Interview with Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae

All right. So it's June 1, 2023. This is an interview with Dr. Naile Keleta-Mae for the Oral History Hub Project Phase 2. The interview is Jermal Jones. So good morning.

Good morning, Jermal.

Thanks so much for being here today, doing this interview with myself and with the library and our oral history project. We are really looking forward to capturing, you know, the voices of Black faculty and staff on campus for Phase 2 of this project. And I guess with that, I just really want to jump right in and get to know a lot about who you are. And that that for me, that starts with your childhood. So if you could just tell me a little bit about your family background, where you were born, where did you grow up, what did your parents do.

I was born in Scarborough, Ontario. That is now known as part of the GTA, but at the time, it was a smaller city to the east of Toronto. And I grew up kind of on the border of Scarborough and Markham. So there were a lot of farmlands nearby on the north side of Steels, for those who aren't familiar geographically with the region. I mean, it has developed considerably. And there are probably no traces of that or very few traces of that now. But I grew up in a mix of -- with open space and farmlands nearby and then also a lot of sub development of a range of middle class aspiring first-generation immigrants from different parts of the world along with maybe third, fourth-generation White Canadians. So that was the mix that I mostly grew up around at the time. I grew up -- I would say that a big factor or defining part for me is that I grew up with parents who were influenced by the Black Power Movement in the US. It was the time when the Roots -- I'm dating myself, which is fine, but the Roots miniseries, Alex Haley's book, Root, was dramatized into a miniseries for television. And it was much watch -- must watch viewing for Black communities in the country. [dog barking] So bad this morning. Yes. Sorry, all folks listening to the recording. Give me a second. Yes, it was much watch -- must watch viewing for Black communities. And it was thinking through -- it's like the book, right? So it was telling the story of [inaudible]. And one of the things that came out of that series was that Ebony Magazine, a stalwart of Black publications, published an issue that had African names for your children. And my mom was pregnant with me at that time. And so they went through the names and chose Naile. And they chose it based on its meaning, which is one who succeeds. So I grew up with a name unlike anybody else's name in my communities that I frequented. And I grew up understanding or being told what the meaning of my name was and that history of wanting to choose a name that would identify me and link me to a different history. I grew up in a family, parents who were unofficial -- well, I shouldn't say unofficial -- who were very much community organizers, who organized in the communities, be it the church that we grew up in, the United Church that was quite progressive at that time in terms of ordaining the first lesbian minister, the first nonwhite ministers. So it was a reasonably progressive church in that regard. And my parents were active in that. They first immigrated to Canada from Jamaica. They immigrated to Winnipeg and were quite active in Black and Caribbean communities and associations in Winnipeg in the '70s. And so they had their jobs aside from those things. But they were always organizing in some way, volunteering, connecting with people. So I grew up around -- in that environment.

Thanks so much for sharing that. I really appreciate that story. It's great to hear that there's so many connections to community organizing, the conversation around the meaning of your name and sort of how that has sort of impacted you. Did you feel at any point that was something that resonated with you in high school or even younger?

It's resonated all through my life, throughout my life, because I've spent much of my life sharing the phonetic spelling of my name and continue to. So it was definitely defining in that regard. And I think that it has always been so. That hasn't quite stopped or ended. When I first began -- not when I first -- there was a point in my artistic career where my -- I used a stage name, and it was the phonetic spelling of my name. I used that for a long stretch of time, and have just gone to and continue to use my actual name. So it's ongoing. Absolutely, it was a defining choice that they made while I was in utero that has continued to shape my life. And then I think in terms of organizing and being in communities in that regard, both of my parents are also from their parents. So my grandparents were also very much active in the community. I think that there are strong histories in Black communities of people organizing in formal and informal ways. Right? Whatever you're doing in your local community group at the church, because church has been such an organizing factor for Black folks regardless of the extent to which Black people are devout, you know. But those kinds of religious settings have been ones where Black communities have used them to organize, to raise funds, to support children, all kinds of things, to be an informal food bank. So I've been around that for generations.

That's really great to hear. Do you feel like that might have -- did that impact you, I should say? Did that impact you in the school subjects you wanted to study as a child, like, in high school, elementary school? Did you gravitate towards certain things?

It absolutely influenced me. It continues to influence my understanding of myself and my place and my -- the work that I'm supposed to be doing, regardless of what my formal, official work that I'm doing is. So I think now when I think about my career and my profession, it is about the amalgamation of those things, right? That it was not something that's happening outside of those work times. I've made it into my career path. I've turned it into my path of study through graduate studies. That's really when that honing in happened. But all throughout elementary school, high school, my undergrad, whatever -- wherever there was an opportunity in terms of subject matter to have that be the focus, that's what I was doing. And in high school, I was organizing with other friends to put on assemblies in the school gym that were about Black life, that were about fashion, that were -- performing the words of Redemption Song by Bob Marley, because it was about the Haile Selassie speech. Right? It's just always been part of the work.

And what was the reception like? I'm curious.

Well, at that point, we had been -- we just were doing it, you know. So we would infuse it in the existing assembly wherever we could. And then, you know, advocating to the administration at the high school to have Black History Month assemblies or to have assemblies that were Black focused and then organizing with high school students from other schools, Black students there, to kind of do assemblies together. So it was just about responding to a need and having a kind of energy and wanting to be the focus, wanting us to be on the stage and behind the scenes.

