So, as a descendant of those strong, courageous people who struggled for survival and justice, I am here today grappling with my ancestral stories and attempting to make sense of my life and of my family memories. I am choosing to use the talents I have been blessed with to give back to my ancestors and dedicate my PhD work to their memory.
I believe I am being directed to do this work. I am a believer in unwritten, unspoken knowledges, or ways of awareness. bell hooks describes how we are connected and directed by our ancestors, and I, too, am a believer in myself and my individual strength, my dna that supports me and propels me forward.
I believe also that for me, continued research into my ancestors’ lives, work, and contributions to the province of New Brunswick is one of my main settlement strategies.
I will close with a quote from Joseph Drummond, who wrote the foreword of W.A. Spray’s book, The Blacks in New Brunswick:
We are a people who desire our Freedom, Justice, Equality and our Dignity. This work, a history of the Blacks in New Brunswick, is a partial attempt to rewrite a segment of the history of a strong people—the Black People. (1972)
References
Brand, D. 2001. A Map to the Door of No Return. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
DuBois, W.E.B. 1970. The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America. New York: Washington Square Press.
Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. Paris: Groce Press.
McKittrick, K. 2006. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
—. 2009. “Diaspora.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Volume 3 edited by R. Kitchen and N. Thrift, 151–161. Oxford: Elsevier.
Spray, W.A. 1972. The Blacks in New Brunswick. Fredericton: Brunswick Press.
Paternal Blood Memory
Volume 1
— Kyla Farmer —
The world is a family.
One is a relative, the other stranger, Say the small-minded.
The entire world is a family, Live the magnanimous.
Be detached, be magnanimous, lift up your mind. Enjoy the fruit of Brahmanic freedom.
— Maha Upanishad, 6.71–75
It’s a tall bill, I usually say, or I ask them to guess, for fun and curiosity’s sake—when people ask me where I’m from. Most of these interactions are annoying and a demonstration of society’s ignorance and arrogance.
Sometimes I say, “From my mother’s womb,” and other times, “Earth,” which is the truth, yet usually doesn’t satisfy whatever exotic vacation destination they were expecting to hear me say.
Where I am from is a story that will take us on a journey all across the world, contradict and align itself in mind-bending ways, and ultimately, may give you a different lens on how to see human beings. A story about many people and many places.
I am on a mission to figure this all out. A lifelong mission, assembled from the crumbs and clues that made their way through time, passed down to me during my youth.
I have been putting the pieces together to help myself understand this fascinating and puzzling multi-dimensional identity of mine. I want to pass down this knowledge. This has been one of the most arduous and powerful things I have done for myself. My writings here will introduce you to me, a story I will continue to write over time as I learn and experience the truth of my family trees.
May this essay encourage you to think to yourself, what was destined for me to uncover within myself?
I Am
I was born on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Territory.
I am so grateful to the land, the people of the land, and their ancestors.
I have been guided by blood- and land-ancestors while navigating a colonial petrol state.
Born as a womxn who is of Afrikan & European descent, my creations reflect my intersections—
their beauties, wisdoms, complexities, stories, and urgencies for
right now and our collective future.
I believe in
the liberation of Afrikan people worldwide;
ending discrimination and the entire scope of violence & systemic oppression towards
womxn, queer, trans, gender non-conforming & two-spirit peoples;
the recognition, empowerment, and true reconciliation for
Indigenous people of Turtle Island and all over the world;
the stewardship of
land we live on, water we rely on for life, and air we breathe,
as keepers, settlers, & visitors;
the ability to appreciate all forms of life—
that flies, that swims, that walks, that we can’t see or feel;
every person in the world having knowledge and love of self, family, community;
the way I speak and that I deserve to live in my truth.
I am a nomadic wild womxn constantly living between, outside of, and within multiple dimensions and worlds. I create resilient intersectional economies and build bridges of understanding within myself and between people. I am redefining what it means to work with purpose and in the arts. I lovingly and carefully do my best to love our blessed Mother Earth. I am love, a human, seeker of the truth.
I am a Farmer. I am Perry’s daughter. I embody the Farmer Fire, as my family calls it. In 2017, Perry and I were fortunate enough to join our family’s community in Jordantown, Acaciaville, and Conway, Nova Scotia, for a community reunion. It was life-changing: a return home for many across our villages’ diaspora. After this communal return home, my father and I now talk about the Afrikan Nova Scotian community’s realities and needs, we envision building a home on the road he spent time on as a kid and how we can contribute to the empowerment of Jordantown, Acaciaville, and Conway, Nova Scotia. It’s a dream come true for the little girl in me, who saw this all in her mind’s eye long ago. He hadn’t been to Nova Scotia for almost fifty years before this reunion. After four years of visiting Nova Scotia on my own, reactivating a connection down home, and sharing those experiences with my father, his siblings, and mother, we were all together in our home-place away from home. This, I will be forever grateful for. This is joy. We, are joy.
Knowledge of self is powerful.
