city have always been treated as lesser than. The destruction of our community began, or the planning of the destruction of our community began, in 1915. Not in 1960 when they came in and destroyed it, but in 1915 with the planning of the destruction of our community. But it was not enacted until the 1960s. So we had to live with all of this industrial waste, all of this pollution. Ingrid in introducing us talked about the road systems in Africville. Where the pavement ended, Africville began. And they used to come out in the summer time to spray down the roads to keep the dust down. They sprayed it with some kind of a mixture. Now we’re talking about the 1960s. We did an environmental study in 2010 to find out if the land was environmentally friendly, and in 2010 the remnants of that poison that was poured on our roads was still present to the point that it was recommended that no one live there over a 24 hour period because the land was still polluted. That’s what we had to put up with. And the reason why? Because they didn’t see us as equal. We were less than. We were no longer slaves, but we were still treated as slaves, as chattel. We were disposable. Our land was disposable. The city of Halifax and their planning department felt that our land was underutilized, so therefore the value in the land wasn’t there for the city of Halifax, so they had to get us out of there so that they could get the true value of that land for the coffers in the city of Halifax. But still, the land sits empty and it will still stand empty until it is returned to the people of Africville. Thank you very much.

19:30 REBECCA THOMAS:

We’lalin, and thank you so much, Irvine, for that, and I hope that my poem honours what you said, honours you, and honours the descendants of Africville. So with that, I’ll begin.

This is isn’t my story.

But I’ve been placed in a position.

I have the honour to tell it.

And I implore that you listen.

This isn’t my story.

But I feel a connection.

Don’t miss this chance to be taught a lesson.

It’s about resilience and lineage.

Unbroken by those born into privilege.

Let’s set the scene.

Paint a picture of a little place, east on the continental map.

Where we have a vibrant Black community and city council fat cats.

Because of their Loyalty to the crown,

Because their melanin was on the other side of brown,

Because they had escaped to freedom and would never go back.

Because they were Black,

The city of Halifax planned it’s attack.

In order to control a race,

You need to control a space.

And control the space they did.

They began by denying services.

They viewed the community as nothing but squatters.

The year the Baptist church went up, the mayor of the time went on to found Halifax Water.

Ensuring Halifax residents a safe drinking supply was the mission,

For this newly established commission.

Who wilfully ignored the Campbell Road Settlement’s petitions.

If only running water was the soul denial.

But Halifax had plans that were much more vile.

A railway bisected Africville’s streets.

Who was responsible?

Raise a glass for the Mayor of the time, Mr. Alexander Keith.

Next came the hospital full of infectious disease.

That filled the community with a sense of unease.

Then a prison to overlook the residents.

That left a correctional legacy rooted in prejudice.

Where decedents are carded and harassed

Because their homes were razed from the grass.

With Africville continuing to grow,

The city calculated it’s next blow.

While toxic chemicals were sprayed on the unpaved streets,

Children followed along on their bikes at top speed.

Into the earth those chemicals leached.

In 2020 can still cause disease.

Decision after decision,

Cut the teeth of politicians,

These transgressions were targeted,

The harm was marketed,

As though it were benevolent help.

Toasted with water from poisoned wells.

This was methodical.

This was logical.

It’s a matter of historical fact!

The evidence is stacked.

They went from self-sufficiency to government dependency.

A people’s humanity was reduced to policy.

White council members voted no on Black survival,

A throwback reference with modern day revival.

Sewer pits and a slaughterhouse

A city dump and future freeway routes.

No amount of engineering could bridge the gap

Between was what taken and what can never be given back.

Their taxes paid for the garbage trucks that moved them.

To where white neighbours angrily refused them.

Broken promises of relocation funds.

Calling their home the city’s worst slum.

Halifax thought they were nothing but weeds.

And it might of damaged the tree when it cut off the leaves,

But Black roots are known to grow deep.

Whole communities sprung forth from the scattered seeds.

No amount of racism could quell the uprising,

At this point, Black success shouldn’t be surprising.

Because Halifax poisoned, destroyed, isolated and denied everything they could.

But the spirit of Africville lives on in neighbourhoods.

The square and the park are full of laughter.

Descendants are writing the next chapter.

Through professing and politics.

In their athletics and kinetics.

Speaking their truth in Scripture.

Blowing minds in art and literature.

Are you now finally getting the picture?

You can move the people and take away their things.

And I’ll point to 1000 examples of how they were and will always be amazing.

But this isn’t my story

And even though there are tales of glory

Of success and triumph,

We can never forget what was done.

To a community that committed no crime.

Whose land was eroded, taken and razed over time.

This isn’t my story but I’ve been asked to tell it.

About a community whose descendants will never forget it.

The colonial beast may have sharpened it’s teeth on our hides.

But from an L’nu to a Scotian, I see that twinkle in your eye.

Because we wrote the books on how to survive.

Then delivered a masterclass on how to thrive.

So from the pen of a Mi’kmaw poet, I put forth a motion.

That Africville be remembered and paid it’s due by every single Nova Scotian.

Thank you. I hope you liked that, Irvine.

24:08 IRVINE CARVERY:

Oh my God. You’ve got to send that to me. That is <inaudible>. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

24:16 REBECCA THOMAS:

We’lalin. Thank you so much.

24:18 IRVINE CARVERY:

We’lalin.

24:19 INGRID WALDRON:

Wow. Thank you, Irvine and Rebecca, that was wonderful. So let’s move on to Pictou Landing First Nation.

Michelle Francis-Denny is the Community Liaison with Boat Harbour Remediation Project but first and foremost she is a Pictou Landing First Nation community member. Pictou Landing First Nation has suffered from decades of pollution and most recently worked with various allies to pressure the Nova Scotia government to pass the Boat Harbour Act, which put an end to the Northern Pulp mill in Pictou County using Boat Harbour as an effluent treatment facility.

With a unique sound crossing Neo Soul and Experimental R&B, singer-songwriter Kwento embodies empowerment through presenting an honest ode to her femininity and Afrocentricity. Kwento receives the energy of her audiences and returns it tenfold – through her soulful vocals, effortless performances and vibrant aura. As her talents take her across the globe, Kwento is collaborating with producers in South Africa, writers in Germany and musicians and producers in Toronto and will release her second EP entitled ‘abbrv.’ (abbreviation) this year. 

Kwento and Michelle’s piece is titled Purple Tides. Purple Tides is a presentation about the community members of Pictou Landing First Nation who have fought tirelessly for more than 5 decades to stop toxic pulp mill effluent from being dumped into their backyard. One of the major visual impacts of the mill operations since it began in 1967, was the presence of foamy effluent washing up on the once pristine beach turning the tides purple. Boat Harbour or A’se’k (the other room) the elders called it, was no longer a place they could rely on for their resources and a void was created in the lives of community members. The Boat Harbour act ordered the effluent treatment facility to close in January 2020 and a new chapter began. Michelle and Kwento have come together to highlight the depth of the impact of this atrocity. Through a speech and a performance of an original song, they will shed light on the healing journey ahead for the community. Welcome Michelle and Kwento.

28:02 MICHELLE FRANCIS-DENNY:

I want to thank you so much for inviting Kwento and I to collaborate on this project for this very worthwhile event. It’s going to be an amazing week. I’m a very proud member of Pictou Landing First Nation and it just so happens that my very personal ancestral connection to the Boat Harbour crisis was highlighted in the film There’s Something In the Water. Our community is very proud to have had this story elevated on such a level that it has resonated with people all over the world and we’re able to help bring awareness to environmental racism. It’s very important for me to acknowledge that every single person in our community and our leaders, those that are here now and those who have passed, each have a story and every single one of those stories matter. Our stories are each a little bit different but connected by the fibres of our being and our strong sense of community. We’re bound by our resilience and our bodies are filled with ranges of valid emotions and trauma. The pulp and paper waste treatment facility has definitely impacted us and those impacts run exceedingly deep. As you can tell in the film, our elders tell many stories and they talk about how the impacts of 1967 were immediate. And how fish immediately died and washed up on the banks and the water turned brown and the stench in the air where, even if you were to venture inside, you couldn’t escape from it. The chemicals in the air and the elders talk about the houses, the paint on the houses, turning black. You think about all those things, but you really need to think about what lies beneath the surface of what you can see. How much anger and sorrow and resentment and sadness our elders must have felt to witness that and how they carry that with them through their lives. The inter-generational impacts that are being carried on. The loss of our Mi’kmaq culture and our pride essentially being washed away with those purple tides. It is quite upsetting how the water authority was very intentful in provincial government. They knew exactly what they were doing. Preying on a vulnerable and marginalized group, using such lies and deceit. Our leaders fought for this case of environmental racism to be recognized, just to be seen, and corrected for many decades. To tell you the truth, the last five years have been a true testament to our strength. Being tossed into this whirlwind and we’re still suffering the effects, but in the pursuit of environmental and social justice it was well worth it. This year, in 2020, we’re finally able to rejoice and celebrate with the closure of the effluent treatment facility that was piped across Indian Cross Point and right into our back yard at Boat Harbour which the elders once called A’se’k. I think about the lengthy battle that’s coming to an end and after the dust settles, a solemn battle within ourselves and within our community needs to be recognized because something new is beginning. Now we’re being tasked with creating a new legacy and a new beginning for future generations. So we look ahead, we talk about our healing journeys a lot, but we’re reminded of the medicine wheel. As Indigenous people we want to strive to achieve balance in our lives and we want to heal from the trauma we’ve endured. So we think about the physical, the spiritual, the mental, and the emotional well-being, but there’s still uncertainty for us that’s in the back of our minds. So we’re not so certain what the way forward is. So many questions alone. I’ve heard from the community: ‘What does healing look like? How am I supposed to feel? Will the fish come back? Who will teach me to hunt?’ We’ve lost that skill, in some sense of passing it down to our generations. ‘Will I be able to dip my toe in the water without fear? Who can I trust?’ Only time will tell.