Thanks for sharing that. So I did a little bit of digging around and finding interviews that you already conducted. And I listened to the one that you had done with Celine Asmibi -- Asimbi, sorry, about the Black and Art Free project. And one of the things that came up for me was your grandmother and sort of the importance. Would you mind sharing some of the wisdom that your grandmother left with you?

So I would say both of them. One of my grandmother's passed before I was alive, Kalita. So her name continues on with me. That's my paternal grandmother. And she was -- she and my grandfather had a small shop in the parish where they lived in Jamaica. And it was a shop where -- I just remember hearing stories or my dad telling me stories of whether or not you had all the money for the things that people wanted to come in and buy that. Part of the role of the shopkeeper was to make sure that people still have what they had, even if they didn't have the financial means to have what they needed. And that's for me about community organizing, how you find ways to stretch the resources to cover everybody, to mobilize or leverage whatever resources you have to facilitate that, whether it's formally or informally organize. So I grew up with those stories. And I grew up with the story of my paternal grandmother being ill with diabetes and clearly coming towards the end of her life and telling my father, who was wrestling if he should stay with her or go, to go, to go, to live his life. Right? That it is about not just your own -- and not because she didn't love him and didn't want him around and wouldn't have benefited from his care and all of those kinds of things. But it's her looking forward to future generations. And that's how those stories were communicated to me, that you have your time here. You do what you're supposed to do and what you can do. And you also organize and pass the baton for future generations. My maternal grandmother was very much an artist and an entrepreneur and absolutely a community organizer, none of which I think that she would necessarily have identified herself as or be identified as. But I grew up with her making things, always making things from incredible baking of enormous range of amazing food and selling it to where you'd have to place the Jamaican Easter Bunny orders or the Christmas cake, the black cake orders. You'd place them. Or, you know, gizzardos and drops and all kinds of -- and then experimental things sour cream cake and carrot cakes. So I grew up around that. And then her -- the things that she made, crocheting, sewing outfits from scratch, modifying sewing patterns to create her own designs, later in her life beginning to incorporate West African fabrics into what she was selling as her own aesthetic and sense and connections with blackness and black culture and being part of an African diaspora evolve. And crocheting blankets, one of -- three of which I use to this day, that are 40 years old, and that every winter, they come out and go on the bed because they are the warmest blankets around and that held up. And they are 40, 50 years old. So I grew up with art as function, as aesthetics and as generational. She crocheted a christening blanket for her unborn great grandchildren when she was nearing her death. You know, I was nowhere near having children, nor was my sister. But she was imagining that there would come a time and that there would be these babies. And so she started knitting the blankets for them, you know, probably a decade before they came. So those are the legacies that inform my understanding of myself and of my purpose and of the work ahead.

Thanks so much for sharing that. And to hear the story of those blankets and withstanding all that time, all that use, the conversation of how art became function, I think that really resonated with me. And hopefully, we can come back to that as we get into talking more about your art. But as you said, looking forward, as you sort of progress in a sort of linear way, I like to do things in lots of different ways. So circular, linear, doesn't matter to me. But I guess as you started to be spaces, higher ed, how did this sort of inform you to hone your skills? What were some of the things you really enjoyed about your masters, your undergrad, your PhD process?

