Good afternoon, bon matin everyone. Welcome to the third and final webinar in the three-part series. Merci for joining us today. My name is Alison Stevenson.
I am a Métis historian from Treaty Six territory and my ancestral homeland, the homeland of the Métis people. My family has last lived in Canistino, Saskatchewan and I live in Fletch Springs, Saskatchewan. My Métis ancestors include the Fiddlers, the Saïzes, the Swains, my sisters Umphrevilles and my European ancestors were French and Irish.
I'm an assistant professor in Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and the Gabriel Dumont Research Chair in Métis Studies. I'm also a citizen of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan. It is an honour to welcome you all here today on behalf of the CHA and also to thank these exceptional panelists who have so kindly agreed to share their experiences with us today. Thank you also to Dr Claudine Bonner for agreeing to chair and as always Michelle Duque who provides communication.
and technical support for us. I welcome Dr. Daniel Sims, Dr. Cheryl Thompson, Dr. Harvey Amani-Whitfield, Dr. Afua Cooper, Dr. Barrington Walker, and Hwisha Singh. As many of you know, to mark the start of the CHA's centenary, we organized an ambitious three-part program that offers a space of sustained reflection on our discipline's past, present, and future. A committee with myself, Jo McCutcheon and Letitia Johnson planned a roundtable series to begin our Rethinking History in Canada 100th Anniversary Programming.
The roundtable series of webinars consists of three webinars, the first of which was a successful reflection on women, gender, and sexuality. The second webinar presented Indigenous experiences and decolonization. In today's final webinar, scholars will focus on BIPOC, Black, Indigenous and People of Colour experiences in the profession of history.
In each webinar, presenters have been invited to speak about their experiences in the profession, association, undertaking the research or other topics of their choosing in relation to these themes. We have envisioned this as an opportunity for honest, critical conversations and this is part of the CHA's wider effort to step back to consider issues of structures of power and exclusion within the profession. The series will be followed by our annual conference in mid-May and other events will follow.
With that, thank you all and I will turn it over to Michelle followed by Dr. Claudine Bonner who will chair this session. Thank you everyone. Hi everyone, welcome to what I expect will be a really insightful and useful discussion on the experiences of Black, Indigenous and other scholars.
color working as historians in Turtle Island. Some of the prompts given were to speak to things like barriers and opportunities that they may have faced over time. So to get us started, what I'd like to do is go ahead and introduce our six participants with a little more detail.
So first we have Daniel Simms, who is a member of the Sekedene First Nation and an associate professor of First Nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia. Twisha Singh is a PhD research scholar at the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. Her research areas include South Asian history, theater and performance studies, gender and sexuality studies. Harvey Amani Whitfield is a professor of Black North American history at the University of Calgary. Whitfield is the author of Blacks on the Border, the Black Refugees in North America, in British North America 1815 to 1860, and North to Bondage, Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes.
His current book project is a biographical dictionary of enslaved Black people in the Maritimes. Cheryl Thompson is an assistant professor in performance at the Creative School at University, where she looks at race and representation. Thompson is the author of Beauty in a Box, about the politics of Black women and beauty, as well as Uncle.
race, nostalgia, and loyalty. She's also the Director of the Media Representation and Archives Lab at Ryerson. Thompson is currently working on an Ontario Early Researcher Award-funded project that will map Ontario's Black archives. Barrington Walker is Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he also holds a senior administrative equity, diversity, and inclusion position.
Finally, multidisciplinary scholar, author, and artist Dr. Vua Cooper is a fellow at the Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is the principal investigator for A Black People's History of Canada, a project housed at Dalhousie University. where she teaches and holds a Killam Research Chair. Dr. Cooper was honoured by Maclean's Magazine as one of the 50 most influential Canadians.
I welcome you all and look forward to hearing from each of you. So let's begin with Danielle, if you'd like to share with us perhaps some of your experiences and how you came to pursue work that focuses on BIPOC history. Thank you, thank you and I do appreciate that and I just want to that I'm coming to you from the traditional territory of the Caligula-Denis First Nation here in Prince George. I'm happy to be part of this panel. I think one of the issues that exists within Indigenous Studies and Indigenous history is the reluctance to be included in the BIPOC label.
And I think that does create a number of problems. Certainly I understand some of the philosophies and the reasons for why people don't want to be included, but I also think it's important for inclusion as well, particularly with regards to. some of the shared experiences and some of the similarities that exist between different groups are captured by that label. With regards to how I started getting involved with regards to BIPOC history, it was as simple as actually conducting research in my home community. So most of my research has been aimed at Northern British Columbia, different First Nations groups in Northern British Columbia and that is by definition BIPOC history.
And particularly with British Columbia. You know, we talk about the settler state, we talk about settler colonialism, but in BC there are groups that exist that don't necessarily fall into the easy categorization of European or settler. So various groups from Asia, Africa, other parts of the world as well.
So just including those groups as well. And then just looking at how the field has changed. And again, I don't necessarily want to occupy too much time today.
I'd say probably the biggest change has just been the recognition. that has occurred. So I don't want to necessarily say everything is good or everything is great, it certainly is not, but I would say that one of the things that has occurred is that there's been more scholarship as time has gone on. It hasn't necessarily been an easy addition to the curriculum or to programs, but it is good to see that change occurring.
And I often like to joke with my students that if things continue on this path, I'm going to have to completely redesign my courses because things that students had no idea about. are now becoming increasingly common knowledge. So when I first started teaching, nobody really talked about residential schools.
And with the TRC, everyone started talking about residential schools. And it got to a point where I actually had to put limits on how many students could write papers or give presentations on residential schools, because it was just an easy topic for them to actually write on. And at the level they're writing on, it wasn't necessarily insightful. undergraduate courses, first year courses, but they'd learn some of this stuff in high school. So even seeing that change occur.
So that's important as well. I think the biggest change is simply making sure this change not only sustains itself, but it also continues as time goes on. So I think that's probably the biggest thing I would say. And there has been some pushback in recent years, not necessarily in the academy, but outside in the wider world.
So critiques on curriculum. race theory, critical Indigenous studies. There's a lot of reactionary forces who want to not cover certain topics.
And I think that's the big task at hand right now is making sure that we don't succumb to those forces. And we don't, you know, follow the advice of people like Jordan Peterson, who would like to see a lot of Indigenous studies, African studies programs, even certain fields and say history, not be taught anymore. So I think that's important to recognize as well.
Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. There's so much there to unpack, you know, and the whole issue, starting with the issue of inclusion in the BIPOC label, you know, the need to disaggregate the different groups that fall into this label.
So many things that we can talk about. So I look forward to hearing more. So Tricia, would you like to jump in? Yes, and first and foremost, I'd like to thank all the panelists and CHA for having me. I'm going to provide a more student perspective, a graduate student perspective to this panel, and I thank CHA for having me on the panel once again.
So my name is Tvisha Singh. I am a PhD student at the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill, and I am a fifth-year student. I'm about to submit my PhD dissertation, hopefully this year. And yes, so I have how I came about studying South Asian history is precisely because I am from India.