33:27 KWENTO’S PRESENTATION:
Waves of change keep growing

Crashing on the surface, level still

Rivers of pain keep flowing

From the corners of the Earth and into our veins

These waters, they know us by name

They know why we came, they have all the answers

We’re learning, learning to swim

Teach us to swim, we’re learning to swim

Beyond the purple tide, beneath the ocean floor

After the battle we, after the battle we find, we still find

We still find

Hear them say, we’re finished

No mountains left to climb

Where is our beginning?

Running out of time

These waters, they know us by name

They know why we came, they have all the answers

We’re learning, learning to swim

Teach us to swim, we’re learning to swim

Beyond the purple tide, beneath the ocean floor

After the battle we, after the battle we find, we still find

Beyond the purple tide, beneath the ocean floor

After the battle we, after the battle we find, we still find

37:18 INGRID WALDRON:

Beautiful. This was really a great idea to do this event! Really great. Thank you, Michelle and Kwento. So let’s move on to Sipekne’katik First Nation.

Dorene Bernard is a Grassroots Grandmother, from the Sipekne’katik Band in Mi’kmak’i. She is a Water Protector, a Water Walker, and Survivor of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. Her background is in Aboriginal Social Work where she worked for 20 years in Child Welfare and Community Support for Residential School Survivors. She was the Coady International Institute Chair in Social Justice in 2017, sharing her teachings on Environmental Racism, Climate Change, Residential School legacy, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and Water teachings. She has been inspired and was mentored by the late Grandmother Josephine Mandamin, Mother Earth Water Walker.

With an eclectic background that has taken her through many performance styles on four different continents, Liliona Quarmyne is a dancer, actor, singer, community organizer, and activist. She performs across Canada and internationally, creates original works as an independent artist, facilitates community programming, and is the Artistic Director of Kinetic Studio. Liliona sees her body as a link to past and to future generations. Her scope of work is broad but is particularly focused on the relationship between art and social justice, on the body’s ability to carry ancestral memory, and on the role the performing arts can play in creating change. Welcome Dorene and Liliona.

39:55 LILIONA QUARMYNE:

Good evening everyone. Before I introduce our piece, I just want to give deep gratitude to Doreen as she joins us tonight from the front lines at Saulnierville and to acknowledge the incredible heart and care she has put into creating this piece as she has been fighting on the front lines. We’lalin Doreen.

Our piece, part teach-in, part dance, part offering, and part prayer. This performance piece touches on Alton Gas and the establishment of the Mi’kmaq Treaty Rights-Based Fisheries. Drawing on the Peace and Friendship Treaties, this piece will share the ways in which the actions of corporations and large commercial fisheries contradict our collective responsibility to live as treaty people.

42:52 LILIONA QUARMYNE & DORENE BERNARD’S PRESENTATION:
<Speaking/greets in L’nu language> My spirit name is <Introducing self in L’nu language>. My name’s Dorene Bernard, I’m from Sipekne’katik, <Introducing clan in L’nu language> clan and Mi’kmaq. In our teachings, water is life. We were given a gift, to bring life forward, to carry life in the womb, surrounded by water. The water is our first world. We can breathe the water, drink the water, we are the water. When we’re born, we come through the water. The water hears our dreams, hears our thoughts. The water is alive, it’s a spirit, it is our first medicine. With that gift, we’ve been given that sacred responsibility to take care of the water. We’re here to protect the sacred, not only for us, but for our future generations. I would like to see more people have a relationship with the water. Tell the water ‘I love you, I thank you, I respect you.’ Water is life. Our Peace and Friendship Treaties, they are a covenant chain of treaties that took decades to be ratified. And at that time in the 1700s we travelled throughout America, throughout Mi’kmak’i, to tell the people, to consult the people, to tell them that these treaties lived. So it did take years, because we travelled by canoe, we travelled by water, we travelled over land, walking the land. Many people look at our treaties as separate, but they’re all one continuous treaty. <inaudible> our own fishery where moderate livelihood <inaudible> use our lands and resources for the good of our people and to implement those into law. We have treaty rights and we are going to assert those rights. We are all treaty people. What does that mean? That means that we are living here together. This is our land. We share our land with you. And it means that you have a responsibility too. Standing on the shore, <inaudible> leave the wharf. Surrounded by hundreds of non-Native boats. <inaudible> I have such a deep pain in my heart. Our boats that went out there among those hundreds of fisherman, with big big boats compared to ours. And how they chased them and surrounded them and intimidated them. Many turned around and hauled all of our traps out of the water. We knew we had to do something about that. Called DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the RCMP looked on and did nothing. <inaudible> They said it was too dangerous for them to be on the water, that says a lot about how much control they had over non-Native fisherman. Using their boats in a dangerous way, stealing gear, doing all the things that break the laws of the fishery. Not only for DFO regulations about also their own unspoken laws: you never touch another person’s gear. It’s not about conservation, it’s not about fishing in a different season. This was only racism. Them thinking they have ownership of the fishery and these are their waters and these are their fish and we were interfering with that. They just came out from everywhere. We know that racism is alive and well. It’s systemic racism, it’s not just in the fishing industry, and it’s not just the corporations. Alton Gas, but also gold mines and the mining that they want to do coming into our communities, on our lands, on our territory, that want to do business and bypass the consultation <inaudible> informed consent of the Indigenous peoples. But it’s also in the health system, the justice system. Pretty ingrained in Canadian society. We’ve lost decades of history. This isn’t something that I learned in residential schools. This isn’t something my parents or grandparents learned in residential schools. We are living this education. We are living this history. Many fisherman and those families down there, really don’t have the education on our rights as the Mi’kmaq people. Many people were educated during those three weeks, for sure. I know they read the treaties. I know they were looking for what these meant. So it was really something that was long needed, maybe this was a wake up call for them as well. As we were asserting our treaty rights they were trying to figure out what those rights are. And it’s important, really important, that these teachings about our treaties are taught in the schools. Taught in the governments and the organizations. It’s very important that people embrace the meaning of what it means to be a treaty people. We have a lot of catching up to do and a lot of healing of relationships because our treaties have not been implemented and it’s the government that has stopped those things from happening. And now we are implementing, we are serving our treaty rights, we are just doing what needs to be done, for the good of our people the Mi’kmaq and the Wabanaki people who are represented in those treaties. We are unified now to implement those treaties with our laws, with our governance, and not just rely on the Canadian government to define what it means. We need everyone to look at the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People and the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action. The UN Declaration is in thirteen of those ninety-four calls to action. The government has the blueprint, has a foundation, in those documents, to also implement those treaty rights into law and that’s what needs to be done. That’s where we are today. We are at this place in 2020, there is no turning back. We only can go forward and we’d like to go forward together. 2020 is the year of change and it’s going to be for the better.

52:27 INGRID WALDRON

Thank you, Dorene and Liliona for that beautiful piece called Salt Fish. Incredible. Let’s move toShelburne.

Vanessa Hartley is an 8th generation Black Loyalist descendant from Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Currently, she works for Shelburne Association Supporting Inclusion (SASI) as a Community Support Worker. She recently completed her diploma in Social Services and is currently working on community development presentations, programming, and other projects for African Nova Scotians in Shelburne. Vanessa also sits on the board of the South End Environmental Injustice Society (SEED) in Shelburne.

Leelee Oluwastoyosi Eko Davis is of Nigerian, Trinidadian, and French descent. They are a disabled, genderqueer intermedia artist. They are from Treaty One Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Leelee also works as a program designer, facilitator, and consultant in the field of Social Innovation and Adaptive Change. Welcome, Vanessa and Leelee to present their piece.

54:21 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Ingrid for the vision of this work coming together in the way that it has. Yeah, feeling really very blessed. Our piece today we’re sharing with you, Vanessa Hartley and myself, is called . It examines environmental violence that’s afflicting the Black rural communities of Shelburne. The impacts that environmental racism is having as demonstrated here is very real and is very tangible and very urgent. Shelburne’s rich history illustrates the systemic barriers that the community has faced and continues to face today. We, Vanessa and I, have asked ourselves: can these trials be overcome? How can resolution and faith carry us through these continual acts of violence? Where can we go to find solace in these turbulent times? We are sharing this through storytelling, film, sound, and movement, and we’re just going to take some time with these questions. That was our intention with this and not because we think we’ll find answers, but as a means to engage our spirits and our continued liberation in this powerful, powerful way that we are here together. Black, Indigenous, solidarity, liberation, sovereignty, together. Thank you. Hope you enjoy.

56:22 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS & VANESSA HARTLEY’S PRESENTATION:

Affliction

Affliction

Affliction

Afflictions

Afflictions that cut so deep, it harms the generations ahead

Afflictions that cut so deep, it harms the generations ahead

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Speaking up to disrupt the cycle

Of inter-generational trauma

You said get over it

Environmental racism

Environmental racism

Environmental racism

Environmental racism

Environmental racism

We want water that won’t kill us

Your response, is to stop using the race card

We protest, speak, and fight in hopes to gain respect and equality

These afflictions that cut so deep

These afflictions that cut so deep

These afflictions that cut so deep

These afflictions that cut so deep

Our Black community is located in the South End of Shelburne.