My undergrad is in journalism and Spanish. And by then, I knew that I loved to write and that I just wrote a lot. It was always writing anyway. And so journalism felt like how I could bring that writing into some kind of professional space that would allow me to make a life with a degree of means and resources. So there was something -- I was just curious about writing. And it brought together a lot of the things that I'm interested in, which is audio and camera work. Those are things that intrigued me. So that undergrad was informed by an interest in writing and presenting and understanding how to connect with people because by then, I had been performing for decades. I started performing when I was four years old. So I had spent a lot of time on stages by then. So I was just curious about that. And I think one of the -- a couple of the great things that happened for me with doing an undergrad in journalism that I really appreciated about it was learning about writing succinctly, learning about writing really strategically and thoughtfully for an audience and how to communicate that to an audience. So you have to kind of take a complex story, often news stories or whatever, but to clarify it and to find language that would be sophisticated and kind of comprehensive in its conveyance of the issue or the story at hand, while also not being alienating, that it couldn't be so elevated in terms of language that someone else -- someone couldn't grasp it, that your average reader couldn't grasp it. That was an incredible experience of how do you manipulate words. And as someone who has long been a poet, a poet as a child, it was just another way of really thinking about words. That was quite fascinating to me. So that's what I appreciated about one of the things that was really informative about that undergraduate degree. And I had the -- I had the great fortune of having an internship at CBC Radio for two weeks. And I'm -- now I'm a long time and many decades long CBC Radio listener. I love radio. And I learnt in that internship that journalism wasn't for me. So one of the things I really appreciated -- that kind of -- that type of journalism wasn't for me. So what I appreciated about that undergrad was that internship as well, because it gave me enough of a window into the profession and its elevated level of the CBC of that standard and was able to see, okay, this pace, this way of working, I don't feel exhilarated by being it. I feel like it's moving too quickly for me to be able to write and communicate in the ways that I want to. So that was deeply informative. My MFA in theatre came as a response to the work that I was doing. So I think that's when my degree, maybe there was a shift in the sense of the first one was about how do I take some of the things I love and make a career out of it. And the second one -- well, it was still that, but I almost fell into theatre from doing poetry and performance. And my first play that I cowrote that introduced me to theatre, that was about bridging poetry. It was dramatized. And so I was like, oh, we should make a play. And it became -- it was an organic way of playmaking as opposed to extensive theatre training and then thinking that I'm going to create a play. So that was, I think, really informative as well to do something or to apply to do a degree that was coming out of my artistic practice and informed by my artistic practice. I also did not intend -- I didn't go -- I imagined that I would do my undergraduate and be finished school. So I didn't go to school. I don't have histories of people with multiple degrees or people who are PhDs. So I didn't go into my undergrad thinking about graduate school and such. I went to my undergrad, and I graduated. And that was it. And I left. Right? And so it was three years later, I believe, two or three years later that I went and did my MFA. And I learnt about -- learnt a lot about perseverance in academic settings. I had some really challenging experiences there. Yeah, some really challenging experiences through that process that informed both my creative and academic practice. And that, you know, reminded me of some of the challenges of being in public school as an elementary student in the sense of the ways in which antiblackness presents itself in public schooling, the ways in which the expectations that people have of Black students can be different, the kinds of alienating ways that institutions can operate. And so I was -- yeah, I was reminded of some of those things and was able to draw some links between them. And I left my MFA with the expectation, again, that I was done schooling. That was it. I was not doing -- not a single solitary day longer. I remember at one point in my MFA, I was like, you know, I'm not even going to complete this degree. I don't need this degree to be who I want to be in the world. And my mother was like, yes, but you've done so much of it, you're finishing it. You should finish it. And, you know, grateful for her because she was right. She was absolutely right. So grateful for her and grateful for having a close -- and that circle of people I can trust who when they suggest things to me that differ from what I want to do, that I know that at the very least need to pause and think carefully about what they're saying, that I can't, you know, discount it. And she was absolutely right, because if I had walked away then, then I would have not foreclosed the possibility of a PhD in future but complicated its pursuit. And I was not thinking about a PhD. So, again, I left with my MFA, which was a terminal degree. And I think what was valuable for me about -- it's like your question of what I learnt from each of those degrees, for me, the MFA was valuable insofar as it taught me or affirmed or underscored what perseverance means and is about. And persevering in the face of sometimes environments, postsecondary environments, that feel like they are focussed on your annihilation and not your development. Yeah. And I don't know that perseverance is -- you know, I think that there are many correct ways to respond to that. I don't know that it would have been wrong for me to walk away. I don't think that you always need to endure all of these situations and that, you know -- but I think that I had the capacity and the support that perseverance actually was on the table, right, and could be pursued. And it was the right calculation to make in that moment, and that there are other moments when the correct calculation is to walk away.

Thank you for sharing that. Absolutely. I guess I'm glad that you can continued to persevere and really have taken those lessons and turned them. And as you said, now you're at this point in your life where you're amalgamating those early years, all these things together. And it shows sort of all the things you've been awarded, reading through all the grants and awards and things that you've accomplished. It's been great to see. So I guess with that, and sort of this feeling of when you were done schooling at different times, what was the end? The PhD, what was the reason for that? Why did you feel you needed to pursue a PhD?

The realities of the market. So my MFA is terminal. And so part of my calculation of doing the MFA was that I'll still be able to teach in universities. And I was imagining a life where -- because between my undergrad and my MFA, I was working as an artist educator in communities. So I was freelancing, making art, producing shows. I had a cultural production company where we were putting on heading and putting on Black focussed cultural production events in the Montreal area in the early 2000s. And so I know for some folks, the work I'm doing now, it's like, oh, this is new. And then I think about not really, because I was doing it in Montreal and not really because we were doing it in high school with assemblies. So I can see a clear -- and not really because my parents were doing things for a long time before that. But yes. So it's the market that led me in part to my PhD because I had this MFA terminal degree. And I was applying to positions in theatre programs in different parts of the country. And I remember working really hard on an application. And I wasn't shortlisted or anything for it. And then I met someone -- I met the person who I think chaired the hiring committee. I was like, so, you know, any insights you can offer? And he said, all of -- everybody else has a PhD. I was like, oh, you don't need it, because MFAs are terminal. And he's like, yes. However, everybody else has a PhD. And so when -- you know, your application was interesting, etcetera, etcetera. But then when they're looking at the range of skills or the applicants in front of them, he was like, you didn't have that. And I appreciated that forthrightness. Again, not having had an academic track -- and I wasn't -- you know, it's so interesting in retrospect to me. I was never tapped in undergrad as someone who should think about graduate studies, the side conversations that I later learnt that professors have with some students. I was never tapped along the way or in my MFA of like, oh, you should consider a PhD. None of those things happened. And I have a track record of academic excellence from elementary -- unwavering, elementary, high school, the awards, all of those things. And I was never somebody who was tapped as someone who could do that. And that's how I think about the many ways that the postsecondary spaces can be really difficult and challenging. So if you don't know how to navigate them or don't have that generational knowledge or even know the question, how do you ask the questions you don't know to ask -- I didn't know that I wasn't being tapped. It wasn't actually until I was in my PhD program and started meeting graduate students who were like, oh, yes, my prof in undergrad told me about this MA program and encouraged me. And then my MA taught -- and it was just like, oh, so there's a whole thing happening. But people are being guided through this system. And that it's not, you know, tied to your academic excellence, for example, or your skillsets, that there's something else at play about who people imagine in the academy, who they imagine we should be pursuing these things. So yes, so I learnt that the PhDs, that people had PhDs, that I began researching PhDs, PhD programs, and understanding more about how a PhD actually works and what you had to do to achieve it and asking myself if I thought I could do those things. Like, that -- the conversation arose out of -- I thought I had the thing that would get me in and allow me to combine this with my art and make a life. But I don't have that thing. And what is this thing? And how do I get to that thing? So yeah -- so in part, the PhD was because I couldn't access the academy at that time with an MFA alone. So that's how I got there.

