The history of black slaves in Newfoundland and Labrador is not taught and rarely talked about, say two authors of a new book about just that.
Black Harbor: Newfoundland and Labrador’s Slavery and Forgotten Black HistoryIn this article, we will explore the history of black slavery in this state and the role that merchant families played in promoting it.
This book came about after authors Heather Barrett and Xiver Michael Campbell’s independent research began to overlap.
We were taught in school that only the British and Irish lived here, but that’s not true. – Heather Barrett
Campbell is a Jamaican-born writer who came to the state in 2008 as a university student.
He quickly noticed similarities between Newfoundland’s culture and his own.
“It’s a curiosity about how things that are part of my culture and my history entered the Newfoundland consciousness. And why my culture and how it came about. There’s no direct reference?” he said.
Barrett is a CBC producer and host. weekend morningI stumbled across a story about the presence of black people in this state for hundreds of years.
“When we grew up, we were taught in school that we were settled by the British and the Irish, but that’s who we’ve lived here before, and who actually lived here for some reason. It was all the people who came. But that’s not true,” she says.
“There were people who lived here and came through here from different parts of the world and were involved in the fishing industry here. Not all of them were doing it of their own volition.”
forgotten story
This book explores some of the connections between Newfoundland and the Caribbean that Campbell noticed soon after arriving in Newfoundland.
“There’s a lot of salt cod in this book,” he said. “I grew up with it. It’s part of Jamaica’s national cuisine, but I never thought about where it came from. I know we’ve been eating it for hundreds of years. But I didn’t know there was any other connection between the two islands. ”
Black Harbor dives into Newfoundland and Labrador’s forgotten history. (Boulder Books)
The connection is that salt cod is what Newfoundland had to trade.
“The low-grade salt cod ended up in the Caribbean because it was cheap fuel for enslaved people,” Barrett said.
The authors say the book is an introduction to a new and unpleasant piece of history that is being discovered.
“We are storytellers,” Barrett said. “What we’re doing is introducing this to the public, and we hope it starts a conversation.”
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