Historically many loyalists settled within town limits along the waterfront.

Black loyalists would soon join and live within the outskirts of Shelburne.

Shelburne is where the first race riot within North America would happen.

Riots lasting up to 30 days. Homes, churches and everything else was burnt.

Black loyalists would then settle outside of Shelburne on the outskirts as well within

Birchtown and South End.

From the beginning our community was displaced and marginalized.

Our problems all start from historical presence.

We need to evaluate Shelburne as we still have many systemic barriers that our people are facing.

Shelburne creates these afflictions that run so deep within our history.

How can we establish our land?

When is this toxic inequality depreciating the value of our homes?

Dispense asbestos and chemicals into our wells and takes our elders all too soon.

This land, once a dream, a promise of freedom, is going to kill us.

It becomes quite challenging when town council is reluctant acknowledge environmental racism as a concrete issue.

South End Shelburne residents are perceived by town council as unvalued.

If our council cared of the health and well-being of the South End residents, they would have brought forth the ability and accountability to provide clean drinking water to our residents.

Blessedness I feel, it meets my skin with a warm glow.

The body of a Black woman feels many things.

Blessedness gives me permission to feel joyous.

This new state of self love is what they fear.

And like, some of the elders in the community talk about watching it burn and having to go to school smelling like that, and asking why they smelt so dirty and being sent home because of it. So it’s definitely impacted a lot of generations, I would say. Yeah, like, the toxins were going down into the wells so they’re getting that deep that they’re able to reach the water tables and there’s like super high levels of lead and asbestos in the water here. And there’s a lot of individuals that have passed away from multiple melanoma which is like a super rare type of cancer. And it’s so weird that this one little clump of Shelburne, everyone’s suffering from that one type of disease. But there is something in the water.

And what are the local politicians like?

Well, I think it was 2017 when this was in the midst of happening, um, the town councillor had said that this community, the Black community, needed to stop using the race card. So, they’re not even recognizing that environmental racism is alive and well in Shelburne, let alone being told to stop playing the race card when all we’re fighting for is clean drinking water that every human should have and everyone should have the right to. So it’s been challenging in that sense of just having the story told and people trying to understand and wanting to listen.

It doesn’t make any sense and to dis-acknowledge that we don’t have a Black community as well.

What?

Yeah. Our mayor dis-acknowledges that we have a Black community in Shelburne.

He says there’s no Black community here?

Mmmhmm.

So basically, your family, all of your descendants, all that, you just don’t exist.

Yup.

Yeah, it’s there’s a lot of like white history that’s shown on the waterfront cause of like the loyalists themselves. There’s nothing to do with Black loyalists, yeah.

But what really struck me is that there was nothing, at all about any Indigenous population, like has been completely completely erased from the storytelling, from the time lining.

But we know they were here first, so what happened? And a lot of the times, my, it would have been my grandmother Clara’s side was First Nations. She actually had, was a part of, um, like the reserve, she lived on the reserve and she married, or had children with, my grandfather who was a Black man, so she lost all of her status. Yeah.

Our town council would have also brought forth an effort to establish and foster relationships within this community, as well acknowledge that there is a Black community in Shelburne.

Blessedness I feel.

Blessedness gives me permission to feel joyous.

This new state of self love is what they fear.

Blessedness I feel.

Blessedness I feel.

Blessedness I feel.

1:06:56 INGRID WALDRON:
Wow. Thank you, Vanessa and Leelee, for that haunting piece. Like all the other pieces, we didn’t know what we were getting. Life is like a box of chocolates. That was haunting and that was beautiful. Thank you so much. I would like to thank all of the speakers and performers for these wonderful, innovative, and incredibly creative performances and move to the final segment of our program tonight, which is a moderated discussion. I want to ask the speakers and performers to reflect on several issues, including their experiences collaborating together, what they learned, and how they think solidarities can be built through art and activism in Mi’kma’ki.

So let’s welcome once again Irvine and Rebecca; Michelle and Kwento; Dorene and Liliona; and Vanessa and Leelee. 

I’m going to pose this question to everyone, so you can all certainly answer if you choose. The first question is really just to get a sense of what it was like, you’ve produced some really beautiful pieces tonight, and I’m pretty sure the audience wants to know, what was it like creating your piece and bringing it to fruition?

1:08:29 MICHELLE FRANCIS-DENNY:
I can start by just, I really enjoyed working with Kwento. I think it just flowed, and I think what I appreciate most about her is that she just listened. When we’re in such traumatic, and so much turmoil constantly, you know, I just kind of word vomit to whoever would listen. But she was really kind in listening to the things that were important to me and that really transitioned and I’m so proud of the piece, that she decided to do an original, and I’m very grateful that we were paired together. So thank you, Kwento.

1:09:16 KWENTO:
Thank you, Michelle. I loved working with you. I feel like we’re very compatible as people, you know. I just loved sitting on the phone and just chatting with you and hearing your stories. I was taking notes and making little pointers on the things you were saying. Yeah, the song wouldn’t have turned out if you weren’t so open and willing to be vulnerable with me and share what you really felt. I really appreciate that and I loved working with you too.

1:09:48 REBECCA THOMAS:

I was going to jump in really quickly. I called up Irvine and he just told me a story, and he told me the story of Africville and I took furious notes. With the poetry I do, and when I write, I’m very clear about my intentions that I never want to write stories that aren’t mine, or speak to stories that aren’t mine, and here I was doing a story that’s not mine. But, Irvine was so warm and trusting and he said ‘you know, I’ve been following you since the beginning and I know you’re gonna do a good job.’ So I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to write something. I was very nervous because I asked him ‘do you want to review it before I do it?’ and he said ‘nope, you’re gonna do a good job and I want to be surprised with everyone else.’ So that’s kind of what my experience was. To have that trust was such an honour, I guess, because I’m not from Nova Scotia, I’m from New Brunswick, so the story of Africville was something that I learned after I moved here. So to have such trust in me was a really wonderful and warm experience.

1:10:57 INGRID WALDRON:
What about you, Irvine?

1:10:59 IRVINE CARVERY:
Trying to unmute here.

1:11:05 INGRID WALDRON:
You’re good.

1:11:08 IRVINE CARVERY:

Am I good? Good now. Oh great. Listen, you know what, we – it’s hard to describe, but we are all Indigenous peoples. Whether that’s an Indigenous person from Africa or an Indigenous person from North America. In our Indigenous-ness we share the spirit. We share in the love of the Earth and Mother Earth. Those are things that we share together. Even though we didn’t grow up together, we lived different lives, I know that that’s why I said to Rebecca, ‘I trust you. Because I know that you’re gonna be able to really really touch on Africville’ and I sent her a note telling her that she really does have the spirit of Africville. In listening to everybody collaborate and the collaborations of everyone here this evening, I’ve got to say that I’m so humbled and honoured to be a part of this group. This is absolutely fantastic and I know that viewing audience is only gonna grow. Because I’ll bet ya, everybody who watched this tonight, is just gonna go spread the word. So I wanna thank all you young people for allowing me into your lives for a day. It’s been wonderful. Thank you so so much. And Rebecca, you’re the best.

1:13:01 REBECCA THOMAS:

Thank you so much.

1:13:04 INGRID WALDRON
What about Vanessa and Leelee, what was it like?

1:13:07 VANESSA HARTLEY
I had such an amazing experience. Typically, I’m not that artistic, so being able to collaborate on this project and really open up with my story and the history of Shelburne was incredible. As well, to be paired up with somebody, ten times as incredible to be allowed to express that. It was incredible and I’m forever grateful for this experience.

1:13:37 INGRID WALDRON:

Leelee –

1:13:38 DORENE BERNARD:

Oh, I’m sorry, did I –

1:13:40 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

No, no, you go ahead Dorene.

1:13:42 DORENE BERNARD:

Oh my goodness, it was beautiful and I want to thank Liliona for putting this all together. With, just some of the things I sent to her, and doing the water song the other day, and just last minute – everything was last minute – and having to come here and not even see the video before we, you know, get a chance to download it because, you know, we’re at the pound here and on the front line. All the things that happened today, this has been so uplifting and really fed my spirit. I’m so thankful that she, I just love that she was at the water and dancing in the water. Yeah. It just really uplifted me and I pray that it does for everybody who watched tonight. All our collaborations, they were just amazing.

1:14:45 INGRID WALDRON:
Thank you. I apologize, let me go back to Leelee and her piece with Vanessa.

1:14:55 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

Oh, it’s all good. To be honest, like, I’m just so moved by Vanessa and who you are as a person and your openness and your willingness, like, it’s really really clear these times require us to move with love, with care, with trust. And you gave and brought all of that, and I’m grateful. I’m so so happy and lucky.

1:15:21 INGRID WALDRON:

Thank you. Liliona? Liliona?

1:15:32 LILIONA QUARMYNE:

Yeah. It was, I think our experience, because what we’re dealing with is so, so alive in this particular moment, well, I mean, I have just so much love and respect for Dorene. But the reality of what we’re doing and the importance of, the importance of the words that everyone shared tonight, just felt so real in the creation process. I think throughout it, I was just so aware of what Dorene was saying and the lived reality of how she is in the world, you know, that she was talking about water as it was like, in everything she was doing, she was embodying water at the same time. It was really, really beautiful and powerful to be able to witness that and to feel it.