Thank you for sharing that. And, yeah, I'm happy that there was someone that told you, yeah, this is what you need to do to get to the next level and be provided with those resources once you're in that space. There were sort of two things I wanted to go back to. The first one was -- well, was Montreal -- during your undergrad, what was the art scene like there? Were you really involved? Or was it something that you just did because of your undergrad program?

It was a great place to be. I ended up staying for a few years after I graduated. It was a great place to be because it was -- there was an experimental art community. We were doing performances and poetry before spoken word was even known as a term. So I predate spoken word. And so it's been amazing to see how this -- how the form and genre has evolved and such. But it was a time of real creativity and experimentation. I remember going to shows and, you know, seeing a poet stand up with their back turned to the audience, you know, and do a poem that way. And I was like, oh, that's a thing. So it felt -- there was a way that it was freeing. It was fraught with politics of -- language politics in the province at the time and referendums. So there was a lot going on politically. It was an incredibly much cheaper city to live in than Toronto. And so to be an artist did not mean that you were necessarily on the margin and scraping in the same kind of way. It's an environment that didn't have the same kind of capitalist, I think, drive as Toronto has, which is something -- and just, like, drive, full stop, to do this, do that, be busy. That's very much the environment that I had grown up in the kind of Toronto context. But Montreal was about people spending time and, you know, knock on someone's house, on their door, or buzz their apartment door without a plan to see them and just see if they're home. And if they're home, then you hang out. So it was a wonderful place, actually, to be an artist and to explore and to collaborate with people, go to jam sessions and take in turns of poetry. And it's also a space that I stepped away from performing for some years because I saw that I was -- or felt that I -- knew that I was beginning to write work for the audience, imagining and anticipating what they would and what would work, as opposed to how I had always approached art prior to that was just making whatever I felt I wanted to make. And so to experience as an artist what it meant to be shifting my practice into being about what audiences wanted and then what that felt like on stage, even if they clapped at the moment that I thought they would clap, that there was something about it that was no longer the art that was for me in the same way. That didn't feel right. And so that was an incredibly important lesson for me as an artist as well, that that's not the art that I'm here to do. I think that some artists are very much invested in -- and I don't have an issue with it, I think it's about different approaches -- but who will be able to read audiences or anticipate audience needs and kind of create work with that in mind. And I can do that to an extent, too. But I learnt in Montreal in that experimental scene that that's not the artist that I want to be. And so I want to make the art. And if it finds audiences, then it finds audiences. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't. But I've still done the thing that I was supposed to do and felt called to do and wanted to do. Now, you know, that's also why I thought I needed to find a way to connect with the academy, too, because it's difficult to make a life as an artist if that's your approach. Right? The approach of I'm going to create what I feel called to create has -- can have economic repercussions. And so it was part of thinking about that. And also just knowing that I had a breath of interest. In Montreal, I had a lot of experience with people connecting with me. I remember a show at Concordia. I had been hired to perform at this event. And so I went, you know, however ahead of time preparing for the event. And I went. And I was like, oh, there's a whole conference happening here. And I was looking at the programming for the conference. And it was so interesting. And I was like, oh, I would have something to say about in this panel and this panel and feeling that and then understanding that I wasn't going to be invited to any of those things because I was the entertainment, because postsecondary spaces also understood, and many places, a lot of the private sector understand art as the entertainment portion, the fun relief thing that happens. Right? That we do the real work in the conference, and then at the closing event or the opening event, you have the artist come in and provide the entertainment. And so I understood in that moment, if I don't access the academic component, even -- my art will -- I will always be being brought in at the end when all of the decisions, the real decisions, which is the budget for the conference -- that's where the real work is. What's the budget for the conference? Who are we hiring? What are the topics? I wouldn't be a part of those things. And that's not the conversation -- that's not the only type of conversation that I was interested in. I want it to be part of the planning and such. So that also drove my move into the academy. And then lastly, I wanted to leverage resources. I learnt working outside of the academy that there is a -- you know, we're fortunate in Canada to have access to all kinds of municipal, provincial and federal grants as artists. And they're incredibly competitive and difficult to get. And so I wanted to be able to leverage resources, too. It proved to be far more difficult than I ever anticipated coming into the academy. But on the outside, looking in, that was one of the other things that I was thinking about when I decided to do my PhD.

