1 00:00:00,270 --> 00:00:06,540 Good afternoon. I'm going to set my stopwatch. 2 00:00:06,540 --> 00:00:09,630 We'll see how that goes. 3 00:00:09,630 --> 00:00:15,660 So what I'm going to talk about this afternoon is something that other people have touched on in their papers because it's inevitable. 4 00:00:15,660 --> 00:00:26,460 It's called narratives of resistance. In his book Silencing the Past, Haitian historian Musharaff Chou looks at the links between history and power. 5 00:00:26,460 --> 00:00:34,680 In it, he explores, and I quote many ways in which the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of 6 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:42,120 competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means of such production and of their production. 7 00:00:42,120 --> 00:00:50,190 I would say I'd say that includes money, time, familiar and societal support, to name, but a few. 8 00:00:50,190 --> 00:00:56,910 He goes on to say that although the forces that he explores in his book are less visible than gunfire, 9 00:00:56,910 --> 00:01:02,730 class poverty or political crusades, they are no less powerful. 10 00:01:02,730 --> 00:01:13,920 As has been noted already by previous speakers and also by trio history, writing in and of itself is a way that power is exerted in society. 11 00:01:13,920 --> 00:01:23,880 And if this is the case, then writing histories which attempt to rebalance the uneven historical narratives of the past is also a form of resistance. 12 00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:33,900 The emphasis that I place in this short presentation is on writing, but of course, this is steeped in a wider colonial discourse, 13 00:01:33,900 --> 00:01:41,820 which encompasses many other institutions such as government and things that we don't really think much about, 14 00:01:41,820 --> 00:01:52,410 like the archives, libraries and museums. Pre 1970s historiography and Bermuda leads all the way back to the 17th century. 15 00:01:52,410 --> 00:01:57,270 The earliest writing by Europeans were for an a European audience. 16 00:01:57,270 --> 00:02:02,170 Elsewhere, these early histories and literary texts, including Shakespeare, of course, 17 00:02:02,170 --> 00:02:08,160 and his tempest informed how local historians came to understand the island's past when they began to write. 18 00:02:08,160 --> 00:02:15,030 And that was mainly in the 20th century early 20th century. A narrative of resolute English settlers and their descendants, 19 00:02:15,030 --> 00:02:22,590 which fit neatly within broader narratives of colonisation, form the core of locally generated discourse. 20 00:02:22,590 --> 00:02:28,950 Unsurprisingly, a colonial settler narrative was also found in local textbooks and museum exhibitions. 21 00:02:28,950 --> 00:02:35,040 For instance, in nineteen thirty seven four thousand copies of the early history of Bermuda for Children by 22 00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:40,050 Ken and Tucker were printed for the use in junior departments of government aided schools. 23 00:02:40,050 --> 00:02:45,540 It was, to my knowledge, the first textbook used in schools which concerned local history. 24 00:02:45,540 --> 00:02:52,290 If anyone knows of an early one, I'd like to know. This book focus, unsurprisingly, on discovery in settlements, 25 00:02:52,290 --> 00:03:01,530 and it remained the main text used for Bermuda history in primary schools for at least 20 years. 26 00:03:01,530 --> 00:03:05,970 The partiality of museum curators and the silences they created were noted by American 27 00:03:05,970 --> 00:03:11,640 observer Leonard C. Rennie in a 1965 lecture to the Bermuda Historical Society. 28 00:03:11,640 --> 00:03:19,740 He stated that the views of history given in Bermudian museums were unbalanced. He argued for history that explored the everyday lived experience. 29 00:03:19,740 --> 00:03:28,650 So part of resistance is not just thinking about what we were when things were bad, it's how did we survive every single day? 30 00:03:28,650 --> 00:03:36,120 He argued for a history that explored the silences that had been left in the heritage sector in Bermuda at the time. 31 00:03:36,120 --> 00:03:42,630 The absence of black comedians and the story of how they were instrumental to the development of this island, he asserted. 32 00:03:42,630 --> 00:03:44,640 And I quote, You had slavery. 