1:16:38 INGRID WALDRON:

Great. I’m also wondering if you could talk about what you learned from each other in your pairing. About your respective communities. What did you learn? Anyone can take this one

1:16:57 IRVINE CARVERY:

Well, you know for me, it was special because my grandmother is Mi’kmaq. And I never got to know my grandmother, but through my mother I got to know her. And to hear my brothers and sisters talking, and my sisters talking, it just brought to life the memory of my grandmother and I am so appreciative of that. And I have such faith, it renewed my faith in young people, that they are so powerful. That they have a gift and I’m so glad that they had the opportunity to share it with the world. It’s just simply amazing.

1:17:52 INGRID WALDRON:

Thank you. Anyone else, what did you learn through this collaboration for the piece?

1:18:00 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

Leelee here. I, you know, it’s funny because it’s like there’s all these moments that led to this moment, where all this learning was happening. And I’m not from here, I’m ‘come from away’ as Nova Scotian Africville descendants would call it. And I have to be aware of that. You know, I was very very hesitant about how much my voice was in the piece, how much my image was in the piece, because I wanted to honour Vanessa and honour Vanessa’s story and connection to that place which I don’t have. I have it only through the invitation from Vanessa. So I’m just grateful for the teachings that I have been gifted and passed forward from my Indigenous loves and community, the love of my life, and you know, then to this moment here that prepared me for this. My teaching, my learning is that everything is preparing me for what is coming now where I am.

1:19:10 INGRID WALDRON:

Thank you. I’m thinking about, for all of you, the importance of building solidarity. With Indigenous people, it’s an often discussed topic here, in this province, but across Canada. Did these issues emerge in the production of your piece, and if it did, how so?

1:19:44 REBECCA THOMAS:

I think for me when I was working on the piece, and learning as much as I did about Africville, like recognizing that there’s so many similarities in the stories between the Mi’kmaq people here in Nova Scotia and Mi’kma’ki and along with African Nova Scotians, just seeing how, how often we as people were just discarded. You know, for convenience, for capitalism, for development, for colonization. And to have very similar, like, you know, the Shubenacadie Residential School that my dad went to and the Home for Coloured Children, you just see so many of these kind of like similarities and it just kind of creates this sense of, though we are different in where we come from, and our backgrounds, we still have this really strong sense of solidarity by, you know, not only just surviving, because I don’t necessarily like framing it in that way, but to thrive and to find success beyond simple survival and I think that’s a really unique and incredible piece. It just brings, I don’t know, for me it just makes me feel closer to, you know, understanding or at least having an inkling of an understanding of the Africville Nova Scotian experience and how it relates to the Mi’kmaq experience. It was just a lot of learning and I feel good about this project. Sometimes I finish a poem and I just feel blah, but I didn’t feel this way about this poem. I feel good about this poem.

1:21:13 INGRID WALDRON:

Anyone else? Building bridges, building solidarities, how did that come out, how was it highlighted in the piece?

1:21:22 DORENE BERNARD:

I think that in our piece that we did, in listening to, seeing others, it’s about, it’s a spiritual movement. We build, through our spirituality, our connection with the Great Spirit, with the land, with Mother Earth, the water, and others, you know, all living beings. We talk about our relationships, you know, our relationships with the land, the water, the animals, the , the geese, and all the other living beings. And it’s our human relationships that are suffering. You know, we don’t have a problem with all these other living beings. We don’t have a problem with us. It’s how we treat each other and how that is reflected with how we treat the land, how we treat the water, how everything else is valued in the world. We don’t have value for ourselves and for each other, this is what’s playing out in the world. I think, you know, we talk about the value of our lives, our spirits, you know, so I think that for me, spoke in all of these collaborations, and I think it’s what came through for me and I want to thank everyone for being a part of this with me and Liliona and with you Ingrid, thank you for all you do. You’re the water warrior, you’re the Mother Earth warrior, and I always thought that and I’m so thankful for all the work you do because you bring good medicine. You take medicine from other people to make something good and I want to thank you for that. All of you.

1:23:54 INGRID WALDRON:

I want to pose this question to the artists specifically, to Rebecca, Kwento, Liliona, and Leelee. As you know, you’re artists, so you know there’s a long legacy of art for social justice. So I just want to hear from you, to hear what you think the role is, the role of art is, in raising critical consciousness and enabling people to listen to one another and respond effectively. What’s the role of art for you in that?

1:24:34 KWENTO:

I would say art is everything. Art is like taking nothing, like, space and time and there’s nothing there, and boom – art – and there’s something. I feel like, you know, like it comes from a place beyond ourselves. So if we want to raise our consciousness, art is the way. The way. Creating and making. Something from nothing. All movements have either a chant, or they have a you know ‘we shall overcome,’ there’s always a song. You know, there’s always a song or like, some type of visual, or some type of something. Because art also doesn’t ask permission to enter us, it just does. I think art is like the way, actually, to create social change.

1:25:37 INGRID WALDRON:

Thank you.

1:25:40 LILIONA QUARMYNE:

If I could just add to that, that was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard in my life. I think too that art has the ability to be both incredibly simple and incredibly complex at the same time. So it can enable us to feel all the different emotions, and all the different sides, and all the realities at the same time which I think is essential for the really complex change that we need to deal with in the world right now. Yeah, and I think sometimes, non-artistic processes don’t have that capability.

1:26:30 REBECCA THOMAS:

I think for me, when I think about art, as someone who is both an artist and also, like a, kind of process oriented, nerdy, policy brain. Like, I live in those two worlds, very much, all the time. I can try to have this very rational conversation with somebody, I can pick apart a strategy, or look at a policy piece and try to find its flaws, but often times when you think about these social changes, those are rooted in emotion. So I often talk about the head work and the heart work. I think the head work is the laws, and policies, and all of that stuff that helps things function through process. But the art is the heart work. And in order to get your head to work, you have to have your heart working too. So I think for me, it becomes like a really great additional tool for me to invoke a sense of duty or responsibility to change. So I try to, at least within my art, blend together both that head work and heart work in a way that I can kind of elicit change.

1:27:43 IRVINE CARVERY:

I’m not an artist, but art is our humanity. Through art, we find our human selves. And that’s, that is incredible because, you know, when we look at our histories as peoples, any great movement has been led by people coming out of the arts. I think of James Baldwin, I think of Maya Angelou, I think of Tyler Perry today and the work that they do in bringing forward those very, very tough issues but bring it in such a way to bring humanity to it. So art for me is my humanity.

1:28:40 INGRID WALDRON:

What about Liliona? Anything you’d like to say? Not Liliona, I’m sorry, Leelee.

1:28:50 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:
Well, it’s pretty much all been said. I just want to say, I guess in addition, that we are all artists, you know. Like, there’s an artists way in everyone if they give themselves space to have it. And that not all artists have the desire or the intent to create through their own humanity. So we’re all making this choice to do this in this way, because I’ve seen many artists who don’t think about intention, who don’t think about output, who don’t think about historical context, who don’t think about any of that. So, you know, I’m just grateful that I wound up in this place, in this time, in this vessel. So 100% yes, bring me back into my body, I started as a professional institution trained dancer and I left it primarily because I was sick of getting patted on the back like ‘hmm, that was nice.’ And I thought, ‘blood, sweat, and tears for that was nice?’ You know I wanted to tell stories and do things in a deeper, bigger way, and I’ve been grateful to be able to find that. To touch presence, to touch people’s humanity, their consciousness, and leave them with something that they can then go with and inform their steps forward. Yeah, y’all said it, but I came and said some more.

1:30:22 INGRID WALDRON:

Thank you. I’d like to pose this question to the speakers. When I say speakers, I mean members of the affected communities: Irvine, Michelle, Dorene, and Vanessa. We’re talking about building solidarity, but as you know there are barriers to building relationships and solidarities between Indigenous people, Black people and Indigenous people, and other communities, there are real barriers in Mi’kma’ki and other parts of Canada in doing so. What do you think those barriers are, and how do you think those barriers can be overcome. 

1:31:02 IRVINE CARVERY:
Hmm. Really serious question here, Ingrid. You know, really, the colonizer did a wonderful job in dividing and conquering. You know, they have done a wonderful job in the way in which they present opportunities for the African descendant community and the First Nations community. They’ve done a wonderful job to divide us, but through our learned experience that all of us have had in dealing with the colonizer, we are breaking down those barriers. You know, we talk about Africville, but we’ve gotta talk about Turtle Cove over in Dartmouth that was destroyed with the Halifax explosion, which was a Mi’kmaq community right across from us. And we shared, we went across that harbour back and forth, from Africville to the Mi’kmaq community, we intermarried. When we arrived here in Nova Scotia, with no supports, it was the Mi’kmaq people that taught us how to go into the woods to find the herbs that we needed, taught us how to fish, taught us how to survive here in this very, very unfriendly place. But over time, they divided us. We need to go back to that commonality that we have with each other and I, you know, the struggles that each of us have been through, the only thing, you know, that worries me, is that the colonizer will use the fact that First Nations people have treaties, so therefore we gotta treat them differently than what we treat people of African descent, because of that, we’ve gotta just say ‘no, sorry, you’ve treated us the same.’ You know, you called me a n*gg*r, and you called them oh that dirty old *nd**n. That’s our history, right. That’s common shared history that we have with each other and we need to recognize that and we need to come together through collaborations like what we’re doing here right now is the way in which we break down that control by the colonizer. We’ve got to get rid of his control over our thoughts and our minds. The spirituality in, when I heard Dorene talk, we talk about the need for us to build, you know, self awareness within our children. That we want them to be strong as young people growing up. That’s exactly what Dorene is talking about, and it’s through that shared history that we can get there. So, you know, we’ve got a lot of work to do, but we are beginning to see the light. We are beginning to walk the same path. And when we get on the same path all together, we are a powerful force. And we can move mountains.

