African Nova Scotian-Mi’kmaw Relations
In this bold and provocative book, Paula Madden takes an unflinching look at the complex history of African Nova Scotian-Mi’kmaw Relations. She shows that despite similarities in the challenges facing these communities, in the past and in the present, African and Native-descended peoples in Nova Scotia (and indeed in the Americas) frequently have drastically divergent notions of place, nation, citizenship, and belonging. Madden makes clear that, despite the liberating impulse behind the rhetoric, assertions of “Indigenous Blackness” require the denial and continuing erasure of First Nations peoples and their claims to their traditional homelands. Such a project, Madden argues, aligns African Nova Scotians with the colonial regime that still structures daily life for many Mi’kmaw people and compromises the emancipatory potential of Black rights, Native rights, and more broadly, human rights campaigns. This book is an important contribution to a growing literature on Afro-Native relations in North America, particularly in its focus on a largely understudied region and its uncompromising commitment to understanding not only what unites these communities, but also what keeps them divided.
– Dr. Angela Pulley Hudson, Texas A&M University