Emancipation
My father’s family has been on Mi’kmaq Territory, colonially known as Nova Scotia, since the 1700s, in Historic Black Communities of Afrikan Nova Scotians. I am so grateful to ancestors for constantly reminding me, even when I stood to forget, that I am the answer to their silent and sung prayers, their Afrofuture Vision. They toiled through the depths of hell on Earth for me to be who I am today. Such magikal, brilliant people, with traditions that transcend time, made of Cosmologik Wisdom.
Afrikan Nova Scotian Parent
August 1st is the day my Afrikan Nova Scotian father was born. I cherish this day with all of my being. For without it, I wouldn’t be. August 1st is the day that reminds me I know I am free. I walk like I am free. Talk like I am free. Love, smile, and feel free in a sovereign, empowered body, liberated soul, loving heart, and emancipated mind. August 1st is colonially known as Canada’s ‘Civic Holiday’—when it is actually the day celebrating the emancipation from slavery for people of Afrikan descent in the British colonies.
The 1833 Slave Emancipation Act did not come into force until August 1, 1834. The first step was the freeing of all children under six. However, although the many thousands of enslaved people in the British West Indies were no longer legally slaves after August 1, 1834, they were still made to work as unpaid apprentices for their former masters. These masters continued to ill-treat and exploit them. Enslaved people in the British Caribbean finally gained their freedom at midnight on July 31, 1838.*
My father grew up in Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, in the traditional territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnaabeg, colonially known as Sudbury, Ontario.
Grandson of the last man hung in Nova Scotia, son of the man who had a baseball team called The Coloured Kings, a man with many siblings and a high respect and love for his mother. I will never know the extent of the hardships, discrimination, barriers, and challenges my father has faced, but I do know some of it. It goes long and deep, and most of it I have been able to learn language for as I got older, primarily as intergenerational trauma. My father has defeated so many odds I’ve lost count. He is a man who has made do with what he had, a wizard at creating opportunities for himself, a man with impeccable hustle and tools for survival, and a person who simply wants to enjoy life and the fruits of his labour. My father is the hardest-working person I will ever know. He has shown me what it means to grow as a person, to rise above your circumstances, to chart your own path, to believe in oneself, to believe that life can get better if you “work hard, and play harder.” I am beyond grateful to be his firstborn, his daughter, and his legacy.
Afrikan Nova Scotian Ancestor
Jupiter and Venus Farmer. Names I heard of a few times growing up. Having been fascinated by space and planets since youth, I thought having ancestors with the names Jupiter and Venus was epic. One day, when I was twenty-eight, I googled Jupiter Farmer. There were a multitude of resources on the first page, mostly information on the website of the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, which I visited about a year later. They had stories about him, his indentured labour agreement papers, his will and testament, and a vast pot of knowledge about the rest of my community. What a blessing! Here it was! The obscure place in the world where I can get the answers I need.
Since that day I have learned that Jupiter and Venus Farmer were folks entered in The Book of Negroes, as they were Black Loyalists who fought alongside the British Army in the American Revolutionary War of the late 1700s.
Jupiter, according to my research so far, was stationed or bound into the enclave of slavery in New Jersey. But, of course, my family has other stories, which makes me curious and intuitive to the fact that multiple information sources are true. I need to understand the rest of the story of how that is so. Venus lived in South Carolina before fleeing north to get free. Learning about that war, and slavery, from a completely different perspective outside of institutional education was essential in the understanding of history that I need. I need to know the perspectives of my people during a time where everything depended on us.
Where were our bodies and what we were doing? I am forever thankful and grateful to Jupiter and Venus Farmer, for having the courage to survive through the plantations, fighting in multiple wars alongside oppressors and against oppressors, and gaining more freedom for themselves, for my sake. What a love that is. What a blood memory that is.
They had intended on joining their community in the exodus to found Freetown, Sierra Leone; however, due to their indentured labour reality, were not permitted to go. I intend to continue that journey for them, and to seek where we are indigenous to, afterwards. Insha’Allah.
Afrikan Nova Scotian Elder
Great-uncle Hubert Johnson is Canada’s first Black chief warrant officer in the armed forces. An incredible community leader. He mentored and cared for over fifty youths in the community in the 1970s. He is King of the kitchen, garden, grill. He is King at clearing land, building homes, caring for burial grounds, and being a father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
Hubert has been the caretaker of the Afrikan Nova Scotian burial ground where his mother, my great-grandmother, Blanch Slaven’s body rests. Located just outside of Digby there used to be an Afrikan Nova Scotian community called Brindleytown. I was told the coastal area near Brindleytown was called Negro Inlet—a fisheries community. Over the years, people guided by white supremacy and racism drove this community out and bought up the land.
Three houses, one business, and the burial ground are what remain of Brindleytown. What was it like for my great-uncle to go out there and maintain the grass, put up headstones for our families? He speaks of it with great pride and love, truly a labour of love and devotion. His care of this land in this way is iconic love in action.