1:34:30 MICHELLE FRANCIS-DENNY:

In my experience, when it comes to barriers, I’ve been working on the, you know, the Boat Harbour mediation project for more than four years now, so I’ve been working directly with the Nova Scotia government and the sector that is responsible for the clean up plans. And I can honestly say that there needs to be a lot of work to be done on the end of, you know, government representation. When you’re working with Indigenous communities because, you know, this word reconciliation gets thrown around so much to the point that it means nothing now. It means absolutely nothing to us, but they have this sense of pride, you know, to say ‘we’re working with this community and we’re reconciling.’ But in reality, you’re not. You’re not. There has to be more space. More space created for conversations. So, you know, we tend to deal with this facade, ‘oh, we’re listening to you.’ You know, you throw in a buzz word here and there to really, to try and capture peoples’ attention that we’re doing well and we’re paying attention. But in reality, on community levels, we feel a different way. And it’s important for government and those representatives that are assigned to acknowledge that. And I’ll tell you, it is a struggle to let anybody acknowledge that they could do better. And that’s the number one barrier for me, is I just want an acknowledgement that you can do better. And it’s impossible right now, so that’s all. So we can move forward. Let’s create space, but first you have to acknowledge that. Don’t hide under this facade that we’re gonna go, and you know, I’m gonna put on my rose coloured glasses and this is all gonna be lovely and we’re all gonna swim in Boat Harbour someday. No. There’s a lot of work here and pay attention and acknowledge. It is what needs to happen and if that has to go up the chain to whatever levels, you know, to ministers and project managers, just a whole slew of people involved, that aren’t paying attention. Something has to be done about that.

1:37:03 VANESSA HARTLEY:
I agree, and going off Michelle’s point, of them trying to throw us off of our path. I think the BIPOC population has an end goal and we have a goal of true equality and equity, and government loves to play the game of chucking a couple words in that makes it look nice and pretty to then distort our perception of what’s actually taking place. So I find, going off this question, I don’t see it as a lack of solidarity between Black and Indigenous because I think it’s always been there and historically we know that it was. I see the solidarity between these two groups uniting and trying to get this end goal and I think in Shelburne, the issue here, is we don’t have the relationship with our municipal, or our town, council. There’s a lack of trust there. I don’t trust that you’re going to tell my story correctly. I don’t trust that you’re intent is accurate. And I know it’s not, because I know that our community still struggles in accessing clean drinking water after being bypassed twice on town water well. So, we know that these things are here in place and we can see them, but they’re not being talked about so we know your intent is not correct and therefore we are continuing to have this conversation, therefore, speaking up for ourselves, trying to fight for what we should have, for what every human being should have, and that’s clean water, and being told ‘no, stop playing the race card, no, there’s no systemic barriers in your way, no, you don’t have health issues’ when we can see clearly that we have many elders in our community passing from cancer and other disease. So I don’t think, in the future, that this trust is going to be built overnight because for many years they’ve been here creating this horrible place of a hell in our Black community.

1:38:55 IRVINE CARVERY:

Very good, Vanessa. You know, I want to point out, how dare Sterling Belliveau – Belliveau, whatever his name is – dare to suggest to the First Nations people that they should stop for a year to negotiate with non-Indigenous fishers. How dare he. How dare the non-Indigenous fishers think that they should be at the table for discussions with the government and the Mi’kmaq people. How dare they. How dare the Premier of Nova Scotia come out and apologize to Black people about the justice system and appoint a committee where we had no input, there was no consultation with us whatsoever, he hand picked who he wanted to be on it. How dare they. How dare they do these, but they continue to do it because of their feelings of white privilege. It’s what it’s about. It’s about white privilege. They say these words, as Michelle said, but those words have no meaning. They have no meaning. And we need, we need, we – our peoples – need to see beyond those words and we need to demand. We are at a, it’s the 21^st Century, no more asking for anything, it’s now time to demand and get out there and make it happen. So, that’s where we need to get to as people with our collaborations. We need to support each community strongly.

1:40:49 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

I don’t think people realize that the fight that we’re fighting is God’s work for everybody’s survival. Because when there’s no water, and there’s no land for us to be on, and there’s no fish or nothing, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, brown, yellow, whatever: you don’t got it. You don’t got nothing, right? So, that’s the thing is that we’re out here doing this work as Black and Indigenous folks, and I really want to highlight as a Black identified person with background great-great-grand Indigenous heritage also, acknowledge all the ways we’ve moved together. And if we do an abolitionist movement, we can see right now the reports, they show that Black people are inequitably incarcerated. But guess what? There’s no number in our Indigenous community. They didn’t even bother to do that report. So as a Black person, I feel I have to stand with my Indigenous community and my counterparts, to move forward because I’m seeing that there’s still shortages that even as a Black person, we’re getting acknowledges, we’re getting all these things, and then I look in these reports that just leave out my Indigenous community. So, I’m a little bit passionate about that.

1:42:10 INGRID WALDRON:

Anyone else?

1:42:13 DORENE BERNARD:

Yes, I’d like to say, I think the biggest barrier that we’re facing right now is the lack of education. The lack of education on what it means to be Indigenous and our rights as Indigenous people. There’s so much out there now, anybody could self educate on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That took over 20 years to write, and look how many years it took to have it accepted by all the countries in the world, and then, even to have it implemented in Canada. We are still working to have it implemented, those 94 calls to action. There’s been so much work by Indigenous people over the decades, like the World Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. They took the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, their report, and then the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We have so many <inaudible> in government offices that haven’t even <inaudible> over these decades, trying to assert our –

1:44:03 INGRID WALDRON:

Did we lose Dorene?

1:44:08 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

She’s speaking truth and the internet came along.

1:44:13 INGRID WALDRON:

Hi, Dorene?

1:44:19 IRVINE CARVERY:

It said that her bandwidth was low, maybe we did lose her.

1:44:27 INGRID WALDRON:

Okay, so why don’t we just move on to the next question and we can come back to Dorene. I’m just kind of thinking about a comment that Leelee made when she mentioned that not every artist uses their work for intention. So this question is actually for the artists, I think most people know that you use your art for social justice, but for those who don’t or have yet to, or want to, how can that be done? How, thinking about what you’ve done throughout your lives, in terms of using art for grassroots mobilizing and social justice movements, you have any kind of words or insights to give artists on how they can begin to do that with intention?

1:45:24 REBECCA THOMAS:

I’ll begin, I guess. I know for me, I always think back to the one moment where I did my poem in city council for Edward Cornwallis, to help get the statue taken down. And that was not the poem that I had prepared for that day, I had a different poem prepared and it was literally within the last 30 seconds or so that I decided to do my piece Not Perfect because for me, when I thought about the responsibility and the access that I had, you know, to a group of decision makers, I said ‘this could be uncomfortable and this could be awkward and I’m just going to be prepared for that and I’m going to do it anyway.’ I think that that first piece is recognizing that if you want to make change with your art, well first of all you don’t have to, but if you want to, for me it helps to just acknowledge that this is going to be uncomfortable, acknowledge that people might not understand. I mean, the tabloid magazine that I will not name took out and did a two page poetic response with like a horrible caricature of me after doing that, and part of it is like steeling yourself for that. If you can acknowledge that that’s going to happen, then it can be less devastating when it does, so that you can continue moving forward.

1:46:59 INGRID WALDRON:

What about the other artists?

1:47:02 LILIONA QUARMYNE:

I think too, there’s this myth or this belief that maybe especially here because more in smaller communities, that there aren’t a lot of people already doing this work. But just because we don’t always know who the people are doing the work, doesn’t mean that there aren’t people doing the work. So, you know, you have to go, you have to work extra hard because the people are there. You just have to find them. I think that this is, I mean, I think this is something that every, not every but a whole bunch of, arts organizations are now starting to wake up to. The day after George Floyd was murdered, it was like, ‘oh, we need to be alive to this’ right? So there’s a lot of people now trying to catch up and catch up and catch up. I think it’s, part of it, is just resilience and persistence. Not saying ‘oh I just can’t find the person’ or ‘I just don’t know how.’ The knowledge is there, there are people doing it, you just have to keep at it and not let yourself off the hook, I think.

1:48:21 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

A hundred percent. A hundred percent the biggest foundational thing in that for me is time. Time. Capitalism cannot continue to function alongside the desires for what we say we need as time. Because capitalism has time is money, this and that, all of that stuff. And that type of thing that you’re suggesting, Liliona, requires taking time. Slowing down. Pausing. Moving at a different pace. You know? I feel like, that so many people say ‘oh well what can I do?’ I really think that, learn yourself. Learn about who you are. Learn about where you come from. Learn about what’s in your heart. Learn about your family’s history. Before you start getting all interested in all of our cultures and then be responsible for that and lead from that because we have our own stories to tell. And so that’s what I always say when I’m working with youth and other folks, is ‘okay well what’s your story?’ Because we can’t keep, it’s 2020, we can’t keep trying to do these old things we’ve done and there’s no excuse for ignorance in 2020.

1:49:39 KWENTO:

Yeah, I agree with that. Just finding your voice. Finding your own voice. And who you are and what you want to say, you know. I guess as advice, outside of your art form, what is it that you want to say? And then also, you know, the truth hurts so be ready for people to act like they don’t care. Because it hurts a little bit when you’re being really truthful but it definitely, that would be my advice.

