February 2022 / Toronto
Afro-futurism/African-Canadian Liberation/Black histories/ month- all contested and complex concepts. Not surprising given our people’s four hundred plus year presence on these Indigenous lands colonized and settled by the colonizers. Our place in the meta-narratives of what we now call Canada, diminished when not completely erased. Still. 2022.
For many in Canada’s African diaspora-whether of the nth generation or arrived last month, February is seen as a moment each year in our ongoing liberation struggle to remind ourselves of how we survived and continue to survive laws and social mores meant to bury us. As the saying goes (I paraphrase) - they tried to bury us; they did not know we were/are seeds.
This February 2022 I pay homage to the ancestors whose sacrifices have birthed the generations they dreamed of as they threw off their shackles of oppression knowing that freedom of mind would ensure the continuation of resistance until we are all free.
In solidarity and struggle
* Debbie Douglas, OCASI Executive Director is taking a short break from this blog. This article is a repeat from February 2021.