African Nova Scotian Research Articles

We’ll Deal with it Later: African Nova Scotian Women’s Perceptions and Experiences of the Police

This case study explores the experiences of African Nova Scotian women in relation to the police. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with Black women living in a rural Nova Scotian community with a well-documented history of confrontations between the police and the Black community. Interviews explored their experiences with the police, their community’s experiences with the police, and their relationship with the police. My analysis revealed that participants did not trust the police, felt targeted by the police, and did not feel protected by the police. Their perceptions of the police were shaped by their own interactions with the police – often as Black mothers – and the experiences of the Black men in their lives in rural Nova Scotia. Some had engaged in active resistance and protection of their community. This article explores how anti-Blackness affects Black women directly and indirectly, contributing to the existing scholarship about over-policing of Black communities.

Spirituality Among African Nova Scotians

This article describes the role that spirituality plays in the lives of African Nova Scotians. Utilizing the results of two studies involving members of this group, “The Strong Black Woman Project” and the “Racism, Violence, and Health Study,” three major themes emerge. These include spirituality as a source of strength, spirituality as a coping strategy in a society where African Nova Scotians continue to experience racism and discrimination in all spheres of life, and spiritual health and well being as an important aspect of health. The article concludes with a discussion of the results and implications for social work practice.

The ENRICH Project: Blurring the Borders between Community and the Ivory Tower

In the spring of 2012, the author agreed to direct a project on environmental racism in Nova Scotia after meeting with Dave Ron, a social and environmental activist who had been involved for some time in the Save Lincolnville Campaign, a community-led initiative for the removal of the landfill near the African Nova Scotian community of Lincolnville. Thirsty for a new challenge that had the potential to effect real change in racially marginalized communities, she understood that the significance of the project lay in its uniqueness: few, if any, studies exist that examine environmental racism in both the Indigenous and Black communities in Canada. Given the dearth of research on environmental racism in Nova Scotia, particularly from the perspectives of these two communities, the project serves as a kind of case study for telling a particular kind of story situated in the Nova Scotian context and, in many cases, in the larger Canadian context.That project, which was later titled the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health (ENRICH) Project, is a community-based academic study of the socioeconomic and health effects of environmental racism in African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw communities. From its inception, the mission of the ENRICH Project has been to employ an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological approach that bridges the academy and community to support ongoing and new efforts by Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian peoples to address the social, economic, political, and health effects of disproportionate pollution in their communities.

Community Mobilization to Address Environmental Racism: The South End Environmental Injustice Society

There is a long history of environmental racism in Nova Scotia, with industrial pollution and other environmental hazards located near communities of color and the working poor. In Shelburne, African Nova Scotian residents live primarily in the south end of town, which is also the site of a landfill that was used for industrial, medical, and residential waste over a period of seventy-five years. The South End Environmental Injustice Society (SEED) is a nonprofit community initiative that represents a direct grassroots response to the siting of the landfill near the African Nova Scotian and working-poor community in Shelburne. Members of this collective organization have developed an approach that allows for the contributions of all members, in an effort that addresses issues of environmental racism and responds in a way that is continually evolving. Ultimately, SEED hopes that evidence-based strategies will be used to improve health outcomes and reduce the prevalence of chronic disease as a result of everyday exposures to toxic substances experienced by Black community members in Shelburne.

Fear at First Sight: Library Anxiety, Race, and Nova Scotia

Multidisciplinary research and services have attempted to decrease educational barriersand increase university success for African Canadian students. However, these efforts have put limited focus on the influence of academic libraries on student success. This study examined racial differences in library anxiety and the coping methods undergraduates used in Nova Scotia, Canada. To examine student experiences, this study used a mixed-methods approach with surveys and interviews. In the preliminary phase, survey findings demonstrated no significant racial difference. The interview phase revealed that African Nova Scotian undergraduates experienced lower library anxiety than Caucasian Nova Scotians. Specifically, African Nova Scotians expressed comfort interacting with their community and public libraries prior to attending university. While attending university, their initial reaction was overwhelmingly positive, reflecting their previous experiences with community libraries. However, throughout their degree programs their library anxiety increased when faced with barriers, particularly with staff. In contrast, the interviews revealed that Caucasian Nova Scotian undergraduates experienced higher levels of discomfort and anxiety during their pre-university interactions with public libraries and throughout their university programs. Based on the findings, this study contributes to a racial and Canadian context rarely discussed in Library and Information Science. This exploratory study recognized inclusive practices and spaces as methods that librarians and staff can use to alleviate library anxiety. These practices and spaces are particularly significant in lowering library anxiety for African Nova Scotian students and should continue in order to assure a successful transition into university for these students.

