Emancipation Festival returns to Iqaluit with dance, film and discussion
Nunavut Black History Society to host 2-day event Sept. 21 and 22
Performers from Edmonton-based SocaFit perform in 2022 at the Emancipation Festival in Iqaluit. People are invited again this year to celebrate emancipation Sept. 21 and Sept. 22 in Iqaluit with music, film and discussion. (File photo by Meral Jamal)
Updated on Sept. 23, 2024 at 10:15 a.m. ET
The Aqsarniit hotel ballroom will be filled with the sounds of Afrobeats, Jamaican dance hall and rap music Sept. 21 to celebrate emancipation.
Hosted by the Nunavut Black History Society, this weekend’s two-day Emancipation Festival commemorates the abolition of slavery across the British empire in 1833.
Juno Award-winning Canadian rapper Choclair is scheduled to take the stage on Saturday, sharing the bill with musical performances from local artists C-4, Musbe Black and Akuluk Alele, as well as B-Benji.
Breakdancers Frost Flow and Audley Coley, who is a former Iqaluit resident, are also featured acts at this year’s event.
“It will be a good expression of the arts by people of African descent under the theme of emancipation,” said Stephanie Bernard, the founder and president of the Black history society.
Tickets for Saturday’s concert cost $25 and can be purchased through the Black history society’s Facebook page. It starts at 9 p.m.
The second event is a film screening and panel discussion on Black and Indigenous slavery in Canada, to be held at the Astro Theatre on Sept. 22 starting at 5 p.m. Admission is free.
While the film choice has yet to be finalized, Bernard will be one of the event’s speakers, discussing the history of slavery in Canada.
“From the society’s standpoint, every time the word ‘emancipation’ comes up, people ask us why we’re celebrating it in Canada which is considered to be the home of the free,” she said.
“We have to carry the baton and re-educate Canadians to remember that Canada had a part in the slave trade and to generally be more informed citizens about the experiences of people around us.”
The second speaker scheduled for Sunday is Iqaluit-based author and activist Francisca Mandeya, whom Bernard describes as a “social justice champion.”
Mandeya is scheduled to deliver a cultural performance at the event by playing the mbira, the traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, where she is from.
This is the Black history society’s second Emancipation Festival since 2022. In 2021, the society held an online pan-territorial celebration of Canadian Emancipation Day in 2021, after it was federally recognized.
Correction: This article has been updated from its original version to correct the date when slavery was abolished across the British empire.
Yes I’ll be there
“Black and Indigenous slavery…” Kind of curious why the two are conjoined? And do you mean indigenous slavery practiced by indigenous peoples?
Hello There!
I believe they are conjoined because Slavery in Canada happened to Indigenous people, and people of African descent.
Here is an extract from the presentation on September 22:
“Historian Marcel Trudel has counted 4,185 persons who were enslaved in the province of Quebec, two-thirds of whom were Indigenous and one-third of African origin.3 The Loyalists are thought to have brought between 1,500 and 2,000 enslaved Blacks (or as many as 2,500, according to Harvey Amani Whitfield) to the Maritimes,4 and between 500 and 700 to Upper Canada.5 However, these are incomplete and approximate figures”.
I hope is of value to you.
“Despite the efforts of historians and researchers to document nearly 200 years of slavery in Canada, it remains a topic that is little known across the country. Slavery was practised on Canadian soil during the colonial period mainly in three regions of the country: Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and Ontario. It began in the early days of New France and ended in the early decades of the 1800s.”
Written by Webster http://www.websterls.com
Novaguy is also correct in that the keeping of slaves was a common practice among several indigenous groups in North America as well. That of course ended with British colonialism. I think it is good that we are recognizing the contributions Britain made to the end of slavery, which were pivotal to it’s abolishment in the west.