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Ra’anaa Brown and Shana Cal­ixte are res­i­dents of Sud­bury, Ontario. Brown is the co-pres­i­dent of Black Lives Mat­ter – Sud­bury, and Cal­ixte is the group’s Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Rela­tions. Scott Neigh inter­views them about what the strug­gle for Black lives looks like in north­ern Ontario and about their con­fer­ence com­ing up on Feb­ru­ary 27 and 28, Here to Stay Baby”: A North­ern Inter­sec­tion­al Cau­cus.

Black Cana­di­an schol­ar Rinal­do Wal­cott has described the expe­ri­ences of Black com­mu­ni­ties and indi­vid­u­als in this coun­try as an absent­ed pres­ence always under erasure.”

Per­haps the most com­mon way this shows up is the ten­den­cy of main­stream media and many white Cana­di­ans to relate to Black peo­ple, anti-Black racism, and Black strug­gle as cen­tral to life in the U.S. but absent or periph­er­al in Cana­da. But of course, Black peo­ple have been here pret­ty much as long as white peo­ple. Cana­da has its own cen­turies-long his­to­ry of slav­ery and of sur­veil­lance, polic­ing, state vio­lence, and oth­er forms of racism tar­get­ing Black peo­ple. And Cana­da has been a site of pow­er­ful orga­niz­ing and mobi­liz­ing in the con­text of the long Black free­dom strug­gle, includ­ing its most recent iter­a­tion under the ban­ner of Black Lives Mat­ter.

With­in dom­i­nant imag­in­ings of Cana­da, Black pres­ence tends to be grudg­ing­ly admit­ted as a fea­ture of, say, Toron­to and a few oth­er big cities, but most of the rest of the coun­try gets imag­ined as white.” Not only is this a vio­lent era­sure of Indige­nous peo­ples, it also often eras­es the real­i­ty that there are Black peo­ple in these places (and oth­er racial­ized peo­ple too) and, again, there have been for a long time – as well anti-Black racism, Black strug­gle, and Black thriv­ing, even though the shape of these real­i­ties may look quite dif­fer­ent than they do in Toronto.

Sud­bury, Ontario, is one such space. It is a small city in Ontario’s near north, his­tor­i­cal­ly based on the min­ing indus­try. It is often imag­ined as a very white place, despite being Anishi­naabe ter­ri­to­ry and hav­ing a pow­er­ful his­to­ry and present real­i­ty of Indige­nous pres­ence and resis­tance. And main­stream appli­ca­tion of the more recent local nar­ra­tive of being tri­cul­tur­al” – mean­ing anglo­phone, fran­coph­o­ne, and Indige­nous – has often left no space for the fact that there are and have been Black peo­ple and oth­er racial­ized peo­ple in the city. But in the last year or so, Black Sud­buri­ans and oth­ers have been push­ing back against that era­sure, against anti-Black racism, and against racial injus­tice more broadly.

Ra’anaa Brown grew up in Bramp­ton, Ontario, and moved to Sud­bury sev­en years ago to go to archi­tec­ture school, which she com­plet­ed last year. Shana Cal­ixte grew up in Ottawa, went to grad school in Toron­to, and has lived in Sud­bury since 2007, and she cur­rent­ly works as a man­ag­er in the pub­lic health sec­tor in the area of men­tal health and addictions.

In the con­text of the resur­gence in 2020 of the con­ti­nent-wide move­ment in defence of Black lives, which hap­pened in the wake of the police mur­der of George Floyd in Min­neapo­lis, peo­ple involved in a few dif­fer­ent strands of activ­i­ty that were already hap­pen­ing in the city came togeth­er to form Black Lives Mat­ter – Sud­bury. The group’s first big event was orga­nized for June­teenth, a hol­i­day cel­e­brat­ing the eman­ci­pa­tion of enslaved peo­ple in the Unit­ed States. And since then, they have been very busy.

Along with numer­ous demon­stra­tions, their work has includ­ed engag­ing with local gov­ern­ment and pro­mot­ing the idea of real­lo­cat­ing some resources from polic­ing to com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ing ser­vices. They have done numer­ous pre­sen­ta­tions to com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions and in schools and post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions about racial jus­tice and the strug­gle for Black lives. They have col­lab­o­rat­ed with local artists and arts fes­ti­vals, which has result­ed in an exhi­bi­tion, a ground mur­al, a short doc­u­men­tary film, and more. They are hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions about how to cre­ate spaces in the city focused on heal­ing and well­ness for Black peo­ple. In addi­tion, an impor­tant pri­or­i­ty for the group is build­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty between Black and Indige­nous peo­ple in the city.

Their most ambi­tious event to date will be hap­pen­ing on Feb­ru­ary 27 and 28. Called Here to stay baby!”: A North­ern Inter­sec­tion­al Cau­cus, it will fea­ture pan­els on top­ics like defund­ing the police, queer expe­ri­ences in the north, Black/​Indigenous sol­i­dar­i­ty, the rise of fas­cism in north­ern com­mu­ni­ties, and Black expe­ri­ences of high­er education.