By Alisha Kang
Before I speak or write, you may see me hold the tobacco pouches gifted to me by elders I wear around my neck. I pray, “Great Spirit and Ancestors, help me always seek and speak or write the truth, or may another truth bringer correct my ignorance so we may all live in an honest community.”
As a Black Indigenous woman, whose Ancestors were enslaved by Europeans’ Royal Assent, this means…
That the monarchy’s hands are drenched in the blood of my Ancestors. It means that the Royal Family had to approve of my Ancestors’ freedom. It means that the French and British benefitted from our subjugation.
The centuries of slavery are the reason my African Ancestors are made up of people from Nigerian, Ghanaian, Liberian, Siera Leonean, Senegambian, Guinean, Congolese, and Angolan descent — stolen people taken to stolen lands. As breeding stock, they forced the strongest to make more.
Then Royal Assent went somewhat as follows; all children under six were freed in 1834 but others were retained for four to six years as apprentices. People in the British Caribbean finally gained their freedom at midnight on July 31, 1838 – a full two years before some in Canada. Canada loves to downplay its hand in slavery.
This means that in Canada those enslaved could have remained so as late as 1840. The spin of history paints those in lights that harm as the heroes even when not exactly factual. I will not uphold their fantastical stories. We cannot deal in truth if we continue to repeat lies.
Twenty million English pounds (£20,000,000) were made available by the British government to pay for damages suffered by owners of registered slaves, but none was sent to slaveholders in British North America.
Not a single cent was ever paid to any generation of the Ancestors for damages or payment for their labour (work) of those enslaved.
So, though I observe Emancipation Day, it is with an understanding that it is a day to mark when European Canadians decided they should no longer own people of Indigenous and African origin.
A day to remind me never to exploit others.
Never convince myself that the ends justify the means.
I will absolutely never use the very ideals that oppressed my Ancestors.
I reaffirm my dedication to dismantle the system of oppressors and their lies.