Thanks for sharing that. So I guess my second question doesn't necessarily feel as relevant anymore, but I will segue with these lessons that it seems that you've learnt about who you are going to be -- so journalism taught you what you didn't want, your time and sort of the art sort of world and learning about being just this isn't going to get you that. How do you think that impacted your career progression? Can you speak about sort of your moves, being a faculty in Vermont, now you're here? So that's a big gap. So how did that all come to be?

Yes. So I ended up -- not ended up -- I decided to pursue the PhD after a couple of years. I think it was about a year or two after my MFA and having that great hiring conversation with the Hiring Committee Chair. And then I had another great conversation with Janet Sears, who is a Governor General award-winning playwright, who put on a really important triannual festival called The Playwrights Canada, African Canadian playwrights festival. And I was standing outside one day of that Festival in 2006, talking with her. And she -- I was like, I don't know what to do, if I should, you know, be an artist full time or if I should think about doing my PhD or, or, or, or. And she just gave me incredibly important advice, which was, you don't have to pick. If everything is inside of, you find a way to see how you can bring it all together. And then she was also like, we need you to go to the academy. We need you in there with an artistic perspective as well, thinking through this work and doing this work. So that was really informative and encouraging, as was another interview that I heard on Democracy Now with the -- 2004 with the poet writer, Arundhati Roy. And she was talking about the context of writers in India. And she said that it was all the seduction of the market that had shut them up like a good medieval beheading never could. And so, yes, 2004, I heard those words. And that was so orienting as an artist as well, right, because the questions that emerged where, have I been shut up? Are my shutting myself up? To what extent is the market seducing me in terms of my work? She talked about that your role of an artist is no different than any other human being. You pick your side, and then you fight. Right? And so it was this is the -- there is function and purpose and ways that this work can be connected to generations before me and my family of what is the legacy? And what is the work that we're doing here? So those are things that helped to orient me. And then you were asking about how I ended up in a -- doing a PhD and doing this work. Is that it, Jermal, or did I lose track of your question? I'm sorry.

No. The question was just sort of the career progression. So studying -- doing your work in academia. Just maybe speaking to some of that experience, your time in -- I think was Goddard College.

Goddard College. Yeah.

Yeah. Hopefully, I pronounced that right. And then you spent at UW Waterloo.

I started at Goddard College, fortunately, while I was doing my PhD at York. So I ended up -- yes. Then I went on to do a PhD at York in their new theatre studies program. And I remember my family was quite -- everyone was quite surprised that I was doing a PhD. But yeah, it wasn't -- my friends were surprised, too. It wasn't a path that folks thought I would be taking. And while I was doing my PhD, I was -- and I -- when I applied to do my PhD, it was like, I'll do a PhD. If I can find a project that I really want to do, then I will do it. Right? I didn't want to spend five, six, seven years studying something I wasn't particularly interested in, even if it wasn't popular or well supported at the time. So I wanted to think about autoethnography. I wanted to think about Black performance, Black feminism, Black expressive culture, those things. And then I had the good fortune of someone I knew -- I can't remember how -- telling me about Goddard College, and then inviting me to apply to be an -- I think it's called an academic advisor. I've forgotten the actual title of the role. But that was amazing because it was a low residency program. The Goddard College is part of the Free School Movement in the US that is very much about student centred learning, narrative transcripts, no grades. You work with students to design their own graduate program based on their interests and the ways that you can support them and mapping out what that will look like. It's a low residency program because students -- meaning that you're on campus for a short period of time at different points throughout the academic year. And then you're expected to go back into your community and be serving your community through the knowledge that you're doing, that you're gaining in the work that you're doing. So it's not that you get to -- you're not suspended. You don't leave your community to go do this work and then return. But you're supposed to be working and connecting back with your community, because the Free School Movement is also about what is the value of education within communities too and how education serves communities. So that was such an important way and informative way for me at a critical point in my career to have been -- or my development -- I was a student at the time -- to be able to understand that there are many ways that postsecondary education can function. What does it mean to speak about a student's progress without assigning a number grade to it, but having to think about the words to describe what they've done and to connect those words to the approved study plan that had been. So that was so good. I think it led in many ways and informed my teaching philosophy, which is a pedagogy of justice. And so that experience was incredibly important. When I was doing my PhD at York, that was really informative as well. I had an excellent committee and got to take amazing courses in political science and English and the humanities disciplines that I didn't have undergraduate or graduate training in. So it was incredibly difficult because I didn't have those foundations. And so I had to spend a lot of time outside of class time learning about those areas and disciplines. But it just opened up so much. And then I applied for a position at UW when I was all but dissertation and, you know, received an offer, of course, with the condition that I finish my PhD, which I did. But it was, like, yeah, it was an intense moment in the sense of still, you know, finishing up my dissertation and starting this new position. But it was a tremendous opportunity. And I understood from the mentors and those around me that you're not often hired ABD. And so it was an opportunity and a challenge that I knew I should see this. So that's how I started at Waterloo. And then I graduated the year after and began my path as a tenure track professor at UW 2011.

So I guess what makes sort of who you are, the role that you have, all those lessons, how does that impact you as a faculty member?

