In the Fall Term of 2016, a select group of students had the privilege to be enrolled in a pioneering course on Slavery and the Law offered at a Faculty of Law in Canada, designed and facilitated by Professor Adelle Blackett. We came to the class, which had a waiting list, with a diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, and levels of familiarity with the institution of slavery and its legacies. However, none of us were prepared for what we were to learn about the foundational role that the law played in the creation and legitimization of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and perhaps more importantly, the deep-seated ways in which the slave industry has shaped and influenced the law. This insight was formative for many of us, as it allowed us to deconstruct and re-shape our understanding of the law in a way that rejected the dominant narrative of multiculturalism and legal neutrality, and better reflected our perspectives and lived experiences within the law. What follows are the reflections of a few of the class members drawn from our final reflections on the value of teaching this class in a law faculty.
By Samanthea Samuels
In Winter 2018, when I graduate from McGill Law, I will have three degrees from an institution named after a man who could have owned me. James McGill was a slave owner. Owning slaves and participating in the slave trade directly benefitted McGill’s wealth and success, just like the unpaid labour of slaves directly contributed to the wealth of the city of Montreal. These facts are widely ignored, not only within my legal education at McGill University’s Faculty of Law but also more generally in the Canadian context, signifying a widespread erasure of slavery and Black history. This course, Slavery and the Law, has legitimized my disdain for Canada’s false-perception of itself as the “True North strong and free”. This erasure that has plagued not only my life-long educational experiences, but also my existence as a Black woman, is a microcosm of the Canadian and Quebec attitude towards slavery.
“Je me souviens,” a phrase tattooed on Quebec licence plates, seems to indicate that Quebec deems its history, especially as a francophone island in an Anglophone sea, as important. Yet the retelling
PLACING SLAVERY WITHIN THE LAW
Our university's founder, James McGill, envisioned a peaceful society with a university at its heart. Acting on this vision 191 years ago, he left in his will, "a parcel of land, to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning… to erect and establish a University for the purposes of education and advancement of learning in this province.
" We stand on his land. We are the beneficiaries of his imagination. - Former Principal Heather Munroe-Blum
To be truly transsystemic, the program must evolve to become multilingual, multijurisdictional and multidisciplinary. - Professor Roderick A. Macdonald
[O]ne’s sense of empowerment defines one’s relation to the law. - Patricia Williams
5 BLawyerisH/March, 2017
Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Slave-ship.jpg