I'm an Indian citizen born and brought up in New Delhi. And I have been trained in South Asian history for more than 10 years from my undergraduate, from my high school undergraduate master's. And after master's, I moved to Canada, to Montreal to pursue my PhD in the year 2017 at McGill. university.
So it has been a major, major transition and it represents a larger transition of a lot of graduate students who are coming from South Asia, from India, from Bangladesh, from Pakistan. And this transition, which I faced in 2017, it encapsulates not only academic transition per se, but also a cultural transition. So in India, the way South Asian history, particularly in my... ex-university, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi was taught was from a perspective of diversity, different religion, caste, class, background.
So that was one of the major transition when I came to North America at McGill and how South Asian history was taught at McGill. So at that point in time, McGill did not have like the history department did not have a South Asian minor. So that is one of the biggest changes that I've witnessed during my PhD studies that A South Asian Studies minor was introduced a year back in 2019, if I'm not mistaken.
Another thing which I witnessed is the basically recognition of the caste-based histories of South Asia, especially India. Harvard University recently made this provision of recognizing caste-based discrimination and caste inequality. equalities and caste equity in their universities. This is one of the major changes I'm seeing in North American academia.
So that has been two of the major changes that I've witnessed during my career in Canada. More than that, like from my personal experiences, I would also like to highlight the kind of financial constraints or like most of the international students face. So when students come from countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or South Asia, there is not necessarily enough base in the new country they are moving in.
There is cultural change, which is also coupled with financial constraints. So we are only dependent on the funding package that our universities are providing, oblivious to what are the local funding packages that we can apply to, we can possibly get. as international students.
So that was one of the major hurdles that I faced. The year I joined, major funding like the SSHRC or the FRQSC was not open to international students. It was only last to last year that that FRQSC was open to international students.
So that poses one of the major challenges in the Canadian or the North American field, especially in history where international students. are not, it's a sort of restriction that is there financially and we have to depend on our funding packages or the teaching assistantships of the universities. Also, like we have to apply for our study permits and CAQ, the process is like known to most of the international students, it's a common like common platform of mutual sharing, mutual drudgery of applying. of applying study permit and CAQ every second year, every four years. One of the constraints is that we are also not allowed to work full-time.
So there are teaching opportunities available to graduate students in other colleges and CEGEPs, but due to this restriction on our study permit, we are not allowed to explore those opportunities. So it becomes very restrictive when you're studying, especially as a graduate student, as teaching becomes one of the important career fields for any graduate student and teaching opportunities should be provided on an equivalent basis. Having said that, I would also like to, because I cannot conclude this short discussion without talking about my experience of COVID-19 as an international student.
So the last two years has been hard for all all of us but especially for international students who are had to make those tedious travel arrangements from their countries to Canada. and the kind of opportunities and restrictions they face. In my, I was stranded, last year I was stranded in Delhi during the second wave of the pandemic and India was all over the news at that time because it hit the country pretty badly.
So it was not only very worrisome, but the entire experience was very traumatic as it resulted in large number of deaths, especially in India. So having said that... The international student experience for me was that in between that I had to also fulfill my academic and professional goals like I had to TA in the VRs to fill in my position as a TA and the entire experience of traveling back to Canada which very few international like very few students know about like the international students from South Asia had to face that. last year, specifically when the travel was banned in India for, I guess, about 12 months.
So it was really, really worrisome and tedious for India, especially, and for all the PhD students whose work suffered, the archives were closed. The archives have still not opened in many parts of the world, especially in India, it's still not open. And these kinds of constraints are still there. and coupled with the financial constraints makes it very difficult for the international student to pursue or to complete their degree but having said that I have gotten a lot of support, a lot of financial guidance, financial help and a lot of mental help from my department and my department has been supportive throughout but I'm sure that that is not the case for many students in other parts of the world.
of the country. And yes, I would like to hear more comments on experiences of students of what they faced and how they are going about completing their PhD program. So with that, I guess I would like to end my brief presentation and Claudine over to you.
Okay, thank you, Tusha. That was lovely. You know, adding not just the grad student perspective but also that international dimension.
issues of culture, issues of needing to traverse across borders during what are very uncertain times. So thank you for that. So Amani, over to you. I just wanted to say I'm thankful to be on this panel.
And it's great to see old friends like Claudine and Barrington and also to see former and even current mentors like Jim Walker and John Reed and other people and dear friends like Krista Kesselring. It's just wonderful. And to see all the young graduate students and people who might have questions. I'll try to keep my comments brief because I kind of feel like people should just ask questions.
Maybe that might be helpful. But I wanted to start with some historical documentation. So I published this book recently about different biographies of enslaved people into Maritimes. This has a point, just hang on. One of them, for example, was a woman named Sarah, who in 1783 was age 20. She was enslaved to one Jasper Buckle.
And Jasper Buckle migrated to the Maritimes after the American Revolution. And we think Sarah, this 30-year-old African-American woman, was probably from New York, and she had one unnamed infant child. The British official at New York noted that previously she had belonged to one John Tabor Kemp, who was sort of a well-known loyalist for those of us into loyalist studies, and he described Sarah as, and I'm quoting now, a short wench. Another entry, of course, is the unnamed infant child of Sarah, was a slave to Jasper Buckle. Won't know this child's name.
All we know is that at least in 1783, for a while, this enslaved child was alive. Don't know the name, don't know what happened to the child. It's totally unclear, right? And so I guess what I would say about all of this is, you know, I don't want to date myself too much in terms of age, but, you know, you know, I remember Barrington and I going to, I think it was the 2002 CHA. Correct me if I'm wrong, might have been 2003, I can't remember.
But I think the big difference, the biggest difference is today, there's a lot of people in the historical profession care about. uh, you know, this woman and her infant child. And I don't know that we can really say that about 20 years ago. Now, it's not just I don't want to say that, like, people in the profession totally didn't care.
Don't get me wrong. It just wasn't like a deep field of interest. You know what I mean?
And so I think that that's just something I've got going on as they asked also. How did we get into this? And as some of you all know, for me, it was like totally accidental. Like, I really ended up in the Maritimes kind of accidentally. I'm from the U.S.
And I was doing as you know, I was doing British Imperial and African history, which at the time was sort of what Dalhousie had been known for. And so that that's why I was there. And, you know, one day I was.
basically feeling unsure about my project in African history. And I went into Michael Cross's office. For those of you who don't know, Michael Cross is very famous.
I'd say, I kind of want to say labor, but I think he would just call himself more of a social historian. He just died in the last couple of years, but I think four years ago he died. But, you know, and he said to me, he said, you know, Amani.
if you really want to stay at Dow and do your PhD, he's like, have you ever thought about just doing Black Canadian history? He's like, there's not a whole lot there. And this is not, mind you, this is like 19, I was very young in graduate school.
But this was probably 1999, maybe 2000. And he just said, you know, there's not a lot out there. Have you ever thought about writing about that? He's like, you know, aside from, you know, winks, and he mentioned, of course, Professor Walker, because of course, Jim had done his PhD when Michael was a professor there.
He said, you know, there's not a whole lot. He's like, there might be stuff that I don't know about. It's not really my field. But he said, you know, maybe maybe that's a path forward for you. And I thought, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, let me let me let me give it a try.