It informs everything that I do as a faculty member. I came to UW doing, you know, what is now called Black Studies when there weren't many -- any folks that I knew at UW who were Black doing that work. I mean, there were actually just very few Black people at the University of Waterloo at that time. One of my first campus visits, I ran into a Black woman across campus. And he had the [sound] moment, you know, of like, whoa. And I introduced herself to me -- her -- myself to her. And she introduced herself to me. And one of her first questions was, what are you doing here? You know, are you sure you're going to be able to make it? Is this really the right place for you to be? And she left, you know, sometime after that. I couldn't find her anymore. So it was a warning of know where you are and know that this is a tough place to be if you're a Black woman. So that was kind of my intro. And I remember going on campus to get some kind of new ID again. This is a new job. Oh, my gosh. This is so exciting. And all of that and then saying to someone, you know, that I'm faculty, one of the first times using that word and trying to fit into that role and the woman who had to give me whatever administrative thing just being like, "You're faculty?" She's like, "You look so," and had this long pause, and then she's like, "Young." I was like, hmm, i's clearly my age that's at play here, because I had gone to orientation and saw people who looked younger than me, who had followed the path of undergrad, grad, PhD without stopping. And I certainly was older in the regard of having spent moments outside of the academy. So I came to UW into a space where there were not many Black people in the Faculty of Arts. And it was a very different environment. And I was teaching students who told me in many instances that they've never had a Black teach or Black elementary, middle -- like, this had never happened, a Black person instructing them about anything. And they weren't convinced, some of them, that I should be there in front of them as a Black person and certainly not as a Black woman. Right? So there were many years of those experiences, and a campus environment that wasn't looking to kind of actively think about those things and to think about how do we create a culture, a campus culture, where those things are -- where we're addressing that, which is the work that we see happening now through HRAI and, you know, being led by ADP Dr. Taylor. So it was a very different environment in short.

And what turned it around for you? Or I guess hearing about your experiences, what inspired you to maybe organize to turn it around? How did you -- how did you survive?

There's so many things that I could get into and say right now. And I think here's what I will say is there are some -- part of the survival, and there certainly have been stretches where it just felt like that alone, survival. And that is, you know, specific to UW. But, also, it was about the academia writ large, in the province, in the country, the publication processes. All of those kinds of things, that tenure track experience of being a junior faculty, racialized female faculty, junior, played out. And the impacts of that were wide reaching. So the survival was about staying connected to communities outside of the academy, continuing to foster and have relationships and friendships with people who aren't working in these kinds of environments, who don't -- who aren't attached to the ways in which power is distributed and some of the expectations and, you know, the very long tenure process. It was good to have friends who would get a job, and probation would last three months, you know, not six years. It creates -- being junior is real. And being junior and female and Black is real. There are reasons that the tenure rates for Black women and Black people, from hire to actually getting tenure, that the rates are lower. The percentages of folks who make it to the end are lower because in many ways, they're environments that have been hostile blackness. This is just the reality and isn't unique to UW in that regard. And then it's certainly challenging when you don't have a critical mass of Black people around doing similar things as well. So I think the ways in which I was like one of the few or one of none or one of, you know, etcetera played its part. So survival was about staying connected outside of the academy and then, where possible, connecting with people within the academy, be it at UW or at other institutions as well, finding Black faculty, senior and junior and other places and connecting with them. And a whole lot of the survival was head down and work. Just try not to take on all of the other pieces and focus on what was required for tenure.

Thanks for sharing that. So I guess that will lead me to thinking about 20 -- we're talking about Waterloo at 100. That's the big thing on campus here. What would be -- how would you weigh in? What would be your vision?