Assembling Collaboration in the Debris Field: From Psychogeography to Choreographies of Assembly

Between 2012 and 2017, Nova Scotia-based Narratives in Space + Time Society (NiS+TS) brought together more than 100 collaborators and hundreds of participants in several public art walks for Walking the Debris Field: Public Geographies of the Halifax Explosion. Through co-creation, including strategies of collaboration and sensorial storytelling in an embodied practice of creative citizenship, NiS+TS was able to generate—in time for the centenary of the devastating 1917 explosion in the Halifax harbour—a choreographed assembly that ably juxtaposed missing memories, histories, legacies, and present-day possibilities. Until the last few years, very few of the stories about the explosion and its aftermath included Mi’kmaq, working-class, immigrant, or African Nova Scotian experiences, even though these were communities deeply affected by the explosion. The first NiS+TS public art walk offering experiences of these stories drew fifty people, while the final attracted almost 200. The Debris Field events also resulted in the production of new forms of storytelling, including a free iOS app, ‘Drifts,’ and a shared website with the City of Halifax in time for the centenary ( intothedebrisfield.ca/ ). The kind of embedded, grounded power reflected in projects like Debris Field came through the growing assemblies of participants engendered by NiS+TS. The coordinated movements of such large bodies of people through spaces on which certain communities have been built, and from which other communities have been erased, makes more pertinent, and far less abstract, the deeply sedimented histories of class, gender, race, and mobility/ability in the city.

Re-thinking waste: mapping racial geographies of violence on the colonial landscape

ABSTRACTThere is a perception in Canada that Nova Scotia has had a long and unique history with racism, and that the province has been more reticent than other provinces to address the structural implications of that history in Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities. The failure to acknowledge the unique histories and experiences of Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities as historically disadvantaged communities enables Nova Scotia Department of Environment to continue to ignore the ways in which its policy actions disproportionately impact these communities. In this article, I lay out the limits of the current environmental justice narrative in Nova Scotia by highlighting the ways in which race has been decentered within that narrative. However, I also contend that an unwavering focus on race and other substantive structural issues must be accompanied by an analysis of the marginalized intersectionality of Indigenous and Black bodies and how this informs their spatial location, exposing them to varying levels of environmental risk. The article also calls attention to the transformative human agency of Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities by illuminating their rich and varied legacy of activism against environmental racism historically and in the present day.

Intersecting Oppressions: African Nova Scotians with Disabilities and Possibilities Arising from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Incorporating a social and critical model of disability with an eye to the important intersections of race, gender, income, and disability, we use the existing literature both on disability and on chronic disease and health within the African Nova Scotian community to argue that a human rights-based approach to disability, exemplified by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), provides the most promise for improving the lives of black Nova Scotians with disabilities.

Findings from the Series of Workshops “In Whose Backyard?—Exploring Toxic Legacies in Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian Communities”

Currently, Mi'kmaw (Aboriginal) and African Nova Scotian communities throughout Nova Scotia, Canada experience disproportional effects of climate change, water contamination, waste disposition, and pollution from the nearby industries. Environmental health equity research findings show differential impacts of toxic facilities and other environmental hazards on health based on race and income. This results in significantly greater health risks for these communities relative to other communities that live in less exposed areas. The Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health (ENRICH) project was borne out of an interest in addressing the concerns that Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities share about the health effects of living near to toxic facilities and other environmental hazards. A series of workshops was held throughout Nova Scotia from September 2013 to January 2014 to discuss these concerns. The main purpose of these workshops was to identify residents' main concerns about the health effects associated with their proximity to toxic facilities and other environmental hazards and to obtain their suggestions for how a future research study could support advocacy efforts around environmental injustices in their communities. The workshop sessions included topics on past, current, and future advocacy efforts and community-based participatory action research. Outcomes from the workshops include consultations with key government departments, a workshop report, a documentary film, as well as communication resources for mobilizing the wider community, such as a project newsletter, a project website, Facebook, television, newspapers, radio, and community meetings.