Hubert first brought me to two burial grounds. It was very early in the morning, and we were set to drive hours east to Halifax so that I could catch the train to Montreal, and eventually back to Toronto. The morning dew and grey-blue sky, the quietness of the town, made for a peaceful introduction. First, he brought me to where our family is also buried, down the road and up the hill in the forest. I got to see the beautiful tree that was planted where his father and my grandmother’s father, Arthur, rests. Arthur and Blanch’s families, from what I know thus far, come from the Caribbean. We stop at a plot with soil that had recently been laid, where Hubert’s beloved, Greta, rests.
We walk to her and Hubert says to me, “Now, I really want to be with her, every day, I miss her every day, I can still hear her talking to me. But I know I still have some things to do. I’ll be with her again soon.” Watching his eyes and hands, the same as my grandmother’s, shapes and bends and opens my heart wide. Such a sweet love. I am beyond grateful that I was able to meet Greta during my first visit to Digby County. May her soul rest in peace, power, and love.
A short drive around the curved roads, we pulled up to the burial ground in what remains of Brindleytown. My great-uncle tells me the story about his life, and travelling, and returning home to see that there was no caretaker of the land where our family and community are buried. He wrote and received a grant to begin a decades-long commitment to take care of the land. The view when standing there is breathtaking, an inlet connected to the Bay of Fundy. Interestingly, in my youth I did an extensive project on the Bay of Fundy with a friend. Amazing how this is where my family has been all this time.
We walk around the area, looking to see if, amongst the few rocks and small stones with hand-carved letters on them, one of them bears the name of my great-grandmother, Blanch. Here she is! The woman whose name my father gave for my middle name. You have to look at the stone very hard and closely to be able to see that it is her name. I get to sit with her for the first time. I get to look at the water, and the sky and hills, the boats floating by, while visiting. What a blessing this is. Hubert and I enjoy silence while we breathe and are present with each other and those in our family tree. We look at each other, at the water stretching into the distance, at the ground. At this moment, it sinks into my deep currents how grateful I am to be here, finally, and how grateful I am to Blanch, and Hubert.
Grateful, to be.
Why are people in such denial of the present and historical realities of extreme racism, slavery, and systemic oppression towards Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, and those of Afrikan descent, those who are foundational to present-day Canada? It is because of that that I was not able to know what my father’s family stories are until I was almost thirty years old.
Afrikan Nova Scotian Next Generation
I have so many cousins. It absolutely blows my mind how brilliant they are and how much we love each other. A generation full of imagination, optimism, creativity, and knowledge. These are the people we all need to love, uplift, support, teach, encourage, foster, and most of all, allow them to be exactly whoever and however they want to be. I have cousins all over Turtle Island, on the Farmer and Johnson sides, and will continue to go to where I can to meet them and ensure that we continue to build relations, gather as often as we can, and continue on the legacy of our ancestors, guided by knowledge of self.
Meeting most of my cousins during the Community Reunion of 2017 was an immense blessing.
One cousin, ten years old, tall, daring, adventurous, has a penchant for filmmaking and knows the land where our family lives very well. I spent an entire day with her in the summer’s sun listening to her knowledge of the land—following her lead as she described its vastness. She grew up being a part of the land, getting to know it, and having that part of her life be a sacred space for herself, a place w
here she could be herself and be free. I am so grateful to have been guided by her in this way. She brought us to a place in the road, past where Arthur rests, where a small creek passes underneath the road. We jumped onto the patch of sand that trails out of the tunnel into the water, took off our shoes, and off we went.
Travelling through this shallow brook, our feet were gliding over rocks in the water, feeling all the marine plant life slide along the bottom of our feet, a soothing texture on the blade-like layers of rock, hanging off branches that lean over the shallow water. I can still see the way the sunshine and the air played with the thick forest that surrounded us, and still hear all the animals around us. Such a delight to stand in the water with her, eyes wide open, feeling the sun on my face—to be still, and listen. She was bringing us to her favourite destination, waterfalls. We didn’t make it that far that day, as there was the community reunion dinner to attend. “Next time I visit, let’s go,” I said. Her presence and essence reminded me that this is where I belong, this place in the diaspora, where my humanity, my face, my voice, is recognized.
Afrikan Nova Scotian Afrofuture
Comrades teach me about Afrofuturism, amongst many endless other things that free my mind, body, heart, and soul.
Scholars, narratives, hxstories, and histories teach me about a time past, what is urgent in the now, and possibilities for tomorrow. Self-teachings, knowledge shared in community, research, experiments, experiences, and my own wild and beautiful imagination teach me things about my family’s history in Nova Scotia that obviously no school, institution could teach me. I am so blessed to be a part of the Johnson Family from Jordantown and the Farmer Family from Shelburne and Birchtown, Mi’kmaq Territory. My intention is to be able to care for a small part of land our family’s community is a part of, build a legacy home, designed in love with the Earth, that will also be an artist retreat centre, community space, and lodging for visitors.
Black Writers Matter Page 9