Disciplines:
Can we be our ancestor's wildest dreams without also at some point holding their traumas?
In 2018, I experienced systemic racism while working in a ceramic studio. In the process of trying to address/avoid dealing with a specific incident of racism, studio management did everything listed in the articles I read about how organisations maintained systemic racism. I also read that once a racist incident of this kind happens, you suffer, and there is no way to avoid it so you must decide how to respond to it.
The studio decided I was the problem and banned me, favouring the racist in the specific incident. I filed a human rights complaint against the studio. My hearing was going to be in 2020, and ended up in 2024, with a ruling in 2025. 7 years after the event. This was stressful, and by the end I was losing hope of winning the case.
Part of what I asked for in my filing was that the studio be ordered to hire a BIPGM-led consultant to create an anti-racism policy for them. The purpose was to prevent them from repeating their behaviour next time there was an incident of racism. The studio operates in a community of systemically marginalised people, and to work with this community and have no anti-racism policy is unacceptable.
I don't know what my Igbo ancestors were doing while enslaved in Jamaica. I read once (years after filing the case) that Igbos were considered “too rebellious to be desirable as slaves.” The english moved on from Igboland after extracting ancestors starting around 1750 but most intensively between 1790 - 1807. Igbos form one of the founding African ethnicities among Jamaicans, and Jamaicans have a big reputation too. Queen Nanny and the Maroons, the Baptist War, the Caribbean Labour Rebellions of the 1930s which included Jamaica.
Sam Sharpe of the Baptist War knew that some Brits in the UK were agitating against slavery, which influenced his organising. The 'elite' enslaved were the leaders of the Baptist War, defying the British expectation that granting select privilege would pacify them rather than making them leaders of their own communities. Jamaicans used multiple timeless strategies for rebellion, and within 18 months the British passed the The Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The Indigenous West African culture of oral history served Jamaicans well - the enslaved knew about troop movements, government decrees, and international news before the whites. When ready, Jamaicans set fire to the most profitable Caribbean colony held by the British. Jamaicans made it too expensive for england to continue with slavery. Too rebellious to be desirable as slaves.
My fight is small in comparison. I had a terrible experience, but it didn't last. I filled out paperwork, found a free student lawyer program, and mostly moved on to other things. The implications of my fight are not life/death as it could have been for my Igbo ancestors. I don't know how I would have felt if I lost the human rights case. The Baptist War was quashed after 5 weeks. Many of the leaders did not survive to see their success in 1833. I will live to see the studio implement an anti-racism policy, and the judge threw in an order for a complaints process as well.
I have a responsibility to use my privilege to advance liberation in the ways available to me. Each of our responsibilities are different; a reflection of our ancestors, our history before and after the start of colonisation, and our current conditions. My response to suffering is to fight for better conditions.
Alongside the fighting spirit comes an eagerness to claim kin. Igbos are eager to claim Igbos, Nigerians are eager to claim Nigerians, Jamaicans are eager to claim Jamaicans. No one in the diaspora is to be left out when trying to re-connect. My first time being claimed by a Nigerian woman happened within moments of meeting. She wanted to know if I was a little bit Black, and if so where were my ancestors from. When I said “I think Nigeria, but I'm not sure,” she was joyful immediately and told me we were family.
Among the positive aspects of culture, my Igbo - Jamaican ancestors are mirthful, flexible, and fiercely prideful, willing the diaspora to join. Before colonisation, Igbos lived in a loosely associated collection of city-states, governed usually by citizen's assembly; a culture defined by local communal decision-making. It was an open, mostly king-free society, woven in between the surrounding Indigenous nations of Yoruba, Hausa, Tiv, and more. Without an exclusionary physical boundary or central government, being claimed by the community was allowed to be one of the most important social structures.
When I filed my complaint, I knew that I would likely experience more trauma as a result of Canada's legal system. I didn't know that I was also starting a more intentional journey of healing and self-knowledge. When I learn about my ancestral history, I also know that I will experience trauma, but what I learn makes me more myself. What I learn pulls me further into the ability to receive how I am claimed by my Igbo - Jamaican kin. My feeling is that the trauma has to be confronted, after which is a good opportunity to move into learning beyond the traumatic moments.
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Although I learn outside of academic spaces, I rely on academics. I feel we would benefit greatly from two things: 1. New ceremonies for BIPGM working with archival and historical records; ideally within a new structure for academia. Academic workers need intentional support circles, a self-determined pace outside of seeking accolades, and acceptance/support when it's time to find a new path. 2. Normalisation of short-term or sporadic historian work rather than dedicated lifelong work as the norm. We need a lay-person's toolkit for how to re-interpret white historical records that do not honour BIPGM humanity, contributions, and perspectives. We can all find ways to contribute to the work of extracting our history from eurocentric records and re-contextualising it within our own cultural historian systems.
