February 20, 2025
PROCLAIMING OUR ROOTS is a project “aimed at honoring the histories, realities, stories and experiences of people who are of African diasporic and Indigenous ancestry, and who reside on Turtle Island.”
With over 400 years of African diasporic presence in Canada, originating from the British North American slave trade (Cooper, 2006; Di Paolantonio, 2010), relationships developed between Indigenous and Black people. Such relationships between African diasporic and Indigenous peoples were feared by colonialists because both communities experienced shared, as well as distinct forms of colonial oppression, conflict, and the need for survival. These unions became a central form of resistance for some African diasporic and Indigenous communities (Brooks, 2002; Lawrence, 2004). Indigenous and Black unions are common within many communities such as the Cherokee, Creek, Lumbee, Creole, and Seminole peoples (Brooks, 2002; Jolivette, 2007; Sturm, 2002). Similarly, Black-Mi’kmaw intermarriage in Nova Scotia proliferated as a form of resistance to extermination policies against Mi’kmaw people and the marginalization of Black loyalists (Lawrence & Dua, 2005).
(“About the Project” webpage)
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We acknowledge that the land on which we work is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.