Rural Women’s Health edited by Beverly D. Leipert, Belinda Leach, and Wilfreda E. Thurston (review)

Reviewed by: Rural Women’s Health edited by Beverly D. Leipert, Belinda Leach, and Wilfreda E. Thurston Frances E. Racher Rural Women’s Health. Edited by Beverly D. Leipert, Belinda Leach, and Wilfreda E. Thurston. Toronto on: University of Toronto Press, 2012. x + 458 pp. Notes, references, tables. $80.00 cloth, $39.95 paper. This anthology of articles from diverse perspectives collectively makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of the nature of rural women’s health. The purpose of the book is threefold: to present a Canadian perspective on rural women’s health through the use of an interdisciplinary, determinants-of-health and primary healthcare focus and a theoretical gender lens; to create a resource for senior undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, healthcare providers, and policymakers; and to provide a foundation for approaching future policy analysis and research involving issues of rural women’s health. Although the majority of the research is Canadian, chapters have been included with American, Australian, and British content that reveal the ways in which the rural experiences of Canadian women are often similar to those of women in other countries. The variety of methodologies and approaches to research demonstrates the need for and effectiveness of diversity, flexibility, and innovation in undertaking such work. The volume’s 22 articles, each constituting a chapter, are organized into five sections. Part 1, “Research, Policy, and Action,” includes discussions of the history and current circumstances of rural women’s health research [End Page 103] and policy in Canada; rural women’s research and action on the prairies; the role and reduction in rural women’s organizations; and an overview of women’s health issues in the rural United States. Part 2, “Health and Environment,” encompasses chapters on farm work and risk of breast cancer; farm women’s food provisioning practices; the contributions and roles of farm women in on-farm and off-farm labor; and perspectives on the environmental risk of Mennonite women in relation to their religious beliefs, agricultural way of life, and the health of their families. “Gender-Based Violence,” part 3, involves studies of Newfoundland and Labrador women’s experiences of their reproductive lives; intimate partner violence and the unique needs of women in rural and northern communities; posttraumatic stress disorder and tertiary traumatization related to the interconnectedness of Aboriginal communities; and rural women’s strategies for seeking mental health and housing services. “Population Health, Health Promotion, and Public Health,” part 4, contains discussions of rural expectations and practices of farm women as nurses in accordance with the restructuring of agriculture and rural healthcare delivery; barriers and strategies associated with enhancing the individual and collective resiliency of rural women; ways that African Nova Scotian women in rural and remote communities understand and manage health and care for self and others; the complexity of the experience of pregnancy and childbirth for northern women; and the integral connections of rural community identity with women’s leisure and health. Part 5, “Theorizing Rurality and Gender,” incorporates embodied approaches to the study of rural women’s health; rurality related to space, identity, and the body; and volunteer caregiving of rural women as relational citizenship, with recommendations for the formal care system. In the final chapter, Deborah Thien suggests placing emotion in rural, gender, and health research to unmask variations and complexities and invite “wide-ranging and creative approaches to assessing, theorizing, and improving rural women’s health,” a fitting conclusion to a diverse collection of articles that effectively engage the reader and successfully contribute considerable new knowledge to the field of rural women’s health. Frances E. Racher Faculty of Health Studies Brandon University Brandon, Manitoba Copyright © 2014 Center for Great Plains Studies

In vivo facial tissue depth for Canadian aboriginal children: a case study from Nova Scotia, Canada.

This study examines facial tissue depth in Canadian Aboriginal children. Using ultrasound, measurements were taken at 19 points on the faces of 392 individuals aged 3-18 years old. The relationships between tissue thickness, age, and sex were investigated. A positive linear trend may exist between tissue thickness and age for Aboriginal females and males at multiple points. No points show significant differences in facial tissue depth between males and females aged 3-8 years old; seven points show significant differences in facial tissue depth between males and females aged 9-13 years old; and five points show significant differences in facial tissue depth between males and females aged 14-18 years old. Comparisons were made with White Americans and African Nova Scotians. These data can assist in 3-D facial reconstructions and aid in establishing an individual's identity. Previously, no data existed for facial tissue thickness in Canadian Aboriginal populations.