1:50:16 INGRID WALDRON:

Anyone want to add anything before I begin to start the closing? I want to conclude our discussion by asking each panellist to describe, if it’s possible, in one word what belonging feels and looks like to you in this province?

1:50:44 VANESSA HARTLEY:
I’ll jump in. It’s not going to be one word, but I’ll try to be quick. I think my word is equity. I don’t want equality anymore, I want equity. I want to be put up to the level of other people if that’s what I need to be equal. I want true equity.

1:51:02 MICHELLE FRANCIS-DENNY:

Mine are two words: Mi’kma’ki Strong.

1:51:12 IRVINE CARVERY:

Thank you very much. Mine is Africville.

1:51:20 REBECCA THOMAS:

I’ll jump in, I gotta keep it to two words too, I’m very sorry. Righteous indignation.

1:51:32 KWENTO:

Mine is allowance. Just allow me, you know? Just let me.

1:51:45 LILIONA QUARMYNE:

I think mine is grace. It’s a far away dream but not an impossible one of us one day having enough grace, to be whole enough in ourselves, that we can allow other people to be whole in themselves.

1:52:08 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

That’s an inspiration for me, Liliona. I say that it’s touching grace. Like I can touch grace in myself and I can come over to you and I can touch grace in you.

1:52:24 INGRID WALDRON:

Dorene? Oh, yes, Dorene, are you back?

1:52:31 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

We don’t see her here.

1:52:33 INGRID WALDRON:

Okay, so, thank you for that everyone. So in closing then, we are at a few minutes before 9. This was a fantastic event, I mean, if I may say so myself. It was unique and haunting and thrilling and I’ve really enjoyed being a part of this. So I’d like to thank the speakers, performers and artists who participated in this event tonight. I would also like to thank Lindsay Dobbin, who curated this anchor project for Nocturne, I’Thandi Munro for providing logistical support, Bria Miller for the wonderful graphic art – you’ll notice the graphic art in the promo that we did but also in the Facebook event page, Laurie Graham for providing technical support for the Zoom online platform this evening, Ayoka Junaid for providing ESL interpretation and Lindsay Ann Cory, the Executive Director of Nocturne, for providing support throughout the whole process of bringing this project to fruition.

I would also like to thank our partners who helped fund, sponsor, and promote our event tonight and that includes: Visual Arts News, Halifax Regional Municipality, Arts Nova Scotia, Canada Council for the Arts, the Public Service Alliance of Canada – Nova Scotia branch, Kairos, Environmental Defence, The Leap, Sierra Club, The Black Environmental Initiative, Nova Scotia Environmental Network, Shake Up the Establishment, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and The Ecology Action Center.

Finally, I would like to thank you, the audience, for attending this event and I would like to wish you a great rest of the evening. Thank you very much everyone. I’m not sure if Lindsay Ann Cory would like to take a few final words or not.

1:54:51 LINDSAY ANN CORY:

Yeah, I don’t really want to add to much, I just think tonight has been so amazing. We’re gonna leave the chat open for a bit to let these kind words flow through, but just thank you so much to Ingrid, and to Lindsay, and the speakers, all of you, all of our artists, all of our speakers. Thank you so much.

1:55:15 INGRID WALDRON:

Thank you.

1:55:17 LEELEE OLUWASTOYOSI EKO DAVIS:

Thank you, Karen Staples for your ESL interpretation too.

1:55:23 LINDSAY ANN CORY:

Yeah, thank you Karen, I put that in the chat as well.

1:55:33 INGRID WALDRON:

Great everyone. Thank you so much. Bye bye! Bye audience! Take care!

How we Build: On Craft and Blackness

A panel discussion featuring four Black artists discussing craft and collaboration.

Juanita Peters, Letitia Fraser, NAT chantel, and Sobaz Benjamin
Facilitated by Francesca Ekwuyasi
Friday, October 18, 2019, 7 – 9pm
Art Bar + Projects, 1893 Granville Street, Halifax

(K’jipuktuk/Halifax) Visual Arts News, in partnership with Nocturne: Art at Night and MSVU Art Gallery, presents the panel discussion How We Build: On Craft and Blackness. Based on curator Pamela Edmond’s quote “I am no longer interested in a seat at the table. I now want to build my own table” this panel will focus on the concept of Black artists creating work for a Black audience.

With the purpose of illuminating ideas on intergenerational knowledge and craft sharing as a means of fostering solidarity and resistance within and between the various Black communities in Nova Scotia, this panel will engage in ideas on locating pleasure, joy, and celebration as a survival tool while navigating structural oppression.

Join panelists Juanita Peters, Letitia Fraser, NAT chantel, and Sobaz Benjamin in a discussion facilitated by Francesca Ekwuyasi on Friday, October 18, 7 – 9pm at the Art Bar + Projects when we will also be launching the Fall 2019 issue of Visual Arts News magazine.

Refreshments will be served and all are welcome. Gender neutral washrooms on site. ASL interpretation available upon request, please contact us in advance to book. Code of Conduct available here. 

Meet the panelists:

Sobaz Benjamin, first and foremost a storyteller, is the Founder and Executive Director of an innovative, arts-based, youth and adult engagement, empowerment and reintegration not-for-profit in Halifax, called In My Own Voice (iMOVe) Arts Association, (2007).  Sobaz is a documentary film-maker, as well as a community developer, advocate, youth mentor, program director, facilitator and public speaker.  His work has been screened across Canada and in venues and Festivals in New Zealand, Bermuda and New York.  He has completed documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Sobaz uses his experience as an independent filmmaker in his community- based work with marginalized youth, adults and community.

NAT chantel is a primarily self-taught interdisciplinary artist who engages subtle movement and repetitive processes to revisit memory and personal history as way to reclaim the body and voice. Language, lineal disruption and displacement from land and home claim permanence in her art.  She has participated in Canadian Art Festivals Ignite the Night, Afterglow, and was chosen as a beacon artist for Nocturne (2019) and the first Indigenous curated Nocturne festival (2018.) She has voiced in Annie Wong’s A Choir on Desires and Demand on Repeat (2019), performed with Black Rabbit (2019), and released sound through a nature-based installation during her White Rabbit Residency (2019). NAT was selected into the 2017-2018 VANS Mentorship Program, the Summer Professional Development Residency with NSCCD (2018) and the Centre For Art Tapes Media Scholarship Program (2018-2019.) Her poem Beauty was published in the first print-edition of Understorey Magazine: African Women Writers (2018.) She was a Nova Scotia Talent Trust scholarship recipient (2017 & 2018) and is a member of Visual Arts Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Basketry Guild, and Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia. NAT has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature and is a Certified Yoga Instructor. 

Letitia Fraser is an Interdisciplinary artist, recently graduating with a BFA from NSCAD University. Fraser’s work centers around her experience as an African Nova Scotian woman growing up in the province’s black communities. As a painter, Letitia draws inspiration from her family and community’s history of quilting. Fraser has participated in several group shows and has recently shown her work in a solo exhibition at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, titled Mommay’s Patches: Traditions & Superstitions, and currently has a solo show at MSVU Art Gallery. She has also received numerous awards for her work including the Nova Scotia Talent Trust RBC Emerging Artist Award. Most recently, Fraser participated in the residency Ground Rules at the Cape Breton Centre for Crafts and Design, NS. Fraser continues her practice in Halifax, NS.

Juanita Peters is a playwright, actor and film director. Peters has over 35 years of media experience. Her early career included radio and television host/reporter for various networks including CBC NB and AVR. A member of ACTRA, Writers Guild of Canada (WGC), Actors Equity (CAEA), Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre (PARC) and a founding member of Women In Film & Television Atlantic (WIFT-AT), Peters is the Executive Director at The Africville Museum and teaches Playwrighting in the Theatre at Dalhousie University.

Panel facilitator:
francesca omolara ekwuyasi is a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness and belonging. You may find her writing in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News and GUTS Magazine. Her short documentary Black + Belonging screened at the Halifax Black Film Festival and Festival International du Film Black de Montréal this year. During her upcoming residency at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, she will be producing work which interrogates the intersections of queerness and faith.

For more information, contact:

Becky Welter-Nolan
Publisher
Visual Arts News
publisher@visualartsnews.ca
t: 902-423-4694, 1-866-225-8267

For Logan MacDonald, collaboration is a practice, a form of kinning and a “way of navigating the communities [he] participates in.” Most importantly, collaboration is braided into the fundamentals of “everything [he] does.”

As MacDonald’s own identity resides in multiple communities, and constantly engages with a myriad of voices, histories, temporalities and ontologies. Confronting the intersections of queerness, Indigeneity, access and ability, MacDonald reckons with the limitations and possibilities of identity.

His work entangles the personal and political as projects take on histories of homophobia, rural isolation, cultural erasure, loss and mourning. From his work in queer art trio The Third Leg (notably the project Welcome to Gayside), to more nuanced embodiments of reciprocity in his most recent exhibition Visiting, MacDonald uses collaboration to create a dialectic that is active, curious and always refusing closure.

As a practice, MacDonald mixes mediums and disciplines with precision and intention. Lyrical, at times witty, and always pointed, MacDonald uses photography, textiles, oil painting, graphite drawings, installation, and signage to mediate viewership, confront the limits of access, and represent the myriad identities that reverberate through the works. MacDonald’s most recent exhibition Visiting, is an extended iteration of The Lay of the Land (2017), which opened at Eastern Edge in St. John’s and has since visited Winnipeg’s Ace Art. The Lay of the Land was the result of MacDonald’s travels through Indigenous communities, histories and activisms across the country. MacDonald recreates makeshift structures – heavy beams of lumber bolted together – used by Indigenous activists in British Columbia as a means of claiming property against colonial and industrial incursion. Photographs of graffitied sidewalks scream “NATIVE LAND” in black spray paint. Neon repeats throughout the show, confronting encroachment, demarcation, and consumption.

