History and Curriculum

Proposed program

The African Descent History Education program will offer students, teachers, and community members a wide range of opportunities to explores arts, culture, and the general history of people of African Descent in Canada since 1608. It also explores current immigration and refugees in Africa or African Caribbean to Canada.
The program intends to help students and teachers’ understanding of the General History of Africa and the International decade for people of African Descent in Canada. This program aims to support and promote education through an awareness campaign and education, African Heritage Month and African Descent History School Curriculum in Schools. The purpose of this program is to create educational study guides and resource materials for teachers, students and the community for studying about history for people of African Descent in Ontario and Canada.

This will be used as independent history course on the study of history for people of African Descent life as well as a fully independent unit for African Descent history. It could provide valuable perspectives for students and teachers for the African Descent History. It could provide valuable local perspectives for the community and teachers at large as relevant materials for the understanding of anti-racism, multiculturalism, and inter-cultural understanding. This can also be valuable for study and understanding of the UNESCO General History of Africa and UN International Decade for people of African Descent.
Africans have had a presence in Canada from around the same time Canada was “discovered.” Mathieu da Costa was the first free person of African heritage recorded to have visited Canada – around the same time as Samuel de Champlain – and he arguably held as much importance as the men he accompanied. Yet, it wasn’t until 2017 that Canada Post recognized his extraordinary diplomatic efforts as a Mi”kmaq and multi-language interpreter for the explorers and First Nations they sought to communicate with.

Celebrating our history

African Descent Society ON has a full schedule of events planned for African Descent Heritage Month. events include school presentations, walking tours, live performances, and heritage discussions.
Although we recognize that African Descent history (or any minority group’s history for that matter) should not be relegated to merely one designated month out of the year, we nevertheless strive to use the month of February to educate the public on African heritage, especially its relation to where we live – ONTARIO.

Activities

Promotes cultural relations among people and inspires them to investigate history with a different lens, shaping the narration and combatting stereotypes, racial discrimination, and past injustices. Storytelling brings to life beliefs, traditions, norms, and cultural perspectives of old communities to life. Telling our history revitalizes new ideas, knowledge, and values in our local community because stories connect us to the past and describe people and their historic places, connect gathering and culture with the future.

Stories:

Create community- through relationships, encouraging community action and engagement.
Preserve language – they celebrate cultures, creating common understanding
Share knowledge – they describe natural history, culture, buildings, land space and creating space for oral histories.
Connect people – they highlight the stories of indigenous peoples and inspire the youth in the future of our heritage.
Are intangible but they transmit heritage and culture. They share memories and reveal new intercultural understandings.
Draw us together and shape our communities.
Build citizenship participation and empower civic engagement through exploration of various issues in the past, present, and future.
Building layer by layer, explores archives, photographs, streets, and buildings.

Community Safety

ADSON plans to invite and engage Ontario Police department in conversation about policing and Black community safety including racial profiling for Black people.

Fashion Shows

Through telling our stories, we will present African live music performances in sessions during and ending the event as part of African Descent stories through music which will be comprised of rich African descent histories. We plan to bring multiple fashion shows in Ontario Black communities to participate and show various African descent heritage

Community Partnerships

Forging Relationships, Stimulating Engagement for Heritage Commissions/Committees
We plan to work with community groups, associations, municipal staff, politicians, and community partners, Heritage Commissions and Advisory Committees to create opportunities to tell stories. These groups perform the on-the-ground local work of sharing the community story. The African Descent Heritage Month is a vehicle for sharing and discussing the work of growing healthy communities through storytelling.

Capacity building

Building the Capacity of Black Community Organizations: A Stage-based approach to business planning for your non-profit.
This workshop will focus on building capacity opportunity for Black Canadian led organizations to step back from day-to-day operations and gain clarity on where to best build capacity for their organization’s “bench strength.” Understanding your organization’s lifecycle stage can allow you to pinpoint your exact growing pains and next steps in capacity development. In this workshop, participants will learn how to undergo an in-depth organizational assessment based on 5 core capacity builders in non-profit organizations: Programs, Governance, Management, Financial Resources, Administrative systems, and infrastructure intending to increase capacity building for organisations of Black community with new skill development.

Heritage walking Tours

Spend an hour touring street, and spaces, Heritage Revitalization Agreement projects in different parts of Ontario which led to the destruction of cultural heritage business and spiritual homes for the people of African Descent

Cultural Landscape

Cultural Landscapes: Understanding African Descent Heritage/Cultural ties to land relations in Ontario.
In Canada, the slavery history and post-slavery immigration continues to erase/ignore Black people’s continuity on their lands since time immemorial. Heritage narratives within cultural landscape recognition and preservation so often emphasize physical ‘evidence’ such as buildings, built forms, burial grounds and battle sites. How can we move past ‘evidence-based’ heritage to a much deeper, often intangible way of expressing history in the land, relationships with the land? How can we start to understand all of these lands as Indigenous cultural landscapes? And what are the implications of that? This workshop explores narratives of cultural landscapes as stories, laws, ancestors, songs, memories, events, food sources, commerce and more. We also look at ways that partnerships can help with the recognition and protection of Indigenous cultural landscapes in working towards inclusive decision-making and storytelling.

Sharing stories of the “Others “
Sharing Stories of the “Other” with Elders

ADSON plans to bring multiple stories from different communities together to challenge traditional historical narratives in a way that invites all viewers to learn about our heritage and traditions in Ontario.

Small scale big Impact

Communities are shaped by their unique cultural landscapes. Small-scale, place-based businesses and organizations are essential to this culture, and to the evolution and adaptation of these communities. In this event, the small program explores how unique place-based cultural assets in our communities can build social, cultural and economic strength. Through exploring cases of revitalization and destructions of Blackstrathcona, we answer the questions: How do we tell the stories of our communities? What is the role of local cultural economies in these stories? How do we support these cultural economies?
As a non-profit community developer, the small program celebrates and activates existing heritage assets to attract and sustain vibrant cultural entrepreneurial hubs. We believe that cultural assets, tangible and intangible, define communities: historical buildings and landscapes, skills related to black community arts, culture, heritage and tradition.

Memory of Place

Memory of place can be a powerful tool to influence the decision-makers, but the heritage sector is only beginning to explore how community memories impact values of place and how art impact our communities. Our panel explores the ways emotions, compassion, ethics, and imagination, through our stories of history and heritage, can contribute to planning and influence policy of municipalities to start planning the future of Black people in Ontario.

Oral History

Singing Our Histories Speaking Our Truths

There will be African Descent Artist performers to share their own stories through music, stories, and performance represent the stories of African Descent community since 1880s to current situation and challenges faced by the people of African descent to explore ways of speaking their truths, through the oral tradition, which has been the main source of historical record keeping on these lands since time out of mind. There will be African Descent Fashion shows with historical stories narratives depicting the history and traditions of people of African descent in Ontario.

Places that matter

This session explores the successes and lessons learned in identifying and celebrating not only well-known and visible heritage sites, but also the hidden histories of a community.

Cultural Landscape Injustices

As the tangible and intangible interactions of humans and nature, cultural landscapes call up complex ideas of ‘ownership’ and stewardship over a land-base that can be contested and re-envisioned over time. Through three case studies, our panelists explore ideas of land conservation, recreation access and commemoration, while preserving and presenting heritage values