So, for me, Waterloo now is reflective of -- specifically thinking around the ways in which UW and Black life and Black people and Black studies, faculty, students and staff are considered is so deeply shaped by that video that 17-year-old Ms. Darnell, the first name, Frazier, who took the video of George Floyd's murder. In the absence of that 17-year-old shooting that video and sharing it with the world, in a pandemic, in the absence of a pandemic, in the absence of people marching internationally as a result of seeing that video, in the absence of the Black Lives Matter movement internationally, and without the uncovering of those unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the residential schools that indigenous communities had been talking about for generations, but that was brought to the fore during the pandemic. UW is a -- that has led to a radical shift in the university. So, you know, this question four years ago, pre-pandemic, pre-video, is a very different conversation. If we just think about the numbers -- there is no Black studies program without that video and those protests. There are no -- the robustness and the hiring that's happening in HRAI -- I mean, that's an office that had to be shut down and go through an external audit in terms of thinking about its effectiveness and what it was doing. That's where UW was before with the office that had to be shut down. You know, without the pandemic, there isn't a Black faculty collective. There is no Black studies diploma. We could think about -- it would be interesting to know how many Black people have been hired since March 2020 on campus as staff and faculty lecturers administration and compare those numbers to before, because the 96 years before that, 97 years before us, before that, that history indicates what the focus was or the interest was in engaging with blackness at UW. So this is a radical shift. And we're three years in. Right? So I think -- if I think about Waterloo at 100, I want to think about budgets, because at the end of the day, that's how values are expressed. What are the budget lines? How are resources being allocated? Which departments are being staffed? Which offices are being stepped? Who's getting jobs? You want to talk about change and trajectory, let's talk about budgets, because everything else to me comes from the budget. It's back to the conference program that I went to decades ago. And I was like, oh, this is already all been laid out. You want to talk about where the power is, who are the logos? Because the logos determine the budget. Right? So if we want to talk about the future of Waterloo, I want to talk about the future of the budget lines. How many resources have been allocated? I was at UW in 2017 when I went to the then HRAI office and was shocked by the rows of empty cubicles and all of the empty offices on a campus where space is at a premium. There was this void of staff. And it's not that they were empty because folks were out of the office. There was nobody staffed to be in those spaces. So back to the video that Darnella Frazier shot. And we've been around -- I was here when the video of Rodney King circulated. So this is not the first time we've seen a video. The brutal beating of Rodney King was caught on video by police officers. So there is a way that some of this feels cyclical. Right? And the call to change can feel cyclical. So the question will be -- what I think about Waterloo at 100 is, what are our budget lines in five years, in 10 years? Do they reflect the same kinds of initiatives and investments as the past three years? Or do they move on to something else? Right? it's always to me going to be about the budget line. Where are the resources being allocated? And I've spoken about that publicly on my social media, kind of mid 2000s, when I was critiquing this flux -- the influx of statements against antiblackness and antiblack racism that so many people had, myself, and the critiques that so many of us had, myself included. So it always comes down to the allocation of resources, for me, ultimately. Everything from my perspective flows from that. And if resources aren't being allocated, then we will reproduce what has happened in the history -- in history, too, which is Black Studies programs that fold because they haven't been resourced or, you know, we're in a moment of an influx of EDI related or type of positions across the board, private public sector, postsecondary institutions, on and on and on and on and on. Are they positions that are being resourced? You know, do we have one person who is not connected to any administration and staff who's been tasked with doing this work? Or do they have a staff? Do they have resources? Do they have budgets to do programming? Because in the absence of resources and the ability to leverage them, we will -- the history, the overwhelming history of a lack of engagement with Black people and Black life, that is the past 100 years, will continue, and that this will be a moment. And I don't think it has to be a moment. I think if -- you know, that we can see this moment. And I think that there is excitement and possibility, and there are resources in place in terms of staff and cash to do things and make things happen. That, to my understanding, is unprecedented in the history of the institution. So if the commitment is there to continue that when there are new Presidents and new Deans and new Provosts in that sustained way, then we can see that change and that impact. So we're three years into a radical shift for UW. And the question is going to be about senior administration's willingness to continue to fund that long after it is perhaps no longer a topic that is the world is galvanizing around. And I would just say -- we've been a publicly funded institution for so long,. And so the idea that there was ever a time that the university wasn't attempting to provide and connect with Black people -- we have been here. And part of this land that we agreed to call -- currently agree to call Canada for 100 years is an issue, too. We're not a -- it's not some private sector who can or cannot engage. We're a publicly funded institution that has a responsibility to serve and reflect communities.

Thanks. Thank you for that answer. And yeah, I think -- I hope the same thing. I hope that we can see those resources continue to be allocated. And it's interesting that it came full circle, you know, a moment that happened. I don't know the amount of years, but it happened before. And you feel like you can see it there. This is where you need it to be to have those conversations. So I guess this leads me to sort of discussion around the art and the Black and Free project because that's what is screaming out to me at this moment is, can you just talk about that for me? What is the Black and Free project mean to you?

It's a full circle moment for me as well, because I was saying -- for some time, I was saying that, oh, I started it in 2017, because that really is when I thought of the word "black" and "free." I thought, that's what it's called. That's how I'm organizing my thoughts. I'm going to call it black and free. So that started in 2017 as just a promise that I was going to spend my -- the rest of my life focused on blackness and freedom. And then what was interesting about it for me, since then, in the last year or so, I remember that one of my first posts was called Freedom in the '80s as a child. And I had forgotten that. And then I remember that my first album in 2001 is called Freedom, about freeing the mind. So as much as I [inaudible] started in 2017, it's decades old. And I think that that 2017 is like a synthesizing in terms of terms of finding three words that say the thing that I've been thinking about and working towards for a long time. So the project itself now started, I guess, as a hash tag. I was like, yeah, it's going to be Black and Free, and then became a course that I was piloting through the Arts First Course -- courses at UW. So I piloted it there a few times. And then I began to apply for and receive seed funding grants to think about blackness and freedom from different perspectives. And that's what I've been doing since 2017, trying to find resources, right, to amass resources. You see a theme, Jermal, right? At the end of the day, it's resources and budgets that make things happen within this context, within -- we make things -- Black communities make things happen without resources all the time and have centuries of experience with that of scraping together resources to do things that are unimaginable and would be impossible without all kinds of people contributing whatever they had. I was interested in how do I do that within a research context where there actually are resources. And that part of the expectation of the institution of faculty is that we have these search profiles and are successfully receiving funding. So my challenge has been to -- have how to articulate this blend of art and scholarship and the need for it to be public facing within the existing grant structures. And that has certainly been a challenge. And I often consistently get feedback of my projects not quite fitting into these things and being different and all of those kinds of things. But it's about finding a way to articulate those pursuits within funding models, existing funding structures, to then be able to have the power to leverage resources towards this work, to mobilize and leverage resources. So I think, technically, that's what is happening with Black and Free, because we're talking about budgets. Like, that's what makes the project possible. It's been failing and succeeding at grant writing, which is part of what the work is. And so in terms of what Black and Free is doing, there are three strings of the project, all of which are public facing to some extent, because that is the generational work that I've been doing that I'm not as a researcher particularly interested in creating work that will only be for specific academic communities or disciplinary communities. I don't have an issue with that kind of research. But as, like, having discussed my context, it's not the kind of work that I could ever -- or at this point I'm interested in doing or imagine doing. I think of what's happening with Black and Free is absolutely an extension of the work that my parents were doing before I was born in Winnipeg, of the work that they were doing in churches and communities and that my grandmothers were doing, I think of it as being connected to the shops that my paternal grandparents had. It's very clear to me, those [inaudible] lines. It's like an academic version of the assemblies that we were doing in high school. I feel like someone just entered our conversation. I heard another voice. All good. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm hearing myself.

