Iqaluit speaker says Black History Month a time for unity

Black History Month kicked off Sunday with a call for unity at a ceremony hosted by the Nunavut Black History Society at the Astro Theatre in Iqaluit.

“We need collective power to bring about change,” said guest speaker Craig Reynolds, regional executive vice-president for Ontario with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing over 240,000 public service workers, in a 12-minute address.

Members of the Black community and their friends filled the auditorium as Reynolds lauded recent federal funding, including $110 million for an anti-racism strategy announced in 2024 to promote racial equity in immigration and housing systems, and another $189 million in October to kick-start the Black Entrepreneurship Program, a federal initiative to remove barriers that prevent Black Canadians from starting businesses.

“Those things are truly amazing, but let’s not be mistaken — there are reasons all these initiatives started after 2021, right?” he said.  “If it wasn’t for the political pressure that the Black Lives Matter movement created, we would not see a lot of these initiatives and a lot of these funding.”

Black Lives Matter began as a movement in the United States in 2013, but became very high-profile following the 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, Minn., by a white police officer.

“It took years of organizing and protesting in the streets to build a movement of resistance and demand that our political leaders take action.”

Despite progress, attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the United States that started last year are beginning to creep into Canada, Reynolds cautioned, including a rise in organizing by white supremacist groups.

“We have faced them in the past and we have fought back,” he said.

“Our communities are resilient. We’re powerful. We are fighters and we will continue to fight to demand the dignity and respect every person deserves.”

The evening’s keynote speaker, Justice Donald McLeod of the Ontario Court of Justice, spoke later about the legacy of coexistence and co-operation between Indigenous people and others who have been marginalized due to perceived racial differences.

Both populations understand “colonial displacement, economic marginalization, and racialization,” McLeod said.

The evening also featured musical performances, poetry and the presentation of the society’s annual Sankofa awards recognizing excellence among people of Black descent and their friends.