You won’t find photographs of faces in Visiting. MacDonald intentionally mediates third party viewership of his subjects in order to protect the intimacy of his encounters. Instead of presenting photographs, MacDonald draws the image, interjecting the melancholic mechanics of graphite sketching between the viewer and the original experience. By denying access to the primary image, curator Emily Critch says that MacDonald generates tension in the work and refuses to “author” someone else’s narrative. As a means of honouring the intimacy of shared encounters, this is a means of negotiating consent, a form of reciprocity and respect for our kin, both an invitation and a refusal.

Similarly, a small but striking oil painting of a hand holding MacDonald’s status card confronts us with the political surveillance of Indigenous identity. We are asked to reckon with authenticity, generational loss, and the possibility of reclamation. For those of us who will never have a status card, who feel the simultaneous sting of rejection and anger of relentless erasure, this work also speaks to the impossibilities of desire.

MacDonald resurrects archival ghosts, entangling past and future, grief and hope, loss and desire. Here, visit-ing also becomes a visit-ation. Morill, Tuck & The Super Futures Haunt Qollective write, “visitations reinforce connections, create new ones, disrupt expectations. Visitations are not settling, they are not colonial exploration. Visitation rites. Visitation rights. Visitation writes.”[2] The visitations in MacDonald’s work assert that he is “also in collaboration with people who are inaccessible.” In The Lay of the Land and Visiting, MacDonald looks to voices silenced by colonial violence, mediating and reclaiming “lost” images, structures and objects through contemporary frameworks. Images of snowy, pine trimmed roads, shadowy rocks, and bushels of blooming shrubbery are mounted on lumber, concrete and graphed paper. Visiting is a verb and everything here is under construction. Consent is ongoing.

A focal point of Visiting is a large-scale photograph of the artist’s limp body, facing upward, sprawled across a large tree stump. MacDonald notes that the surveillance of trees acts as an analogy for the surveillance of queer and Indigenous bodies in public spaces. MacDonald tells me that “this work is sad. It is about contemporary mourning and historical mourning, but it is also a call to action and to empathy.” In these betweens there is also a generative tension that illuminates hope and possibility. While there is something apathetic and exhausted about the artist’s slack limbs falling to either side, there is also something powerful and active about a tired body laying with another, of holding space with one another. How do we find ways of carrying on? MacDonald tells me that it can be “good to put a name to a thing.” This photograph tells me that where words fail us, visiting together can be enough.

[2] Tuck, Eve and Karyn Recollet. (2017) “Visitations (You Are Not Alone) in #callresponse. Vancouver: grunt gallery. www.evetuck.com/s/Visitations-You-are-not-alone-2017-Tuck-Recollet.pdf

Carrie Allison’s work deals with identity, as well as ideas of allyship, kinship, and hosting. An artist of Cree, Metis, and European descent who embraced her Indigeneity at a later age, her approach to materials is empathetic and thoughtful, working in large and often collaborative beading projects. Her work traces lines—fingers over pages, veins across skin, rivers across landscapes, while looking to the future of cultural institutions and the laws that govern them.

As part of her MFA thesis work, Allison considered waterways that were important to her maternal lineage, and beaded the Heart and Fraser Rivers (in Alberta and B.C., respectively). Wanting to make a similar gesture to the place she has called home for the past seven years, Allison turned her attention to the Shubenacadie River. She invited collaborators of all skill levels to bead a portion of the River in an attempt to build community and draw attention to the work of Indigenous water protectors who are on the front lines fighting the Alton Gas development—underground gas storage units that Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies are opposing, due to the development’s plan to dump salt brine into the Shubenacadie River.

MOLLIE CRONIN interviews CARRIE ALLISON in anticipation of her latest body of research and work with Eyelevel Gallery the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History in Halifax, NS.

MOLLIE: I remember talking with Eyelevel director Julia McMillan back in the spring and when she told me about your work, she kept using the word “transplant,” relating to how you were thinking about plants (invasive species in particular) and sort of seeing yourself reflected in that idea.

CARRIE: I love plants, I think they’re amazing … Identity has always been in my practice, but it’s always been a hard thing for me to understand. When you’re trying to reclaim a connection to Indigeneity … it was hard for me to do, I didn’t grow up in an Indigenous community—my grandmother wouldn’t acknowledge that she was Indigenous and that was mostly because of residential school guilt, so I feel like that was passed down to me. It took me a really long time to be okay with saying: “I’m an Indigenous person, as well as mixed-race” (which is something that I identify more with). Plants were the first way I understood that. It made more sense to think about colonialism though plants, how the landscape has been altered, and that moved [my work] to more political and social practice in general.

I looked at a lot of indigenous plants and invasive species, which I’m still very fascinated by because they’re so pervasive. With projects like this I really just see myself as trying to navigate [these ideas] but also build connections, kin and work within this idea of allyship. I understand that I am a guest here, that I am being hosted by the Mi’kmaq people.

MOLLIE: I think there’s a lot of material there, in terms of thinking about colonialism through plants: landscape, agriculture, even gardening and growing grass…

CARRIE: Grass is so crazy! It’s like a sign of royalty—the fact that we still have it in our lives is very weird!

MOLLIE: Our “natural” spaces in Halifax are so Victorian still—from the park to the public gardens, it’s very British.

CARRIE: Very British. You can’t sit on the grass.

MOLLIE: I think that your work with museums right now is a similar sort of teasing out a very rigid way of moving through a space. Museums operate with these same restraints—very precious, very white glove, very don’t sit on the grass.

CARRIE: Totally. A lot of Indigenous knowledge is based within the land, but colonial knowledge is based in these boxes. These “discoveries.” Whereas a landscape can function as an archive in and of itself.

MOLLIE: A living archive.

CARRIE: Yeah, it’s just a matter of knowing how to read it. [Archives and museums] are gatekeepers. I’m fascinated by them—museums and libraries—I’ve always loved searching for things. They can hold so much power. Libraries, archives, churches—they just hold everything there. And [these are the spaces] where we were “legitimized” as people: marriage, birth, etc. I always have a hard time navigating these two worlds. I grew up in a world of museums and libraries; everyone grows up in institutions in some way, these colonial parameters that you have to navigate as a citizen. Indigenous ways of being don’t really function within those constraints. They’re more fluid—a more fluid way of being. 

Detail of exhibition catalogue cover for “In This Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia”

The exhibition We are the Griots—curated by Jade Peek—may have opened to the biggest snowstorm all season this past February at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, but it still saw a lot of press coverage. Jade was on the cover of The Coast weekly paper. The article billed We are the Griots as the first exhibition of “solely Black Nova Scotian artists in Halifax since the 1990s.” I was stunned — Had there really not been another exhibition dedicated to Black Nova Scotian art since the 90’s?

So I went digging, looking up the late 90’s in the Visual Arts Nova Scotia archives, and low and behold, it was on the cover of the Spring 1998 issue, Volume 20 Number 1: In this Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia. The cover image is bold, graphic and visually striking. It features a painting of three figures in simple, but expressive white lines on a black thickly textured background. Inside, there’s an article by curator/artist Pamela Edmonds, stressing the historical importance of the exhibition. “In this Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia represents the first-ever attempt to represent and contextualize the tradition of Black Nova Scotian art making in the province,” she writes. In my research since, I have learned that David Woods—who co-curated the show with Harold Pearse—represents just one individual out of just a handful of Black curators who have been working in Halifax to this day, continuing the push for the self representation of Black Nova Scotians in visual art.

“A great void existed for me as an artist in Nova Scotia … of knowing that most people assume that no art of significance had been created by the Black community.” —David Woods

Volume 20 / Issue 1 / Spring 1998 / “In this Place” cover

Edmonds describes the exhibition as a “groundbreaking effort to provide a comprehensive overview of a sector of the art making community rarely shown or acknowledged.” She points to a history of exclusion and segregation in Nova Scotia. In the article she interviews the co-curators David Woods, a local artist and community organizer, and Dr. Harold Pearse, the academic dean at NSCAD, about their inspiration for the exhibit, their relationship and the project. As Woods explains, the title of the exhibition originates from his poem Abode, which references the experience of the early Black settlers and the land the government allotted them in Nova Scotia—described as
“barren, rocky soil or swampland.” For Pearse, MSVU Art Gallery’s 1983 show The Past in focus: a community album before 1918 : photographs from the Notman Studio served as his inspiration for the exhibition, as well as providing him with his first exposure to the depth of art created by Nova Scotia’s Black communities.

Pearse explains that even though many Black kids from the community spaces are very interested in visual art, their enrollment at NSCAD has always been very low. In the article, Pearse points to Woods, a self taught multi-disciplinary artist and an active community member, as the perfect link to try to bridge the two worlds of the Black art communities and the institutionalized White art world.

Installation view from the catalogue of “In This Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia” 

Pearse and Woods discuss how surprised they all were by the amount of Black Nova Scotian artists that they uncovered in their interview with Edmonds. When they began planning their exhibition, they were thinking about featuring only a few artists—but that all changed by the end of Wood’s research, which  consisted of his unorthodox, but essential curatorial method of driving to several rural Black communities around Nova Scotia and literally knocking on doors and asking questions. Woods brought back over 200 images of work, which they narrowed down to 100 pieces to show by 45 artists. As the exhibition grew, the curatorial team realized it deserved more than just a two-week show at the gallery. They decided to take the exhibition beyond Halifax, touring to three other galleries in the province.