Awareness of Palliative Care and End-of-Life Options Among African Canadians in Nova Scotia

To assess, using qualitative methods, the knowledge African Canadians living in Nova Scotia have regarding their options for palliative and end-of-life (EOL) care. This project engaged caregivers in a Black community in Nova Scotia, Canada, in an exploration of palliative and EOL care. A group of six caregivers who cared for someone who had died were recruited through purposive sampling. The caregivers met three times to (1) discuss their experiences, (2) receive a presentation from the palliative care service, and (3) discuss whether those services would be beneficial. This was followed by a community meeting to discuss the findings. Knowledge of options for palliative care services is limited. Family centered care may be a reason why "system" is generally not aware of the EOL experiences of African Nova Scotians. Information about palliative care services is not filtering down to the community in a way that is meaningful to families. Families tend to self-select services that assist them in providing care in the home setting. There is a need to engage Black communities and palliative care services in developing culturally appropriate services.

Meanings of food, eating and health among African Nova Scotians: ‘certain things aren't meant for Black folk'

Objective. Most research on food, ethnicity and health in Canada is focused on the dietary acculturation of first of second generation migrants. ‘Failure’ to adopt nutritional guidelines for healthy eating is generally understood as lack of education or persistence of cultural barriers. In this study we explore the meanings of food, health, and well-being embedded in the food practices of African Nova Scotians, a population with a 400-year history in Canada. Design Design. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 2 or 3 members of each of 13 families who identified as African Nova Scotian. Interviews asked about eating patterns; the influence of food preferences, health concerns, cost, and culture; perceptions of healthy eating and good eating; how food decisions were made; and changes over time. In addition, research assistants observed a ‘typical’ grocery shopping trip and one family meal. Results Results. Participants readily identified what they perceived to be distinctively ‘Black ways of eating.’ Beyond mainstream nutrition discourses about reduction of chronic disease risk, participants identified three ways of thinking about food, health, and well-being: physical well-being, emphasizing stamina, energy and strength; family and community well-being; and cultural or racial well-being, emphasizing cultural identity maintenance, but also resistance to racism. Conclusion Conclusion. While culturally traditional eating patterns are often understood as costly in terms of health, it is equally important to understand that adopting healthy eating has costs in terms of family, community, and cultural identity. Dietary change unavoidably entails cultural loss, thus resisting healthy eating guidelines may signify resistance to racism or cultural dominance. Several suggestions are offered regarding how community strengths and beliefs, as well as cultural meanings of food and health, might inform effective healthy eating interventions.

“With God in our lives he gives us the strength to carry on”: African Nova Scotian women, spirituality, and racism-related stress

This mixed-methods study explored the racism-related experiences of 50 mid-life African-heritage women living in Nova Scotia, Canada, along with their use of spirituality as a coping strategy for dealing with racism-related stress. Four standardised instruments, along with qualitative in-depth interviews, were used to examine women's experiences of racism, depression, stress, and spirituality. Spirituality provided a key coping mechanism for racism-related stress, providing church community, spiritual community, faith, guidance, a personal relationship with God, and a source of meaning-making. For some women, spiritual belief provided a means of cognitive reinterpretation, allowing them to make sense of racism and other life challenges, recasting these as tests and trials which they were capable of surmounting with God's blessing and protection. Implications for mental health practitioners include working with spiritual and religious venues to help lessen stigma against mental health problems.

In vivo Facial Tissue Depth Study of African Nova Scotian Children

This study collaborated with the African Nova Scotian community to create the first African Canadian facial tissue depth database to help identify missing children. The relationships between tissue thickness, age, and sex were investigated, and comparisons were made with contemporary data for African Americans and White European Americans. Ultrasound technology was utilized to measure the facial tissue thickness of 54 living subadult African Nova Scotians between 3 and 18 years of age, at 19 standardized points. Results revealed significant relationships between tissue thickness and age at some points, but overall age was not a strong influencing factor. Statistical analyses suggest sex influences tissue depth at puberty. When compared to African American and European American children, African Nova Scotians have thicker facial tissue depths predominantly in the forehead, nose, mouth, and chin regions, while the jaw and cheek regions are thinner. These differences were not evaluated for statistical significance. The current debate on the separation versus collapse of subadult facial tissue depth data is also addressed. This study adds to the facial tissue depth data available for Canadian populations, which can aid in the generation of forensic facial reconstructions of unidentified African Nova Scotian children.

