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| Dr. Afua Cooper Photo: C. Ferguson |
Born into a close knit family during a
period of great changes in rural Jamaica, Afua Cooper remembers a childhood
with, “history exploding all around me.”
Dr. Cooper tells the tale of living in the shadows of a fierce and bloody
history. Her home in Westmoreland, Jamaica was located just meters from the
historic sugar cane plantation and she grew up listening to tales passed on by
a Grandmother who had lived in the days when the cane fields were still ripe
with cane and the men of the village still paid homage to the land with their
backs to the sky. Afua also remembers growing up in an era of new consciousness
in Jamaican music, Bob Marley and his brand of conscious music had begun to
agitate not only a new sense of consciousness in the people, but also to bring
a new consciousness of the outside world.
Afua moved to Toronto at a time when
Canada’s economic policy included openness to immigration from Caribbean
nations to fill spots as teachers, child care workers and care givers. Having
always been interested in history and Caribbean Studies, after a brief stint as
a teacher, Afua entered the realm of Canadian academia with a challenging,
questioning nature that often left her short of marks on numerous assignments! Her
questioning nature would eventually lead her to complete ground breaking
research on African Slavery in Canada. Her research documented the lives of slaves
like Henry Bib and Angelique, a clear indication of the presence of slave
owners in Canada long before the Underground railroad. Canada's early settlers had indeed brought
African slaves to Upper Canada in the 1780’s after which slavery expanded
rapidly as British Loyalists brought their slaves with them.
Her work in this area, led her to become a highly acclaimed
author and high profile activist. So much so that in 2007, Afua was one of the
fifteen individuals appointed by the Ontario government to advise the
government on province-wide projects to commemorate the bicentenary of the
abolition of the slave trade, a little talked about part in Canada’s
history. Dr. Cooper acted as lead
coordinator responsible for funding community initiatives and speaks candidly and
proudly of those projects and their impact on the Afro-Canadian population. The
commemoration activities afforded the opportunity for education, ownership,
understanding.
Despite all this work, Afua laments that we still have
a long way to go towards knowledge of self and claiming ownership of this space
called Canada. She notes that we still have not taken ownership of this space,
have not created our own systems, our own industries, owned our own lands. She further
challenges the notion of repatriation as purely monetary, noting that, “history and culture is part ah dat too, not
just finances. Is in the telling, that great gift of story-telling that we
enable a new generation to know themselves. Our youth need to be fed our
stories, culture, heritage, art, like good cornmeal porridge on ah early
mawning, to mek dem whole, to feed dem body, mind and spirit…History, heritage,
blood, family….. that is we identity.”- 2012
Despite her academic success, Afua’s first
love is poetry, her face glows as she speaks of it, describing it as “the
first medium I used as a child to understand my world… (It is) my heart, it feeds and sustains me …the
voice, sound and movement…the past
colliding with the future.”-2012
Dr. Afua Cooper has used and continues to
use the gift of poetry and documentation to verbalize reflections of the black family,
history, heritage, enslavement here in Canada. Attempting, through artistic
explorations of “myth, memory and voice,”
to restore humanity to the enslaved. For this the AfroCanadaViews team
recognizes her as a GIANT on whose shoulder our Afro Canadian Community STANDS.
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