And so what I ended up doing is I ended up doing a PhD. in the history of the Maritimes. You know, I guess at heart, I mean, I would admit, I would probably say I do African-American history, broadly African-North American, but really in my heart of hearts, I like to just call myself, I can do this now because I'm a full professor, but I like to just call myself honestly, like a Nova Scotia historian, because you know what, that's really what David Sutherland and Judith Fingar taught me to be, right?
Because David and Judith were not, even though Judith did. published quite a bit on Black Nova Scotians, and David published a couple articles, you know, they were more, I would say, sort of, I guess now you'd call them British Atlantic world historians, and in fact, Nova Scotian historians. And so I think at that time, when I was in graduate school, and I could be wrong, I'm sure people can correct me, but I think Jim might have had the one maybe focused PhD program in Black Canadian history.
If I'm forgetting another one, I'll ask Afua. embarrassing to correct me because I think at Toronto people were studying with Dr. Ayaka Veda, but I could be wrong. So for me at Dalhousie, it was a lot of learn the literature on the Maritimes and then go to the archives and focus, ask a research question. And that's what I did with my book about the Black refugees.
It was all about that. So I guess I would say that the biggest change for me now. is how much larger the field is and how many more people are actually interested in it.
Academics and lay people. It's kind of shocking, but it's really, really exciting. And it's led me to wonder out loud. I might write a short piece for the CHR.
I don't know. But like, are we in a golden age of African-Canadian historical writing or Black Canadian historiography? We might be.
I don't know. The other thing is like. You know, just quickly to mention, you know, in terms of opportunities, there's a lot more there. I mean, than there were back in the day, I think. You know, I used to always say, you know, in America, back home where I'm from in the South, you know, racism is insidious, but it's right in your face.
You know, because a lot of times you just tell you to your face. But universities took steps to address that imperfectly. Of course, right?
My mom taught at Howard University, but I mean like imperfectly, but schools, primarily white institutions, were aware of the problems they were trying to address it. But Dalhousie... And some of the other schools needed to do more. We had the transition year program, which Isaac's doing a great job with now, and Jim had been part of early in the 70s, but we needed more of those programs.
And I think now we're realizing that there's more opportunities out there. And there are departments hiring in Black Canadian history. I'm just thinking, Calgary bought me to Canada after me being a professor at a US school for, I don't know, 15, 16 years.
Guelph is just hiring somebody right now. I know I'm leaving things out. York made a wonderful hire recently.
So I think for me, everyone, it's all of those things. And I think when I say more opportunities, I want to be really clear. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to just claim that there's this sort of blanket racism in the Canadian historical profession. That's not what I'm trying to say.
What I'm trying to say is that you know, in 2002, 2003, a person who did Black history or a Black person who did Black history, you know, you could apply for like a pre-confed or post-confed job, right? But there weren't as many jobs out there for maybe Black historians, you know? I think you could just have easily gotten a job if you did, you know. I don't know, pre-Confederation labor history in Belleville.
And there's nothing wrong with that. But so I think that that was part of the difference. And just one quick personal story that I'll never forget is that when I was applying for jobs, because I'm an American, I was not a Canadian or a permanent resident. So it's very hard for a Canadian school to make a case saying, well, yeah, he kind of does Canadian history.
But, you know, it was like they couldn't really do that. And I remember I had applied for a job at Western Ontario. and they couldn't hire me.
But I got a phone call from JBB Forrester. You're probably wondering, some of y'all might not know him. He's an old business historian.
He really didn't have to bother at all. He called me on the phone, and he said, Amani, I just want you to know, if I could hire you, I would love to. But he's like, I can't, because I can't tell them that I'm hiring an American for a Canadian history job. It's not going to work, right?
Now, if we had the same things we have now with Black Canadian history, who knows? But he said, I really believe you're going to be successful in this profession and just hang in there. And it really helped me because I really was thinking about quitting and going back home to the States, going to U.S. military, you know, whatever, U.S. politics.
So I'm thankful for that phone call. I'm thankful for all the people who have helped me get to where I am in this profession and real happy to answer any questions from any grad students or anybody else. And it's just so wonderful.
to be on a panel with old friends, Claudine and Barrington and Fouay. Just, it means so much. So thanks.
Thanks, everyone. And new friends like Daniel and the graduate student from McGill. And I'm sorry, I forgot your name. So thank you all. Tricia.
Thank you. Thanks, Amani. Again, so much there.
And, you know, I find it particularly interesting that All three speakers have talked about this idea of us being in a particular historical moment, a moment of transition in terms of the scholarship in our different fields. So I think that's important to think about. And I'd love to hear other people's perspectives on that.
So, Cheryl, how about we hear from you? Yes, thank you. And Amani, we've never met, but I'm here with you, by the way. Just, you know, it's funny to me because I am a couple of things. One, I'm a reluctant historian who writes history.
I'm not a trained historian in any way, but I'm a storyteller. So that's how I approach everything that I do. I approach it from storytelling. And I think also not being trained in a history program. That's probably why I write the things that I write, because I'm not thinking about the field.
I don't know what the field is. I'm not thinking about the canon. I don't know the canon.
I'm just trying to tell stories and approach it from my own lived experience and also my research. And, you know, Claudine, I forgot to mention in my bio that I have been working on studying Blackface, like Black Canadian, Blackface history in Canada for like 12 years now. That is the book that I'm currently writing.
That is really a history. And, you know, the thing is, is that I didn't, I was writing histories when I was a grad student at McGill. I also went to McGill, Tricia, 2009 to 2015. And so when I started at McGill, that was the first time that I actually started histories. My MA really was a contemporary project, so I never went into the archive and I never considered it really a history.
Even though it was, it was like a history of 1985 onward, which I don't really consider to be the kind of histories that I'm doing today. So for me, I went to McGill and I thought, okay, I'm reading Imani Whitfield. I'm reading Barrington Walker. I'm reading Afua Cooper.
I'm reading Claudine Bonner. I'm reading all y'all, okay? And I'm thinking to myself, I'm absorbing your ideas. And at the same time, and I was trained to, my PhD is in communication studies. And because that's such a new field, the way we're taught to think is to read what everyone is doing and then zero in on what they're not saying that you feel like you can say.
Just weed out what's not being said, basically. Or not that it's not being said, but it doesn't. You have ideas that you're not hearing replicated out of the field. So find yourself in that little gap, whatever exists. So that's essentially what I did, right?
I wasn't really thinking about that I'm going to be a historian or that I'm going to be the field of history. To Amani's point, I mean, when I started my undergrad, I was like, history? No, no, no, that is not a field for Black people.
Like, that was literally my thought. Like, you're not going to be nurtured in that space. Who is going to supervise you?
What are you going to read? Like, I just had a lot of negative things. And it was from experience, because every time I would mention what I was interested in, especially at McGill, a history professor would tell me that that's not a valid topic. So I would always get these, like, really negative responses. My PhD was Beauty in a Box.