The Meanings and Functions of Occupations Related to Spirituality for African Nova Scotian Women

This article explores the meanings and functions of spiritually-related occupations for 50 African Canadian women in Nova Scotia, Canada. All but two women were affiliated with a Christian church. Using qualitative in-depth interviews, several spiritual occupations were identified by participants: prayer, Bible study, reading other sacred texts, private devotion, singing spiritual songs, and church-related activities such as committees, community ministry, choir, and leading Sunday school. These occupations were part of a holistic conception of health, and helped to protect against the psychological effects of racism. They connected women with church and spiritual communities, including ancestors. These communities and personal relationships with God gave women moral guidance for living according to their values and principles. Spiritual occupations were central to meaning-making, helping women reinterpret suffering as challenges accompanied by God's blessing, and providing hope through transcendence. For these women, spiritual occupations were part of surviving in the context of racism.

<i>Variation in linguistic systems</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Variation in linguistic systems Anne Marie Devlin James A. Walker. 2010. Variation in linguistic systems. New York/London: Routledge. Pp. xviii + 158. CDN $39.83 (softcover). The aim of this extremely thorough book is to provide both students and linguists with a comprehensive guide to the study of variation within language systems. This can often be a difficult area for students. However, James A. Walker combines theory and statistical analysis with naturalistic data to provide those interested with a one-stop-shop for the study of variationist analysis. The scope of the book is wide-ranging and covers definitions of key concepts, analysis (including an entire chapter devoted to the GoldVarb statistical analysis tool), variation in sound and grammar systems, language change and language contact. Walker initially sets out to provide a “storyline” for the teaching of the analysis of linguistic variation (p. xvii) and like any good storyteller, he starts at the very beginning. In Chapter 2, the author clearly defines the main terms used in the field of study. These include terms such as categorical and variable contexts, variable, variant, and the principle of accountability. Illuminating examples are provided from a range of languages and language varieties. Once the foundations have been laid, Walker proceeds to present fully exemplified step-by-step guides to the more common analytical tools used by linguists. In Chapter 3, he covers areas such as calculating frequencies and testing for statistical significance using chi-square tests (with the mathematics underpinning the statistics explained on a “need-to-know” basis). Chapter 4, is devoted entirely to the use of the GoldVarb statistical programme. This could almost function as a stand-alone users’ manual to the programme. Examples and fragments of files are displayed precisely as they appear on the computer screen. However, the reader may be left with a number of questions insofar as it is sometimes unclear how certain codes appear in the coding string. When entering data into the GoldVarb programme, it is necessary to assign a code to each factor under investigation. If four factors are to be investigated, they could be coded as a, b, c, and d. The coding string (or token) forms the instructions for the statistical programme and is simply a conflation of the individual codes. Therefore the coding string for the aforementioned factors would be abcd. This is well illustrated by Walker; however, the example is less clear. In 4.1 (p. 32), the author presents a possible set of codes for t/d deletion. This is followed by figure 4.1 (p. 33) which shows a fragment of a token file for t/d deletion as it appears on the computer screen. New codes are in evidence here, and it is not obvious where they come from. Further explanations would have resolved the issue. Having covered the fundamentals of establishing variables, variants, and factors, as well as having shown how to apply and interpret statistical analysis, over the next two chapters Walker leads the reader through variation within differing aspects of the linguistic repertoire. He reiterates that his approach to variation is a language-internal approach—that is, one which is not concerned with social or symbolic features of the utterances, but rather with language-internal factors such as the morphological status of the word in which the variant occurs. The first aspect approached, in [End Page 280] Chapter 5, is the sound system which is also the most widely studied. In order to overcome difficulties in differentiating between variation in phonetic and phonological systems, Walker conflates the two terms to establish the umbrella term “phonic” variation. Using multilingual data, although heavily relying on t/d deletion in varieties of English, the author demonstrates, in a very practical manner, how to conduct research into phonic variation. Additionally, the reader is made fully aware of theoretical and methodological problems which may arise and, more importantly, how to overcome them. One area emphasized as potentially problematic is the researcher’s assumption regarding the underlying contexts of the variable. The example given (p. 47) is that of the plural form of the word ”ghost” in African Nova Scotian English. Generally speaking, it is realised as [gos...