33 00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:51,930 Yet the only way visitors would know that you ever had slavery in these islands would be if you heard of Emancipation Day. 34 00:03:51,930 --> 00:03:54,710 The silencing has already been noted. 35 00:03:54,710 --> 00:04:03,900 It was excused away the worst of slavery and segregation, and this was a crucial part of forming a narrative about Bermuda's past. 36 00:04:03,900 --> 00:04:09,030 It was a narrative that position the descendants of settlers as benevolent patriarchs and was used 37 00:04:09,030 --> 00:04:15,180 to downplay the role of persistent racial hierarchies to maintain the status quo in society. 38 00:04:15,180 --> 00:04:17,930 I've got I'm running at four minutes, so yours is a bit fast. 39 00:04:17,930 --> 00:04:26,490 I would use my to maintain the status quo in a society that featured a majority black population in this way. 40 00:04:26,490 --> 00:04:31,770 Black comedians remained economically, politically and socially disenfranchised. 41 00:04:31,770 --> 00:04:35,970 So Dr. Swann spoke about the kind of political changes that happened in the 50s. 42 00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:43,110 So I will skip that part. But there was frustration at the slow pace of political change. 43 00:04:43,110 --> 00:04:47,730 There was also resistance to change of the status quo, and it came not just from elites, 44 00:04:47,730 --> 00:04:54,690 but also from others who profited from the system in lesser ways and also from those who actually didn't profit from it at all, 45 00:04:54,690 --> 00:05:01,800 but feared change change that they felt needed to be avoided in case it brought about something worse. 46 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:06,930 In the nineteen sixties and seventies, old colonial tropes were reframed and redeployed. 47 00:05:06,930 --> 00:05:10,860 The need for change was acknowledged, but it was not noted that this neat. 48 00:05:10,860 --> 00:05:16,980 Sorry, but it was noted that this needed to be incremental to protect the island stability that was said 49 00:05:16,980 --> 00:05:21,960 to be needed for both the tourist industry and the nascent international business industry. 50 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:26,550 The local media, of course, played its role in this tug and pull between competing narratives. 51 00:05:26,550 --> 00:05:31,990 But the Royal Gazette and the Ramita Record are playing key parts. 52 00:05:31,990 --> 00:05:38,470 In the 1970s is when we see a change in narrative and we've spoken about some of these, 53 00:05:38,470 --> 00:05:45,710 some of the changing narratives comes before, of course, with Eva Hudson's first class citizens, second class men. 54 00:05:45,710 --> 00:05:54,400 Why the 1970s, well, there's the whole the historical context, it has already been spoken about, but there's also something else that happens. 55 00:05:54,400 --> 00:06:00,160 That's when the local archives came under the purview of the government for the first time, historically, 56 00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:05,560 no concerted effort was made to either by the local legislator in Bermuda or the bureaucrats in 57 00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:11,980 London to create an archive to conserve locally held documents concerning the colony's history. 58 00:06:11,980 --> 00:06:16,210 I'm sure most of us have heard of Lefroy, so the Froy was interested. 59 00:06:16,210 --> 00:06:20,020 He was governor, but he did not do that conservation under his official role. 60 00:06:20,020 --> 00:06:23,980 London did not help him. He did that off his own back. 61 00:06:23,980 --> 00:06:26,590 And of course, we know his transcriptions were problematic, 62 00:06:26,590 --> 00:06:34,330 but he saved that archive from both the disinterest of the local legislator and the officials in London. 63 00:06:34,330 --> 00:06:40,210 Access to original source material concerning the island was partially rectified when the Bermuda Historical 64 00:06:40,210 --> 00:06:46,450 Monuments Trust established a small private archive that had held the colonial records at their centre, 65 00:06:46,450 --> 00:06:54,070 but also included non-governmental documents. The restructuring of government in 1968 led to the disbandment of that organisation. 