That was my dissertation that I then rewrote into the book. And so it was in 2015, actually. There's two actually flashpoint moments that I think.
really made me realize how the field has changed. And it was in 20, it would have been 2014. I was just finishing at McGill. I wrote an article for the Graduate Essay Prize in the Canadian Journal of History. So I submitted the article for the prize and the article was on the Dawn of Tomorrow, which is the London, Ontario based Black Canadian newspaper that was pivotal in a lot of the chapters in Beauty in a Box.
So I just, I just saw this call for grad essays to go out, I thought, you know, what do I have to lose? So I actually wrote the paper in response to the call. I didn't have the paper already there.
So I wrote the paper, submitted it. And then I think it was like six months later when they came out with the results and I could not believe it when I won. I was like, how could I win?
I'm not even a historian and I've never written a paper like this before. So that to me was a major like. Green lights flashing, you need to do more of this.
And what I realized is that I was writing about Black Canadian media. And that was my in. That was the topic that I feel like had not really been given that much attention as a standalone topic. People had engaged with Black newspapers, of course.
Everybody knows Robin Winks and the good old Blacks in Canada. But nobody had made it a field to say these community presses were basically... like networks, because they're also telling an international story, connecting African Canadians to African Americans, and even people from the Caribbean.
So because I'm in communication studies, I realized that's where I could really become the historian of this aspect of Blackness in Canada, that taps into my specialization in terms of my PhD, but also my interest in my community and my interest in storytelling, because what is the newspaper but stories? So it just kind of all fit. And then just recently, in 2021, I won the Canadian Historical Association Best Essay Prize.
And again, I couldn't believe it. Honestly, I could not believe it because that wasn't my intention, right? And I think every time I get one of these best paper prizes, it really shocks me because I'm just trying to tell stories.
And I think in terms of, I do want to answer this question about barriers and opportunities that I faced over time. I would say just general pervasive discouragement. And I'm sure a lot of people can relate to most of the things that I write about now that everybody seems really interested in IE blackface. When I started doing that, people thought I was crazy.
People thought it was not a topic. Why are you talking about this? This is no one's going to find this interesting beauty in a box writing about black women, beauty culture at McGill.
Let's just say I had no funding. I never won any major awards. I remember being in groups with grad students when we would have to, you know, at grad school, you always have to share your topic.
What are you working on? And every time I would tell them what I was working on, people would leave. People would get up and leave the room kind of thing.
Disinterested doesn't even sum it up. And so those were the barriers. And so the last thing I would say is how did I overcome those barriers to now have one, a successful book out of it? working on a third book is that I didn't listen to those people because they had no vision. If you're writing histories that have never been done, you have to have a vision that is beyond the feedback that you're going to get from people who don't understand what you're doing or don't see it as a topic.
And so I intuitively knew that everything that I've been writing about and write about eventually. people are going to start to find it interesting. I just always kind of believe that now it could be a little bit naive. I could be naive and delusional. So that also helps in academia, because it means you're just going to do it.
And so you have to be fearless. And so for me, that's how I overcome, overcame those barriers. But I would say, I still think the field still has a long way to go in terms of... I always think about the things that I'm not seeing written about, and there's a whole long list to go. So I think, yes, it's come a long way, but I think we're still articulating ourselves.
And to the point, I do think this is a bit of a renaissance. I really do. Because in my lifetime, I don't remember so many voices saying so many different things. It's not that we're all saying the same thing.
We're saying sometimes completely, even contradictory things maybe. And I actually think that's when a community has grown up. when there's disagreement, because there's so much happening that people can now start to say, hey, you know what, when that person said that 10 years ago, I actually think we're somewhere else.
That to me is a mature discourse. And I think we are there, but we still have further to go. I don't want to act like we've reached some pinnacle because you know what, the minute you say that, they're like, oh good, it's over. No Black hires anymore.
So no, no, no, we're not there yet. We're just, we're getting there. So don't, anybody who's on here thinking it's done, it's not done. But it's just an encouraging time to be doing this work. I think I'll just leave it with that.
Okay. Thanks, Cheryl. And that's, you know, in seven minutes, that's quite the journey from not a valid topic to, you know, being able to talk about maturity in the discipline.
So, yeah. Thank you. Barrington, you're up.
Thanks, Clydene. Thanks, everybody, for making the time to be on this call today. Echo a lot of Amani's sentiments and Cheryl's sentiments and Daniel, Tricia.
Yeah, it's good to reconnect with people that I've known for a long time. And it's great to make some new friends. So, you know, for me, I was glad to have the opportunity to think about some of these questions over the weekend.
And I've been teaching in universities at various levels for nearly 30 years. And the story of what led me to study BIPOC peoples, although Daniel's point is well taken, I think BIPOC is reaching the end of its usefulness, I think, as an analytical category. It's probably time to sunset BIPOC for a few reasons.
But for me, it's not that complicated, but drew me to BIPOC history and experiences. But for me, it was the silences in Canadian institutions from K to 12. So some of my formative experiences growing up and in higher education about our lived experiences, our contributions. And what Anthony Stewart has called in a really insightful blog post, you know, the insufferable kind of invisibility.
that characterizes the ways in which we've been positioned vis-a-vis national narratives. And as Amani alluded to, that invisibility sometimes is often a lot worse than overt racial hostility because at least in overt racial hostility, not to say that we don't have that in this country too, but when that isn't part of the dominant narrative and you're instead stuck with this invisibility, it's a lack of... of recognition that we're only just starting to come out of in many spheres of Canadian life. So in terms of changes in the field, you know, I think other people have hit on a lot of this. a lot of this, just reflecting on my lived experiences.
I think most of the earlier work was focused on a couple of things. And yes, there was that kind of pervasive culture of systemic discouragement that Cheryl was talking about. And I could talk more about one of my sort of origin stories and that whole piece around discouragement, but I won't unless somebody asks.
I think... a couple of things that we were trying to say that we were here in Canada and trying to find a place and a lot of the early scholarship to me is that you know we were here too we made a contribution kind of stuff and trying to point to our physical social and epistemic place in a profession that was not only unwelcoming in very broad strokes but couldn't even imagine us being a part of it in the way in which the disciplines the discipline of history Canadian history in particular was constituted. There was only, infrequently, there was a place for us as the objects of study, and the reference to the great book is, I think, Cheryl, is sort of indicative of that, but very little conversation about us being, or very little space to imagine us as being the creators of new knowledge, right? I think that for me has been kind of profound, is living through that.
We also, thinking back on some of my history, coming through Canadian history, I'll just say have a very, had, have a very complicated relationship to the left. And I'll leave it there for now. I think in terms of how things have changed, there's been some slow shifts.
I think catalyzed by the summer racial reckoning and all the things that we know. And that and unfortunately, you know, finding mass graves with Indigenous children. Unfortunately, we're in a moment where these are the things that get people kind of mobilized, which I have a lot of mixed feelings about. And it often does seem like a bit of a scramble.
Frankly, panels like this seem to be suddenly in vogue. after years of kind of neglecting these sorts of things. But, you know, we do need to keep pushing for these changes, how the discipline imagined itself again.