In Halifax they planned several special events, connecting Black artists to the larger art community. These events included a panel discussion and performance event with guests including: Jim Shirley, one of the first Black artists to exhibit in Nova Scotia; Audrey Dear Hesson, the first Black graduate of NSCAD in 1951; local photographer and filmmaker Silvia Hamilton; and painter Crystal Clements. They also screened a film about celebrated African American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, gave youth workshops and tours of NSCAD, and provided a funding information session with the Canada Council and the Nova Scotia Arts Council (all made possible by $40 000 of grants obtained from the Nova Scotia Arts Council, Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts by Black Artist Network Nova Scotia (BANNS) and Peter Dykhuis, who was the director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery at the time). After the tour concluded, they were able to produce a full size catalogue from the NSCAD Press.

Installation view from the catalogue of “In This Place: Black Art In Nova Scotia”

Pearse’s curatorial statement in the catalogue includes well-researched tidbits of information about the experience of Black artists in Halifax, such as the fact that Hesson received the Lieutenant-Governor’s prize and “taught for the school’s Saturday morning children’s art classes, at the YMCA’s boys club and to an adult education group in Africville.” But he points out that due to a shortage of employment opportunities, Hessen could never obtain steady employment in the public school system. Pearse continues with a sparse, but steady history of Black exhibitions and artists in Halifax in the 80’s and 90’s, a time when NSCAD grads and Black artists like Donna James were showing black and white photographs (Eight Men in a Big House, 1989), Buseje Baily was making videos about the female black body (Body Politic, 1992) and Derril Robinson showed his pottery in a joint exhibition with Andrea Arbour (Facades, 1995).

Woods’ statement provides a much more sobering reflection on the presence of Black artists in Nova Scotia. He notes that “a great void existed for me as an artist in Nova Scotia …the void of knowing that there were no exhibitions of local Black artists featured in the provinces’ major galleries; of knowing that Black artists were unfamiliar with each other’s work; of knowing that most people assume that no art of significance had been created by the Black community.” He wanted to challenge himself to try and fill that void with an exhibition that could change the status quo.

 Beverly Bowden’s “Picking Strawberries” (1997), oil on canvas

When I spoke with Woods, I asked him what he thought, almost twenty years later, about the impact that In this Place had made. He talked a lot about an increase of visibility. “All of the establishment galleries offered shows to the NSCAD people for the next four or five years,” he pointed out. Woods himself has continued curating and one of his longest touring exhibitions has been The Secret Codes, which started touring 2012, where he featured narrative and pictorial quilts exhibited quilts made by African Nova Scotian quilt makers. These quilts are the result of a collaboration of Woods’ drawings and the talent of quilt makers like Myla Borden of the Vale Quilters, a group from New Glasgow, who have been working together since In this Place showed the pictorial quilt Passages. As well,  he recalled MSVU Art Gallery invited Shirley back to the Mount to have a retrospective called Jim Shirley Returns: The Art of James R. Shirley (2000). Woods himself also worked as an Associate Curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia from 2006-2007, where he helped to develop the AGNS’ African Canadian Art Initiative. During his short time there he helped to bring Mary Bendolph: Gees Bend Quilts and Beyond to the gallery in 2007 and worked on acquiring work by early Black Atlantic painter Edward Mitchel Banister. He confidently states after all of this work things can “no longer go back to the status quo.”

I’d like to believe that the status quo has changed in the 19 years since In this Place opened. Researching this historically seminal exhibition in Halifax’s art history has opened my eyes to the work and struggle of Black visual artists and curators in the very White dominated art world of Halifax. A staggering number of galleries in Canada still almost exclusively give solo shows to white artists (according to statistics from a 2015 Canadian Art study). We are the Griots represents one in just a small fraction of Black artists and curators living and working in our province. In this Place blew the door open in terms of self-representation for Black artists in Nova Scotia, but that door is still there and it’s primed to be blown away completely.

In the next two parts of this series, I will be looking closer at the history and context of Black exhibitions in Halifax previous to In this Place, and report the prolific work of the author of the VANS article that started me on this journey, writer, artists, art administrator and curator, Pamela Edmonds in the years following In this Place.

More: Looking Back: Our version of “women in the arts” in the 70s

More: Get to know our research intern

KAYLEE MADDISON: What does the “house” personally mean to you?

PAM HALL: I use the word “house” as both noun and verb—as a noun, it signifies a specific place, location, site for home, for work, for play and from which to be in community. Most simply, it is a building to live in and at its most complex, it is something that must be built together with others, and that holds the history of all who have inhabited it. As a verb, to house means to give shelter to, to accommodate, to hold or contain its inhabitants, their memories, actions and histories.  The works in this show are in conversation with all of those meanings.

KM: All of the works being displayed have never been shown in St. John’s, Newfoundland, your home, before. What does it mean to you to bring these works home?

PH: It is profoundly meaningful to bring this work home, to share with others in the place I have been living and working for 40 years. When one works “away” as much as I do, unfolding stories and conversations in other communities across Canada or the U.S., many people at home have no idea about the work one is doing—the questions one is following. It matters deeply to me to open these conversations here—to step back into conversation with my own geographic community and those within it who have helped me make it home.

KM: Many pieces in the exhibit are created through collaborations with the public. Is there anything in particular that has surprised you about how people contribute and interact with your ideas?

PH: I have been working with others as collaborators and participants for many years, so am no longer surprised by the generosity, engagement and willingness of others inside and outside the art community to lean in to some of these projects as my partners. I am continually sustained by their contributions and am always reminded that there are many, many ideas that cannot be realized alone.  I am not surprised by the amazing contributions of others in these community-engaged projects, but am always profoundly grateful for their engagement and support. One of my favourite elements in HouseWork(s) is the names of contributors and collaborators listed on the walls throughout the gallery. They are all there in the space with me.

KM: You’ve noted before that the collaborative types of pieces you create are often an example of an artist having to let go from controlling the work. What do you find most difficult or challenging about not knowing what’s going to happen to your initial idea?

PM: Letting go of control is something most artists learn from working with unruly materials or in sites and locations where wind, water or weather are part of the environment. As someone who has worked outdoors on site for many years, I had been dancing with elements I could not “control” for a long time, so moving towards working with other people seemed like a natural evolution. The challenges of working with others, where your own decisions are not the only ones at play, keep me nimble, humble and responsive. It reminds me that I am not imposing my will on the universe, but rather am dancing with and within it. No matter how my initial idea evolves or transforms, I am always learning how to realize it as aesthetically, as effectively and as evocatively as I can.

KM: What do you most enjoy about collaborating with the public and those outside of the art community?

PH: The learning, the dialogue and the participation in conversations larger than those within the art world, these are what I most value in collaborative work with artists and non-artists. I adore people who know “stuff”—whether they are scientists or fishers, doctors or dancers, bakers, knitters, boat-builders, mapmakers or cooks. It is privilege and pleasure to work with other knowledge-holders. I also am deeply moved when total strangers in diverse “publics,” step into participation in a project where it is clear that I could not make the same work alone. It is a great gift as well as a significant responsibility to make visible and acknowledge the labour of others in the artmaking process.

KM: The exhibit includes works from the past 10 years. Over those years how has social media changed the way you engage with communities?

PH: There are three projects in HouseWork(s) that were enabled by social media and electronic communication and thus the internet has extended dramatically both my “communities” of conversation and also the locations in which I might put my work into encounter with others.  Over the last decade, social media in particular, has also enabled me to be in dialogue personally and professionally with a much larger and more diverse “village.” It allows me to live on an island in a very specific cluster of communities and to avoid feeling isolated, disconnected or out-of-touch. For someone like me, who is essentially a hermit—social media invites me into good company and reminds me I am living in a world bigger than my house and garden, my neighbourhood, my province, my nation or even my species.

KM: How do you believe the combination of creating both solitary and collaborative works has helped you grow as an artist?

PH: To quote two memory cloths from Marginalia (my four-year long collaboration with Margaret Dragu, represented in the show by The History House): “Solitude keeps her sane” and “Relation keeps her civil.” 

My solitary practice feeds me, keeps me fuelled.  It is the place I do my research, keep my material and conceptual investigations strong and nimble, and figure out how I want to materialize my meaning and where I want to set-it-to-work in the world. My community-engaged collaborations or social projects are where I try to open dialogues and step into conversations with a larger world than my own creative expression—where I try to make the meaning matter, or set it to work. Sustaining both types of practice has helped me grow immensely, not just as an artist but as a person who believes deeply in the work that art might do in a world that needs many voices engaged in building sustainable and inclusive futures for more than just some of the inhabitants of the planet that houses us all.

Both kinds of practice then, invite me to learn and listen deeply, to be in conversations across difference and discipline, and to remember that—whether in a single community or the larger world—we do not build the house alone.

One day, in the spring of 1995 in some innocuous field in rural Prince Edward Island, David Askevold—already established as “one of the world’s most important contributors to the development and pedagogy of conceptual art”— was retracing his steps, searching for his glasses.

Terry Graff, then curator of contemporary art at Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, had grown accustomed to such incidents. The pair had been driving around the Island, snapping photographs for what would become Askevold’s exhibition Cultural Geographies.