Remembering
Heritage is a vital resource for social change that can empower communities to take action against exploitation
Remembering past forms of enslavement prompts recognition of the enduring life of exploitation
It can raise awareness among the vulnerable, it can equip activists struggling against the violation of rights today, and it can empower communities to challenge contemporary patterns of abuse.
Both tangible and intangible forms of heritage can activate community memory. Historic sights, commemorative spaces, expert knowledge and skills can all be used as tools to open up collective conversations about disremembered pasts and present taboos including historical and contemporary forms of slavery.
Memory practices are reflective and creative. The pasts we chose to collectively remember or forget shape our societies, our behaviours, our institutions and what we are able to perceive in the present.
Unearthing Hidden Histories
HIDDEN HISTORIES
Our partners at Jamestown Walking Tours (JWT) in Accra, Ghana have been mapping heritage sites associated with historic networks of enslavement in partnership with University of the West of Scotland. They have identified a network of sites connected by underground tunnels, which were used historically by merchants to move enslaved people between large, private houses and the coast.
To document these findings JWT have created a virtual tour. Making these landmarks and itineraries visible to local communities is contributing to a programme of awareness-raising and taboo-breaking through which JWT, working with Jamestown Community Theatre and local residents, is identifying parallel networks of contemporary human trafficking that traverse the same areas of Accra.
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Access to James Fort with kind permission of the Ghana Museums and Monuements Board.
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A lot of people have sort of forgotten the fact that the engineering of forts, that originally were slave holding sites into prisons means that the memory of what these places were used for is eroding gradually ... the reason why people are saying slavery ... doesn’t happen in Jamestown [today is] because they don’t see these people with chains. It's not visible. But ... exploitation can be found in so many ways....
Forms of enslavement in Ghana
Working with Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB), a research team at the University of Ghana Legon has conducted fieldwork in regions across the country to identify sites associated with the historical slave trade.
Building the capacity of GMMB, the project has enabled Ghanaian experts to locate, research and recognize a diversity of site types beyond the major coastal slave forts through attention to both tangible and intangible heritage as repositories for memory.
The team have shared their findings through an itinerant exhibition that has toured cultural sites across Ghana, sparking great interest amongst visitors. It has opened a space for conversations about both the legacies of historical slavery and prompted discussion of contemporary forms of exploitation that traverse the same Ghanaian landscapes.
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Activating community memory
Visualising Liberté
In Mali, local NGO Donkosira collaborated with SOAS University of London to document oral histories from the residents of Bouillagui: a Soninke village in the west of the country.
Bouillagui has an exceptional history. It is a village founded by the formerly enslaved, a group of people who liberated themselves at the beginning of the twentieth century. Residents of Bouillagui are proud of this history, in contrast to the situation elsewhere in Mali where acknowledgement of internal slavery and enslaved ancestors is considered shameful.
Interviews conducted through the Visualising Liberté project enable the accounts usually passed down intergenerationally within families to be shared more widely. This collection, which is made accessible via an innovative web documentary, records the village’s radical challenge to the taboo of descent-based slavery in Mali and its contemporary legacies as well as activating collective memory among younger residents prompting continued activism for human rights in the present.
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Pupils [at Bouillagui primary school] were particularly impressed by the determination and the courage of the formerly enslaved to leave the village of their former masters. ... A graphic novel and an animation film about [Bouillagui's] history of resistance against slavery ... will introduce the younger generations to issues such as citizenship, human rights and the fight against discrimination and modern slavery.
Emerging Voices
City Hearts Africa has developed an educational programme for young people that seeks to raise awareness of historic and modern forms of slavery in Accra, Ghana.
They have found that the triangulated experience of visiting heritage sites connected with historic forms of enslavement, taking part in reflective arts-based workshops and learning from Ghanaians who have lived experiences of modern slavery has been very powerful.
Reflecting upon these various heritage-based and personal legacies of enslavement has enabled the young people participating to re-examine social customs that might normalize child labour exploitation and develop personal strategies for addressing the threats of being drawn into modern slavery.
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I thought slavery was something which was just said, but when we went to the castles and the forts, I knew that it's something that really went on.
Emerging Voices
City Hearts Africa has developed an educational programme for young people that seeks to raise awareness of historic and modern forms of slavery in Accra.
They have found that the triangulated experience of visiting heritage sites connected with historic forms of enslavement, taking part in reflective arts-based workshops and learning from Ghanaians who have lived experiences of modern slavery has been very powerful.
Reflecting upon these various heritage-based and personal legacies of enslavement has enabled the young people participating to re-examine social customs that might normalize child labour exploitation and develop personal strategies for addressing the threats of being drawn into modern slavery.
I thought slavery was something which was just said, but when we went to the castles and the forts, I knew that it's something that really went on.
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Confronting painful pasts
Leslan
Descent-based slavery is seldom acknowledged publicly
In December of 2019, the LESLAN project supported a concert campaigning against slavery, human trafficking and violence held at the University Abdou Moumouni of Niamey.
This was a significant event in Niger, where descent-based slavery and its legacies are seldom acknowledged publicly. The headline act was Nigerien rapper Ibrahim Oumarou Yacouba, known as Sage Soldat who performed his new track ‘Slavery’. Sage writes politically engaged songs that seek to inspire young people across Africa and elsewhere in the world to fight against injustice.
His track ‘slavery’ calls for an end to exploitative practices, reminding those in Niger who are faced with the legacies of enslavement day-to-day, that they can and should ‘stand up for their rights’. Following the success of this event, in 2021 the LESLAN project launched a ‘Music for Freedom’ programme that will tour locations across Niger.
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Music is an important tool of communication, a very effective means of conveying and passing on messages. It occupies a significant place in several sectors; education, development; sensitization; awakening of consciousness etc. Slavery exists in Niger, and I strongly believe that art, artists and music have a major role to play in the fight against social marginalization; exploitation of people and multiple forms of injustice.
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