And I think actually one of the panelists mentioned, just I think it was Cheryl, how a lot of BIPOC people don't even see themselves taking history courses and had similar conversations with... members of my family who are reaching university age and asking some very frank questions about whether or not for example it's beneficial in terms of their own in terms of their own sanity right to stay in in this discipline or maybe to to to go over and do Indigenous studies you know my university I'm making a little plug for Laurier has one of the finest faculties of Indigenous studies and this is something that one of my children are interested in and I think that probably be staring him in that direction. And I think that's something that we need to to be cognizant of in the historical profession that people do have options, right? Students have options about where they want to park their tuition dollars.
So I think, you know, we need to keep pushing for a new kind of boldness. And I think there is a new boldness in BIPOC scholarship kind of beyond the we were here too stuff. I think younger scholars are making serious contributions around method and theory, epistemology, expanding how we think about archives, and finding places for the work.
In terms of barriers and opportunities, I think a lot of what I've said already points to barriers. In terms of opportunities, you know, I'd be remiss if I hadn't, if I don't sort of say that I've been fortunate as well. I've been able to have a career where many in this profession have not been afforded that. opportunity. Many people who certainly deserve it, who weren't, I don't know, lucky enough, resilient enough to hang around for this moment of renaissance that Amani's talking about, a lot of people, Amani, sort of just gave up before this moment was, right?
They just, they got tired and they left before this moment came about. And we know that there are larger issues around precarity and things that are, that are, that are a profession. is facing.
It's been wonderful to get to make a contribution to a number of fields and to do it in Canada. I also want to say that students have been, it's been a real joy for me just to be able to teach at the undergraduate and the graduate levels. Even though one of my graduate students just sent me a DM saying that my earphones, my headphones are way too big for my face.
I still love all of my, you know who you are out there. I still love all of my graduate students. And it's been an absolute joy being able to mentor and teach them.
And lastly, I'll talk about, you know, this latest chapter that I'm in, and that's my administrative portfolio. This has been a tremendous opportunity. to try and change things at a very high level. So although I agree that we're in this, I think I could be convinced that this is a moment of renaissance, there's also been a lot of work behind the scenes to open up spaces to make this renaissance possible. So there are a lot of people who are advocating and making arguments for greater representation of BIPOC people in the university today.
I'll leave it there and back to you, Claudia, looking forward to hearing from my good friend of Will Cooper. Thank you, Barrington. And I think that last point you made is so important that we think about the heavy lifting that's happening away from just the research and the writing.
You know, a lot of people are doing a lot of hard work to allow us to get to this point where we're talking about sustainability, we're talking about creation. programs. We're talking about hiring the faculty and training up more young students. So I think that's really vital that we remember that a lot of heavy lifting has been done and is being done. So for that, thank you.
So Dr. Fuokouper, your final speaker. Okay. Thank you, Claudine. And thanks to everyone on the panel, old friends and you. It's a pleasure to be here.
I thank CHA for... inviting me. So with regards to how I came to do this work, I thought of it and I grew up in East Kingston, Jamaica. I am a Jamaican immigrant with a Jamaican accent, as I was reminded in in Montreal when I went to launch my book, The Hanging Alfangelique, at someone in the audience.
What do you know about Canadian history? You're a Jamaican immigrant. So not only do you face the discrimination because you're Black, you kind of face it because of where you're from and your accent, right?
So I couldn't possibly know anything about Canadian history, but yeah. And, you know, the area I grew up in, in East Kingston, it's a working class neighborhood, right? Lots of Rasta philosophy.
I'm a Rasta child. I grew up with Rastafarians. And so people like...
Walter Rodney, the names on Kamau Brathwaite were like holy names in those environments, which is interesting because these are not people who had, I mean, the people who raised me and who were in my neighborhood. They are not people with university degrees, right? But there were some of the best philosophers, some of the best teachers, some of the best historians around. And as I've said, Walter Rodney was like, you know, a saint. in East Kingston and in places like Augustine.
So I was growing up in an environment where people had a historical consciousness. And that's how I came to history. I thought I would do a PhD. I knew I was going to university. I was my intention to do a PhD from when I was in high school.
So in many ways, it was that consciousness, this is going to happen. But coming to Canada as an immigrant, things kind of became precarious, right? So my eventually getting a PhD in history, I said that was serendipity, as much as there was a lot of conscious effort behind that.
I have a PhD in Canadian history from the University of Toronto History Department, and I was part of the same cohort at U of T. I think we were two of the people who had who did anything on like Black Canadian history in that department maybe for the longest while in Canada. There was also Sheldon Taylor who came out of that department but who never continued in the field but my PhD was to be in African history. That didn't happen because of just some things which I probably, yeah, if I can't say it on this panel, when am I going to say it, right? There was a lot of hateration.
So I had to leave African history and go over to Canadian history. And thankfully, Franca Iacovetta, who was the, you know, I went to her before I quit African history. I went to her and said, would you take me on?
And she said, yes. But before that, um, and I thank her a lot, a lot. But before that, my master's was in Canadian history.
I did my master's degree on Black teachers at OISE on the Alice Apprentice. And so, you know, I was there, you know, researching, writing. I know all the archives in Southwestern Ontario and in Toronto.
Did everything I could do at that time on Black teachers and students and education and separate schools and so on. But. You know, having completed, doing the MA, doing the PhD, and at the same time, and I must mention the book, We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up, it says in African Canadian Women's History, which was a foundational book, right? I mean, it was like the first scholarly book we had on Black women's history in Canada.
And I did that as a graduate student. I was part of it with Adrienne Shad, Peggy Bristow. dion brand linda carty sylvia hamilton and linda um annette henry from ubc was part of it but you know she at the end she she wasn't part of it anymore and we we never had any funding for that book we just kind of did it on our own and went to uft press and say hey this is this wonderful manuscript you must publish it which they did and it's still in print 1994 you do the math how many years is that And so it was this activism. I say my scholarship has always been infused with activism because without activism, from my perspective, we couldn't have done what we did.
So it was never an ivory tower or an ebony tower kind of thing. If we didn't have activism, and I see myself as a scholar activist, I've always been in the community, which is... kind of not a good thing, you know, when I was a graduate student. You didn't say that because you would be considered like a real scholar if people knew that you went up to Malvern Library to give a lecture on, I don't know, famous Black inventors or something of Ontario.
If people frowned on that, right, the universe was really the ivory tower and if some Blacks were in it then they created their own ebony tower. But in my own experience, This, what we are talking about, this renaissance wouldn't happen if there wasn't activism. So that's how I came into history.
It was kind of meant to be, was fate. The opportunities, it's been talked about before. Like when I finished my PhD in, when did I? When I defend my PhD, goodness, in 2000, August, yes, I did the defense. There were no jobs.
I couldn't get any job. My scholarly journey was precarious. I couldn't get any jobs in, say, Black Canadian history, right?
So I taught at Rice. And so one of the things actually about doing a degree at U of T is that you're well-trained. Because- You have to do other fields.
So my other fields were African history, Caribbean history, and women's history. So then I got a job at Ryerson. It was a full-time job.
It wasn't tenure, but it was full-time. You get all the benefits. Salary wasn't bad in Caribbean history because I trained in Caribbean history, actually at York University.
