Michele A. Johnson - Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History

How did Canada become white? Dispossession, erasure, and a sham multiculturalism. This extraordinary volume of essays exposes settler violence and fraudulent claims of inclusion and offers instead a long, deep, and often hidden history of Black struggles for freedom, power, and self-determination. It should be required reading, not only for Canadians but for all of us on occupied Turtle Island and around the world.

Robin D. G. Kelley,

Author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

This timely collection challenges any remaining conception of the Great White North as a refuge from anti-Black violence and exclusion. Documenting the long and varied histories of endurance, negotiation, and resistance against racism among persons of African descent, this volume not only challenges any conception of the Black Canadian experience as linear, unchanging, homogenous, and recent, it also offers a vital corrective to the erasure of Black Canadians from the national myths about who we are, and who we can become. Truly a must read!

Beverley Mullings,

Professor of Geography and Planning, Queens University

This collection, by locating the past as a force shadowing the present and informing Black peoples ongoing search for freedom, overwrites narratives of a redemptive Canadian multicultural citizenship to narrate the possibilities by which Black people have survived, and continue to survive, conquest and subjugation. This comprehensive cartography of Black life in Canada is a stunning achievement and essential reading in Black Canadian history and thought.

Andrea A. Davis, Associate Professor of Humanities,

York University, and co-editor of The Journal of Canadian Studies

Unsettling the Great White North is a vital collection of historical scholarship featuring bold and accomplished voices in the field of Black Canadian Studies, and illuminating a striking diversity of periods, regions, communities, institutions, art forms, and emergent frames of inquiry. Expertly curated, it offers precious knowledge and critical insight to scholars and general readers alike.

David Chariandy, Professor of English,

Simon Fraser University, and author of Brother

This is an important and comprehensive contribution to Black Canadian historical studies. It offers critical analyses regarding the diversity, complexity, and creativity of Black Canadian lives and new understandings about the racialized history of African Canadians as well as the ways in which Black communities have overcome systemic barriers. Unsettling the Great White North indeed unsettles dominant historical practices and centres the very people who have been left out of history.

Annette Henry, David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education,

Professor of Language and Literacy Education, and Professor at the Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia

Unsettling the Great White North is a major contribution. Encompassing essays on topics ranging from slavery to community studies about African immigrants, this indispensable book should be read by all students of Canadian history.

Harvey Amani Whitfield,

Professor of Black North American History, University of Calgary

Unsettling the Great White North, the first volume of its kind, is an impressive collection in depth, scope, and quality. Twenty-one authors centre and make visible the experiences of African Canadians, including recent migrants (Rwandans and other continental Africans). Collectively, albeit with different emphases, these authors bear witness to histories of exclusion and marginalization while simultaneously underscoring African Canadians as agents of their own lives. Unsettling the Great White North clears up any misconception regarding African Canadians contributions to Canadas nation-building enterprise. An authoritative text that is accessible to and suitable for both academic and general audiences interested in Black Canadian Studies and history.

Karen Flynn, Associate Professor of Gender and Womens Studies,

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of Moving beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora

This important collection of essays engages with the presence of Black people (people of African descent) in this region colonially known as Canada. But more than this, the compelling essays demonstrate the importance of Black Studies in addressing the historical and current conditions and experiences of Black life. This is a book for all interested in Black Studies!

OmiSoore H. Dryden, James R. Johnston (JRJ)

Chair in Black Canadian Studies, and Associate Professor,

Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University

This is essential reading for all Canadians. Michele A. Johnson and Funk Aladejebi, two formidable scholars, have collated and edited a perfect mix of essays focused on Black Canadian history. These documented Black Canadian stories can now be shared and debated, bringing about awareness of the Black Canadian presence indeed Unsettling the Great White North.

Honourable Dr. Jean Augustine P.C., C.M., O.Ont., C.B.E.,

First Black Canadian woman elected to the Parliament of Canada,

Proposed the motion to designate February as Black History Month in Canada

Unsettling the Great White North finds a path through the hazy four centuries of Black history in Canada to elucidate the racial oppression of Blacks, and its attendant resistance-resilience dialectic. The book paints an unpleasant, albeit truthful, portrait of the procedures of Othering used to sustain the exclusion of Blacks in many spheres of Canadian life. The enduring desire of the majority to extract racial subsidies from Blacks in pursuit of profit is illuminated in a voice that is often deeply poetic. This is an indispensable resource for scholars of Black Studies in Canada.

Joseph Mensah, Professor,

Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University

Black Canadian History

EDITED BY MICHELE A. JOHNSON AND FUNK ALADEJEBI

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London

University of Toronto Press 2022

Toronto Buffalo London

utorontopress.com

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4875-2916-1 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-2919-2 (EPUB)

ISBN 978-1-4875-2917-8 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4875-2918-5 (PDF)

_____________________________________________________________________________

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Unsettling the Great White North : Black Canadian history / edited by Michele A. Johnson and Funk Aladejebi.

Names: Johnson, Michele A., editor. | Aladejebi, Funk, 1983 editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210321628 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210321733 | ISBN 9781487529178 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487529161 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781487529192 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487529185 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Blacks Canada History. | LCSH: Blacks Canada Social conditions. | CSH: Black Canadians History. | CSH: Black Canadians Social conditions.

Classification: LCC FC106.B6 U57 2022 | DDC 971/.00496dc23

_____________________________________________________________________________

We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Mtis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.