66 00:06:54,070 --> 00:06:58,540 Its successor, the Media National Trust, was established in 1970. 67 00:06:58,540 --> 00:07:04,840 Clearly responsibility for the maintenance of that archival collection passed to the newly formed government archive. 68 00:07:04,840 --> 00:07:09,460 The archive brought together official papers still held by various government offices, 69 00:07:09,460 --> 00:07:17,230 together with those documents that have been preserved by the Froy and the colonial records that have been collected by the MTA. 70 00:07:17,230 --> 00:07:22,570 It also included personal documents of businesses, individuals and families. 71 00:07:22,570 --> 00:07:33,110 In 1974, the Bermuda Archives Act was passed, creating a policy for the Bermuda Archives of Bermuda for the first time at that sink in seventy four. 72 00:07:33,110 --> 00:07:39,140 That in this interest in that this interest in government records and historical documents came after the creation of 73 00:07:39,140 --> 00:07:47,150 party politics and the increased participation of formerly disenfranchised comedians cannot be seen as a coincidence. 74 00:07:47,150 --> 00:07:55,160 It was in this decade that Bermudian historian Sarah Packwood wrote the first comprehensive slave history of Bermuda trained on the rock. 75 00:07:55,160 --> 00:08:02,360 The preface, written by Kenneth Robinson, emphasised the important gap in knowledge that Packard's text filled as information 76 00:08:02,360 --> 00:08:06,940 about this part of Bermuda's past was almost non-existent when the book was written. 77 00:08:06,940 --> 00:08:13,030 In this preface, Robinson identified the vital link between access to knowledge and knowledge production. 78 00:08:13,030 --> 00:08:20,200 He revealed that some of the local sources Parkwood research for his work and only recently become accessible to black people, 79 00:08:20,200 --> 00:08:23,740 and he took full advantage of them whenever he visited his native land. 80 00:08:23,740 --> 00:08:29,980 That's Robinson's words. Other writers also noted the role of the local archive and helping them to develop their work. 81 00:08:29,980 --> 00:08:34,820 In the introduction to Nellie Mason's mind, the onion seed, Bermuda's government archivist Leonard J. 82 00:08:34,820 --> 00:08:40,810 MacDonald notes that Muslins archival research cover material that was not usually used. 83 00:08:40,810 --> 00:08:49,780 It was there, but it had been ignored. Importantly, in these text, they were not just dependent on the archive. 84 00:08:49,780 --> 00:08:55,390 They drew on a long history of oral telling within the black community. 85 00:08:55,390 --> 00:09:00,670 Importantly, Pacquiao's where it could also be traced back to his own father's interest in the past. 86 00:09:00,670 --> 00:09:04,120 The strength of this oral tradition was also explored in the book. 87 00:09:04,120 --> 00:09:10,360 In fact, Packwood, according to his daughter Cheryl, was, I quote, an orator at heart. 88 00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:18,100 Thus, this new information of history drew on both archival research. Yeah, for one minute, as well as the oral history tradition. 89 00:09:18,100 --> 00:09:19,630 And that's what I've got left. 90 00:09:19,630 --> 00:09:27,190 These writers wanted to ensure that black comedians understood their histories and thus were better placed themselves in the present, 91 00:09:27,190 --> 00:09:36,870 confident claiming their place within society that their ancestors had a core role in developing muscle noted in mind the UN in siege. 92 00:09:36,870 --> 00:09:44,280 That this the book was the outcome of her own personal search for her family roots and the roots of other black comedians. 93 00:09:44,280 --> 00:09:52,020 And in the foreword to Kenneth Robinson's heritage, Dr. Norma Cox Atwood noted the text provided new insights into the previously 94 00:09:52,020 --> 00:09:57,600 stereotyped versions of what slavery and other aspects of life were like then. 95 00:09:57,600 --> 00:10:03,600 It is my expectation that most readers will have many of their own judgements and prejudices challenged when they read this work. 96 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:09,600 We must continue to write and read histories that shift us from the complacency that they challenge. 97 00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:16,881 Thank you.