We would like to acknowledge this sacred land on which the University of Toronto operates. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.”
“Acknowledgement of Traditional Lands” read during convocation ceremonies at the University of Toronto
I was pleasantly surprised to hear “Acknowledgement of Traditional Lands” read at convocation ceremonies I attended during the 2017 Spring Convocation at the University of Toronto. A step in the right direction since the University of Toronto was founded in 1827 when the original people of this land were not acknowledged. The university was established because members of the “Family Compact” decided that a university should be established in the town of York (Toronto.) The “Family Compact” wielded political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada (Ontario) at the time. Some members of the “Family Compact” also bought, sold and owned enslaved Africans.
In 1793 when Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe attempted to pass a law to abolish slavery in Upper Canada his efforts were thwarted by the slave owning members of the “Family Compact.” Simcoe was galvanized into action when on March 14, 1793 an enslaved African woman Chloe Cooley resisted mightily as she was beaten, tied up, thrown into a boat and rowed across the Niagara River and sold in America. Chloe Cooley did not go quietly, she resisted with everything she had. Here was a woman who although enslaved in Canada was being sold away from everyone she knew. Cooley screamed and fought her enslaver William Vrooman and two other White men as she was brutalized, bound, thrown into a boat and rowed across the river from Upper Canada to America.
Her resistance was documented when Peter Martin, a free African man who had witnessed the outrage, made an official report to Simcoe and the Executive Council of Upper Canada at a meeting on March 21, 1793. On July 9, 1793 An “Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude” was passed in the House of Assembly of Upper Canada. Although Chloe Cooley was not freed, her resistance was the catalyst that led to the first anti-slavery legislation in Canada which even though it did not free any enslaved African immediately, at least it gave them hope that their descendants would one day be free. Slavery was eventually abolished in Canada on August 1, 1834 just 31 years before the USA abolished slavery.
On July 1, 2017 Canadians will celebrate 150 years of nationhood. On July 1, 1867, Canada became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain and a federation of four provinces: Nova Scotia; New Brunswick; Ontario; and Quebec. Since then Canada has grown to a country of 10 provinces and 3 territories with Newfoundland becoming the last province to join the confederation on March 31, 1949 and Nunavut becoming the last territory to join the confederation on April 1, 1999. Until 1982 July 1 was Dominion Day; today officially known as Canada Day.
Although the Federal government decided to hold a year-long celebration and recognition of 2017 as Canada’s Sesquicentennial year (reportedly spending half a billion dollars) not every Canadian is in a celebratory mood. This land on which we live has been the home of Indigenous peoples for millennia, long before any Europeans set foot on the land, long before any Europeans even knew that this land existed. According to European history “In 1604, the first European settlement north of Florida was established by French explorers Pierre de Monts and Samuel de Champlain, first on St. Croix Island (in present-day Maine), then at Port-Royal, in Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia). In 1608 Champlain built a fortress at what is now Québec City.” In this history there is no mention of the people who were already living on this land. There is no mention of Mathieu DaCosta an African man who was a member of the Champlain expedition and interpreted for the French with the Mi'kmaq people. Since DaCosta spoke the Mi'kmaq language it is surmised that his arrival with Champlain was not his first visit to Canada.
In 2017 as Canada celebrates 150 years the “official languages” of Canada are European languages (English and French) the languages of the people who occupied/settled on the land that was already home to several Indigenous Nations including (Algonquin, Assiniboine, Huron, Inuit, Ojibwa and Oneida.)
The languages of the original people of the land are marginalized. This is not surprising since the White colonizers/settlers from Europe unleashed a campaign to destroy the culture and languages of the people they met when they arrived on this land. Information from the website of the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada" documents that the Canadian government established Residential schools across the country with that goal in mind. "Indian Residential Schools date back to the1870’s. The policy behind the government funded, church-run schools attempted to ‘kill the Indian in the child.’ Over 130 residential schools were located across the country, with the last one closing in 1996.
More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families and placed in these schools. Many were forbidden to speak their language and practice their own culture. Today, there are an estimated 80,000 former students still living."
The “Acknowledgement of Traditional Lands” read at convocation is just one of the many ways in which Canadian universities are acknowledging the original people of Canada. The Algoma University Students’ Union voted unanimously on June 22, 2017 against endorsing events related to Canada’s sesquicentennial celebration. The university’s Sault Ste. Marie campus once housed the Shingwauk Indian Residential School, which operated until 1970. For the 150 years celebration “Universities Canada,” an organization which represents 96 universities across Canada is “featuring events that focus on Indigenous issues and reconciliation.”
During this 150 year celebration of Canada as a nation the whole history of Canada is not acknowledged. The history of the enslavement of Africans in this country from 1628 with the documented sale of six year old Olivier LeJeune in Quebec to August 1834 when slavery was abolished is not acknowledged. The child who was sold in Quebec and given the name Olivier LeJeune was an African child who was kidnapped from the African continent. He was sold by David Kirke who was one of the English privateering Kirke brothers. During his life of enslavement in Quebec Olivier LeJeune was sold several times. He was buried on May 10, 1654 when he was approximately 32 years old. Enslaved Africans were not known for their longevity.
The enslavement of Africans and their coerced unpaid labour contributed to the wealth of the Canada we know today. On May 1, 1689, Louis XIV the French monarch wrote to Governor Brisay de Denonville and Intendant Bochart deChampigny as follows: "The attorney general of the Conseil souverain of Quebec, who has come to France to inform His Majesty that the principal inhabitants of Canada are resolved, if His Majesty so consents, to bring Negroes to that country for the purposes of cultivating and clearing land, as a way of avoiding the heavy costs of resorting to workers and labourers of that country. Whereupon His Majesty is pleased to state that He consents to such importation of Negroes as they propose, but He must at the same time warn them that Negroes may die in Canada because of the difference of the climate there; this warning being needed so that the people there only execute this project in gradual steps, and do not take on large expenditures which may in due course prove useless, doing considerable harm to their affairs and consequently to the Colony." The monarch had nothing to worry about because there was an endless supply of Africans to enslave and work to death for centuries not only from the African continent but from the USA and from the Caribbean islands where Africans were also enslaved. White people living in Canada bought enslaved Africans from the USA and from the Caribbean islands. The coerced, unpaid labour of enslaved Africans was used during the fur trade, as domestic servants in homes, inns, hotels, as labourers in printing shops, fisheries, as farm labourers etc.,
In 2017 as Canada celebrates 150 years as a nation, its history of colonization, destruction of enslaved African families (selling children away from parents, partners away from each other) the destruction of indigenous communities (including capturing children and forcibly relocating them to residential schools) is not acknowledged. Anti-Black, anti-African racism is not acknowledged, which exists in 2017. The United Nations (UN) proclaimed 2015-2024 the International Decade for Peoples of African Descent http://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/background.shtml and even though Canada is a member of the UN there has not been any events to recognize the Decade by any level of government. Half a billion dollars is being spent on the celebration of the 150 years since Confederation while indigenous communities live without indoor plumbing, without safe drinking water, now in the 21st century! What a shame! That half a billion dollars could have been better spent.
No comments:
Post a Comment