‘People Are Just Becoming More Conscious of How Everything’s Connected’: ‘Ethical’ Food Consumption in Two Regions of Canada

In this qualitative study with three ethnocultural groups in two regions of Canada, we explore the ways reflexivity and tradition may help explain regional differences concerning ‘ethical consumption’ in relation to food. We argue that ‘reflexive modernity’ cannot be said to apply unambiguously in contemporary Canada. The food concerns of Punjabi British Columbian and African Nova Scotian participants centred more on cultural traditions than on ethical consumption. While European Canadians in British Columbia (BC) and Nova Scotia (NS) appear similar on the surface, British Columbians expressed strong commitment to discourses of ethical consumption, while those in Nova Scotia displayed almost no engagement with those discourses. In contrast, tradition was a more prominent concern in food decision-making. Availability of resources for ethical consumption both shaped and was shaped by local discourses. Differing relationships to community may contribute to reflexive ethical consumption.

‘Symposia’ in the Drama of trey anthony and Louise Delisle

Scholars recognize that African-Canadian literature is polyphonous, multicultural, and, in a word, diverse, thanks to its origins in themigration of black intellectuals and artists fromthe Caribbean, the United States, Africa, Europe, and South America, over three centuries, to colonial and (post-)modern Canada.One example of the profoundly divergent orientations among African-Canadian writers is provided by the plays of Louise Delisle and trey anthony. Delisle is an Africadian (African-Nova Scotian) playwright whose Canadian genealogy stretches back two hundred years. Significantly, her work in theatre has been regional, amateurish, and concerned with excavating the Africadian history of her environs. None of her work has enjoyed professional staging. In contrast, anthony is a first-generation immigrant, based in Toronto, whose play, ‘da Kink in my hair, has been an internationally successful major stage play and now a television sitcom, treating black women’s experiences in a contemporary, urban setting. Delisle and anthony could hardly be more different.Yet, this paper argues, their settings—kitchens and beauty parlours—replicate a shared black experience that transcends very real cultural, historical, and geographical cleavages.

A population-based analysis of the health experience of African Nova Scotians

People of African descent living in Britain and the United States have higher rates of morbidity from chronic disease than among the general population. We investigated whether the same applied to people of African descent living in a Canadian province. We used administrative data to calculate 10-year cumulative incidence rate ratios for the period 1996-2005 for treated circulatory disease, diabetes mellitus and psychiatric disorders in Preston (population 2425), a community of predominantly African Nova Scotians. We used data for the province of Nova Scotia as a whole as the population reference standard. We also calculated 10-year incidence rate ratios for visits to family physicians and specialists and for admissions to hospital. We compared these findings with those in 7 predominantly white communities in Nova Scotia with otherwise similar socio-economic characteristics. In the province as a whole, we identified 787,787 incident cases for the 3 disease groups over the 10-year period. Incidence rate ratios for the community of interest relative to the provincial population were significantly elevated for the 3 diseases: circulatory disease (1.19, 95% CI 1.08-1.29), diabetes (1.43, 95% CI 1.21-1.64) and psychiatric disorders (1.13, 95% CI 1.06-1.20). Incidence rate ratios in the community of interest were also higher than those in the comparison communities. Visits to family physicians and specialists for circulatory disease and diabetes were similarly elevated, but the pattern was less clear for visits for psychiatric disorders and hospital admissions. African Nova Scotians had higher morbidity levels associated with treated disease, which could not be explained by socio-economic characteristics, recent immigration or language. Apart from psychiatric disorders, use of specialist services was consistent with morbidity. Further study is needed to investigate the relative contribution of genetic, biological, behavioural, psychosocial and environmental factors.