Don't ask me that, but it's on my U of T degree. And because I was trained in Black Canadian history too, in my Caribbean history courses, I always infused Canadian history. There was all that. Caribbean people migrated to Canada after the Second World War and even before that period, talking about the 18th century, the Maroons and so on. But in terms of a tenure job, no, it just wasn't there.
And so... And because I had another life, because I had another life as a creative author in which I was successful as a creative writer, I don't think that beat down my spirit too much if I hadn't had that creative life. But it was really discouraging because Amani talked about going to those conferences and people had no interest in Black Canadian history.
They kind of thought you were a loser. And I've been told that no one said, Afua, you're a loser for studying Black Canadian history. But, you know, they said it in more sophisticated language.
People thought you were a real loser if you were doing Black Canadian stuff. Right. So the and because of that, perhaps because I didn't have those constraints, I was able to create opportunities.
And I'm just going to talk about the bicentenary of the abolition of the British Slave Trade Act. That was, you know, 1807 that happened and the bicentenary would have been 2007. And I thought, here's an opportunity to use all my knowledge and training in slavery and African diaspora to do something for Ontario. So for between 2007 and 2009, when I did not have a university appointment, I...
And it was a real joy, actually, to be, my title was a chief knowledge officer for the province of Ontario in rolling out this Black history endeavor. It's like I died and gone to heaven. The province gave me, well, they didn't give it in my hand, unlike what many people thought, but I had a million dollars.
And I did 33 projects all across the province of Ontario. Not me, I didn't do that. We did things like, you know, a restoration of cemeteries, an academic conference, University of Ottawa Law School. And that was to commemorate the bicentenary. And I just, there were so many partnerships, so many people that were involved, university folks, community folks, students.
And that was an opportunity. That was an opportunity that came because of my training, because of my love. for history and the desire that did not come out of a university institution because when I approached several university institutions like hey what are you doing for this important bicentenary no one was interested so you know within the the barrier there was the opportunity I would say another barrier is we we don't have a lot of resources there are few resources that are dedicated to Black history and I'm going to say Black history not necessarily you Black Studies.
One financial, there's an issue of SSHRC. I remember one year writing to Chad Gaffield because I had done my research and for that year SSHRC had given only something like one grant to anything that had to do with Black something and it wasn't even given to a Black person. So SSHRC didn't didn't think that what we were doing was was important either.
And of course, Mr. Gaffey wrote back and he said nice things, which he's supposed to say nice things. But those are some of the barriers to, you know, to the development of this field. People are talking about the target hires that we've had. That came because of two things. One is because of the public murder of George Floyd.
And everybody was shocked. And then. universities and banks and corporations and everybody suddenly discovered that there was anti-Blackness, you know, in the world, in the United States and in Canada, and everybody started putting anti-Black, what you call it, statements on their website.
The other reason, though, was the long-time activism that had been going on behind the scenes, as Barrington said, behind the scenes by Black faculty and other... faculty, staff for decades. If people remember in 2006, I believe, Queen's University put out that culture of whiteness report, right? So people have been doing this. People have been agitating for this.
When the Black Canadian Studies Association was founded at Simon Fraser, and, you know, I was the lead on that because I was at Simon Fraser at the time. and called this meeting of Black scholars, which eventually became the Black Canadian Studies Association. That's one of the things we were talking about, the hiring of Black faculty across Canada. And I'm sure people before that meeting at Simon Fraser were talking about that.
So it's been a long journey and there's a lot of behind the scenes and there has been a lot of sacrifice people have made for this to happen. So that's how the target situation is, you know, that's how it's gone. Another barrier, if you want to call it barrier, I don't know, is, or for Black scholars, is the reluctance of some journals to publish Black history articles. Okay, so at this point, you know, I'm going to be like Steve B. Quincy.
I say what I like. After being an article of mine being rejected by CHR, I called up the people, I said, what's this? I looked at the comments and so on, and then I kind of got in a little tiff with one of the people I was speaking to.
And it just seems to me that the goalposts kept moving. And then, you know, I said, well, you've been publishing for 100 years. So tell me, how many Black scholars have you published? And it was about maybe two or three, right?
I'm not saying they haven't published articles on Black studies. Certainly, you know, James Walker has published in CHR and Shirley Yee on Black history, you know, epistemologies. But here's a journal that's been publishing for 100 years.
And... and not much on Black history. So those are some of the barriers.
Reluctance of journals too. And I'm going to finish a thought, but I just want to say these journals, Canadian history journals, they will publish African-American stuff or even African stuff, but not Black Canadian stuff. Of course, you're going to tell me, you know, they just published Barrington or whomever, right?
But I'm just saying there's been a reluctance for this to happen. over the course of 100 years and here we are. So it's great that Black Canadian history is being seen as this field, you know, this topic of worthiness. It has scholarly, it's now getting scholarly recognition and so on and so forth, but it has been a long journey and I say maybe it's just through the inspiration.
of my grandmother, Georgiana Cooper, who was the family historian and a born storyteller, why I stuck it out. I actually felt that there was a point when I couldn't and I would leave, but for some reason, I'm still here. And Claudine, the whole Macklin's award or recognition, I didn't know of it.
I had no idea. It was... It was someone from Pier 21 Museum who sent me a message of congratulations. And I was saying, why? For what?
What's this? And then she told me because McLean's already did. They said, hey, Fuqua Cooper, send us a photograph of yourself. How many DPIs or whatever?
And I just had my daughter sent it to them. I had no idea. But I'm going to wrap up. The $1 million I got from Department of Canadian Heritage to do this Black People's History of Canada, again, it's Department of Canadian Heritage.
It's not SHERP. So it's outside of the established funding institutions. What it says to me is that there are other people, other institutions who see Black history as something worthy.
worthy enough to get this $1 million funding. So there's still hope. I'm still hopeful.
I'm an optimistic person. And I will end it at that. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Cooper.
As I listened to you, I was thinking that, you know, you talked about George Floyd and decades long activism having brought us to the moment that we're at. And, you know, Danielle started by talking about the importance of the TRC in terms of the increased scholarship, the changes that we're seeing in the academy around Indigenous history. Tusha talked about, you know, the changes, the addition of South Asian, the minor program.
And so, you know, we're seeing this kind of movement forward in terms of the scholarship. And it just makes me wonder. I don't see any questions. in the Q&A.
So I'm going to ask a question and then perhaps open it up to the people on the call to talk amongst yourselves because there's been so much. there's been so much that's been brought up that we can talk amongst ourselves about. But I'm wondering about your thoughts on the future of the discipline for those of us who chose to study or chose this particular focus.
We see, we all, I think, agree that we're in a particular moment and that we're seeing a movement forward. But Daniel also mentioned something that I think is very important to acknowledge and recognize, and it's that there are are the pushbacks, there is the critique. And, you know, I'm always, I'm a believer in the pendulum swings.
So yeah, we have this forward momentum. But what does the future look like for you? And feel free to jump in.
I can't see everyone on my little phone screen. So whoever on the call would like to can go ahead. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead. I'll say that higher education is changing, right, or has changed, especially now in the past two years. where a lot of people are teaching online because of COVID-19.
Higher education is changing. Who knows in the next 20 years what's going to happen? Will we even have history departments?
I don't know because things are being consolidated and everything is about money, et cetera, et cetera. But for the field to grow, we have to continue training people. graduate students, even, well, I'm not going to say even, that sounds condescending, from the undergraduate level right up to PhD.
Hopefully, we will get people to train at the PhD level in these disciplines, but that's the main thing that's going to have to happen. And for that to happen, you have to give competitive packages or offer competitive packages to students, like I'm in right now. in a situation with the university where I teach, which is Dalhousie, and you have no visit time, you're offering packages to people and there's that kind of thing about, okay, you put more money here because you want the student to come and study, right, and be trained and mentored by you. So universities have to step up to the plate in offering. competitive financial packages.
So that's one thing. Another critical aspect is that if we want people to train in the field is that we have to literally begin from primary school. And otherwise, you know, with Black people, with the Black community, we know our students are coming into the university.
But we know they are going to teach us college and we know they are going to law school, which makes sense. Because at the end of their studies, they want to be able to walk into a job. They can get a job as a high school teacher, definitely a job as a lawyer.
If you're going to say to people, oh, come and do a PhD in, you know, 18th century Black Canada. Oh, that doesn't sound so attractive, right? We have to... It just has to begin our efforts.
And this is where activism is important. This is where bridging the gap between the university and community is important. We have to go in the community. We have to talk to kids in grade four.
You could become a historian. You could become a history teacher, whatever. Thanks, Afua. Does anyone else want to jump in on that question?
We do have a question in the Q&A. Yeah, this is Cheryl. I just wanted to say, I just have a quick comment. You know, I'm also squarely in the communication studies field as well. And, you know, over the last few years, the running hashtag in that field is hashtag communication so white.
And that's not just in Canada, that's also in the US, like we literally started that hashtag. And there's a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communications coming out on hashtag communication so white. Last year at Congress, that was literally the theme of CCA, hashtag communication so white.
And I think it's about time that history departments start to hashtag history departments so white and actually start to move on that line. Because the reality is, is that, you know, I'm maybe a cohort, you know, behind Barrington, Ofua and Amani. And my experience is exactly the same.
So it's not like I have any benefit in that sense. Nothing had changed. And I talk to students doing their undergraduate studies now, and history departments still are exactly the same.
You look at a history department across the country, just like a communication studies department across the country, and you probably won't even find a Black scholar. And if you do, right, they have the one and it's like they check that box and they will not hire another one because they have the one. And the reality is, is that if you're going to actually shift a space, we all know that the magic number is three. It's not even two. You actually need three people in that space because then you're going to have a multiplicity of ideas.
Right. If you just have two, they're going to pit one against the other and say you're not like so-and-so and the other. It's always going to be a comparison. Three, you actually have a community that are reflecting a lot of different opinions. And I think the idea of three Black scholars in a department, any field in Canada, three Black scholars in the same department, and I think they're going to think there's a revolt happening, right?
And I think that's the mentality that needs to change. Because the truth is, if you don't have that critical mass, it's very difficult for those who don't know how universities work. People always focus on the fact that You know, we need more grad students.
We need more grad students. Yeah. But you also need faculty because who's going to work with the, with the grad students. Right. I see a lot of heads nodding.
It's real. It's like, I got into McGill, but I got in on a wait list because they were like, we love you, but you have, we, we only have one person for you to work with and they're going on sabbatical next year. So, so imagine that precarity of the grad student. So it's a combination deal.
And I think a lot of history departments are not paying attention to that. To Barrington's point, if you want to make the field of history more attractive to students, guess what? Get some Black faculty and you're going to be more attractive to students. Like the two really go hand in hand. And the problem in a lot of history departments, like communication studies, they're not making that connection.
They're just thinking students. They're not thinking, who are the students going to be mentored? by like who is going to do the work.
And so it's, it's a complicated conversation, but I think it, it actually, for me, I actually think it needs to start internally and then outward. I don't think outward inward is going to make much of a difference. Okay. Thank you, Cheryl. So I'd like to quickly add something to that, to Dr. Thompson, Dr. Hooper's comments, because that like I resonate.
with that so much because when I took South Asian history at McGill in my department, there is only one professor in my department who teaches South Asian history, per se, South Asian history specialist. And there are two things arising out of this conversation. Firstly, any field, whether it's South Asian history or Black history, it's so diverse.
It's very difficult for one faculty member to specialize. in all the fields. For example, South Asian history has ancient history, modern history, medieval history.
In my university back in India, there were like three sub departments in one department which comprises of South Asian history. So how can that get across to the students? In this summer, for the first time, I'm teaching a course, a summer course on South Asian history and themes in South Asian history.
So there are students coming up to me and asking, what is the scheme you're teaching or what research you're asking. We know a lot about general information about South Asian history, but we don't know what research topics to take, what to pursue for a PhD. And that problem is precisely arising out of this fact that there is no subspecializations in those fields.
It's so underrepresented. So I completely resonate with Sheryl. And on one other point on her small presentation about her research topic.
So I am researching on theater and performance and I research on colonial stage actresses in Calcutta, India, colonial India and in London. So I had the same experience when I first started conceptualizing my proposal. And there was a lot of questions on why are you working on actors?
actresses, that too in colonial theatre, that too in Calcutta. So there were a lot of questions about how to fulfil kind of my proposal. But I'm very thankful that I got support of my supervisors at that point, because there were other professors from my university back in India, who were very sceptical about my research topics.
So I resonated a lot with Cheryl on that. So thank you for the insight. And also, Dr. Cooper, I really resonated with your experience.
And it's so inspiring to hear about it at so many levels I can't even express. Because this panel is more invigorating and inspiring more than anything to me. Because I did not find the space to say these things earlier.
This is the first time I have a space to. say such stuff and also regarding one of the funding which I talked very modestly and briefly about about SHERC and FRQSC. So I applied for FRQSC and I really worked on the proposal and it was basically reviewed by my department and they were very happy about my proposal but The kind of reply I got from FRQSC was that you are among the top seven candidates we have shortlisted for the scholarship, but we are only giving it out to just five students and none of them are from BIPOC community or people of color. And yes, that was my personal experience of rejection. The first year when FRQSC went international, to international students.
there were hardly any international students there. So yeah, so thank you all and yes Claudine, I won't interrupt anymore. That's okay Tosha, thank you, I appreciate your contribution. So we have a question in the chat which I'm having trouble getting to hear from Nekoni.
Hi Nekoni, and the question reads how do we connect our Canadian history to the African American and Caribbean history? which are the origins of Black Canadian history and ultimately to our ancestral homeland for emotional and spiritual strength in the 21st century. So drawing connections between Canadian history, African-American, Caribbean and to the African continent.
And I could throw that out to anybody who would like to answer on the panel. I mean, just quickly, I mean, I. I think you just do it.
Anything else to add? I mean, yeah, there's intersections and depending on the topic, you just do that work. I kind of write about, I write about African-American history.
I write about Caribbean history. I don't, I haven't spent too much time writing about the African continent just based on what I've been specializing in, but the future is long and it's ahead of me. So you just never know.
Yeah, go ahead, Afua. No, I was going to say the questioner is asking how, the questioner is not necessarily a teacher or an academic. So I would say to the questioner to take my course, it's called SOSA 2005, Introduction to African Canadian Studies.
I'm being cheeky, of course, but if you're in, well, you can take it online now. But, you know, I deal with Caribbean, African. Of course, Canada is a matrix, right?
But he did ask him, how do you get emotional and spiritual strength in wanting, which is an important point, right? Because we do this work, whether we're students or teachers. you know, for cerebral satisfaction. That's one of the reasons we do it. But it's also spiritual work.
Let me speak for myself. It's also spiritual work. It's also emotional work. And these things are important. And sometimes I think that having that orientation because of the kind of satisfaction you get from it, the emotional satisfaction.
Like when I go and speak to a group of, of whomever in this case prisoners at kingston prison at joyceville penitentiary black easter month right kind of like an awful place to be um more awful for the prisoners but like you're going into joyceville and you have to go through three levels of of big doors it's by time you get to the inmates you're kind of depressed but then you have to lift yourself up because you say i'm not the inmate right but i can tell you Doing that history and getting the questions, I went into Joyceville Prison and my topic, in fact, the Black inmates and friends of the prison system, they were the ones who invited me and they were very specific. They wanted me to talk about ancient African history, Nubia, Kemet, all of that. And I did that and getting the questions after and just a feedback and, you know, having the dialogue.
was very, very emotionally and spiritually enriching for them because they said it. Because for them, it was like, to use religious term, it was like the bomb in Gilead, if only for a moment. So this, the work we do is important. The audiences we speak to is important.
And so if, as a Black teacher, I feel that... You know, when September morning comes and I look in front of me and I see only white faces, sometimes I'm a little bit down because I'm saying we're the black kids, right? They need to know this history. They need to hear this. But then I lift myself up again because I said white kids need to hear just as much.
Because at the end of the day, it's white kids who are going to go there, who are going to become captains of industry and leaders in society and prime ministers and deans of departments and what have you. And hopefully this little knowledge that they're going to get will make them more compassionate in the future, will make them bring spirit to their work as administrators, as captains of industry, as HR personnel, et cetera, or as history professors later on. So it's, it is, it's, the other thing when we, you know, talk about.
We're bringing all these various streams together, which is Black Canadian history, the African, the Caribbean, the what have you, the Portuguese. In fact, when we look now, here we are in 2022, in 50 years, I'm sure if we're still around, if the planet doesn't implode, we're going to be doing more on, say, modern day African immigration into Canada. We're going to be talking about Francophone studies because there's so many African Francophones who are coming. The topics are going to change, right? So thank you, Nhi, for that question.
I just want to say real quick. I just want to say for me, too, I also think I also believe that, you know, storytelling and writing and just being an orator for me, history is bringing to life. the voices of people in the past who maybe didn't have the voice, right? I actually think that could also happen outside of formal structures of education.
So you don't need to be in university, you don't have to have a degree, you just have to have a desire to tell a story and to kind of be that voice in the contemporary for people who maybe didn't have a voice. And I think everyone who does work here on the screen, that's essentially what we are doing. You know, we're, we are the voices for the the people in the past who maybe didn't have the power, the access, the ability, whatever it is, to be heard.
It doesn't mean they didn't speak. It's just who was listening. And so we now go into the archive and go into all these things.
And it's kind of an amazing, for me, it's an amazing, it is a spiritual connection that you could go into a place, find something that's been otherwise maybe invisible, hidden, not heard, and then you bring it to a new set of people. To me, that's just, and it's also a lot of power. And so I think that is something for everyone who's here to understand. You don't have to be in formal education to be a historian, in my opinion. Thanks, Shara.
Now, we have a hard end time, but I would like to, before we stop, give Daniel, Amani, and Barrington an opportunity to share any final thoughts, any final words that they'd like to. Daniel, did you have something that you'd like to say? Yeah, I just want to say wonderful panel.
The only thing I would say with regards to kind of this last question, the question before, I think one of the dangers of Canadian history is making it too focused on Canada. You know, Canada is a nation, it's relatively recent creation, and we're talking about BIPOC peoples, you know, it's part of this larger imperial project. I think that's one of the ways of getting around it is by focusing just on Canada, like Canada is unique.
Canada is not part of this larger British empire that's colonizing the entire world and negatively impacted people from all sorts of backgrounds. So it's really easy to kind of narrow it down to that perspective. And then also just to making it a national history, telling rather nationalistic narratives. I mean, I talked about pushback. That's one of the big sore points is that people who are tied to these narratives really, really are tied to them.
And so I'm part of a committee for Parks Canada. Canada. And we were talking about John A. Macdonald's house in Kingston. And how are we going to make that so it includes more diverse voices?
But the thing that struck me about it and being from Western Canada, I'd never been there. He only lived there for about a year, but it's his house, even though he only rented it. And it's part of this national narrative.
So Parks Canada spent millions of dollars maintaining it. I think that just highlights just how far people will go for these nationalist ideas. Thank you. Amani, did you want to share something?
No, I just want to say thank you to everybody. I really enjoyed myself. So thanks so much. Okay, we enjoyed having you here.
Yeah, thank you guys. Thank you, Amani and Erwan, Tricia, Daniel, Cheryl, Barrington, Claudine, and I see Michelle is still there. Is Barrington still there? Barrington, did you want to say something? Just to say that one of the things that I think about a lot is that this conversation is taking place within a larger conversation about having to defend.
the social sciences and the humanities. And I think that's something that wherever we are in these institutions, we need to continue to, I don't wanna say make the case, but often that's the way that it, that's often the way that it feels. So there's this sort of larger conversation, I think.
And then just to reiterate what I said earlier, that we need to keep thinking about how the, And Daniel's point about getting overly focused on national narratives is well taken, but country is changing, particularly in large urban centers, and how is our discipline going to respond to that? Because I think that the survival of the discipline is tied to that question about what the, you know, the communities in which our universities and departments are ensconced is rapidly changing. Thank you.
I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you so much Barrington. So I'd like to thank everyone for agreeing to speak today and sharing your thoughts and also thank you to the audience. Hopefully your questions were answered or you know your interests were sparked in some of the topics that were raised by our participants today and I'd like to thank Alison and Joe and Leticia for inviting me to facilitate the discussion. And I think Alison has to go, so I'd like to turn it over to her so she can do her closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone. Merci Claudine, and thank you everyone. Hearing these experiences from me is always so inspiring, and we are deeply appreciative of the generosity of each participant here today. In each of these three webinars, scholars from a range of career stages, regions, and backgrounds have shared their personal and professional triumphs and challenges they have faced. face in their fields of study.
Moving forward, we will be continuing these conversations in different forms within the intention of incorporating the wisdom shared in these webinars. Thank you, panelists and audience, and we look forward to seeing you all at the annual meeting. Marcy, once again, enjoy the rest of your day, and thank you. Thank you all.
Take care.