Yeah. No. I don't know what happened on my end here. I guess, like, Siri decided to respond when you said something similar to that.

Hi Siri.

Well, don't do that again. [laughter]

Oh, sorry. Oops. Yeah. The free line is really clear to me and the idea of, like, if you have some control of or access to the resources, like you're a shopkeeper, then you can allocate them to serve the people who need to be served. It's the same premise opening or the -- to serve the communities that you prioritize serving. Right? So it's that same ethos playing itself out within the context of being a scholar and being a faculty member. That's what I'd say. And then Black and Free, we're doing all kinds of -- I'm really -- yeah, I'm proud of the work that we're doing, working with private and public sector organizations, commissioning artists, commissioning designers, currently working with playwrights who are thinking about, what could be plays that could be created for children and young people on the topic of blackness and freedom. Just had 16- to 19-year-old, a group of 16- to 19-year-old Black students, participants of the Edge Program on campus at UW imagining themselves, to facilitate that imagining of themselves in postsecondary institutions have done some great programming at the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum and at the museum in Kitchener, partnering with Young People's Theatre. Just we've done a lot of great work. And I'm currently working on a short film, which is a new medium for me to work in that. As a creator of it, I've been in other people's films. But this will be my first time -- this is my first time controlling the budget lines and writing the -- it's a very small project, but it's something that I need to learn how to do and writing the script as well. So yes, it's through the Canada Research Chair that I'll be making some artistic work and supporting doing some work with Black and Free through an Ontario Research Fund Research Excellence Grant from the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, that we're doing a lot of public facing work. It's a multiyear project. So some of that public facing work that I was just describing. And then, also, through funding from Shirk, Black and Free will be doing some international -- have done already some international travel. But we'll continue to do international travel in the years to come. There are book contracts with Wilfrid Laurier University Press for books that will come out from the project. Working on four books right now. So yeah, four. Yeah. Working on four books right now. I just had two that came out this year, one that just came out and one that actually, the publisher was just telling me that they got it in the office. So I should be getting my own copies of that soon.

That's exciting.

Yeah. I'm doing a couple of special issues, editing some special issues, on the topic of blackness and freedom that will be coming out in the coming years as well. So thinking about the public programming. Had a symposium talking about blackness and freedom, too. A marketplace where we invited Black vendors to an organization to the Ken Seiling Regional Museum and waived the fee for having a vendor table so that -- people bought their things. They got all the money to do with as they wished. And I think of my paternal grandmother and grandfather, shopkeepers, that you're supposed to support entrepreneurship. Like, yes, I'm thinking about art and scholarship, but there are very real needs of communities. And part of that is economic. So how do we create artistic and academic spaces that are also speaking to the economic needs and possibilities and supporting those endeavors? So that's -- the project is really drawing on so many of the things I value and lessons I've learnt and practices that generations before me have already exposed me to and that I'm looking to integrate in an academic setting. And I think that that's partly why, at times, the projects are considered to be -- the project is -- I think difficult or challenging for people to wrap their minds around in terms of its scope. But it's a scope that's informed by my life, but also previous generations and what they've taught me.

Looking forward to, you know, seeing what continues to come from that project. Sounds like amazing work and worthy of all the attention it's been getting and will continue to receive. One of the things I'm wondering is, if we have time to experiment with sort of your song or your [inaudible] within this interview. Is there something that has sort of come to mind at this point that you would like to maybe share?

Well, one, I think I have to just say that I've spoken about my mom and my grandparents a lot. But I haven't spoken about my father. And that's actually -- he's deeply influential in my life. And part of that not speaking is that he passed when I was pretty young, just prior to finishing my undergrad. And so there's a way in which when I think about my -- or talk about my life, there's so much of it that he hasn't been a part of physically. But that's not reflective of his influence. So a lot of my work in artistic practice comes as a result of deep conversations that we'd have. I think my father had -- was quite philosophical. And so I was raised having thoughtful, deep conversations about all kinds of things, about gender, about how to manage antiblackness, about how to recognize it, about thinkers and artists. I was deeply influential in those ways. And so I see and continue to see his influence in not just my artistic work, but my academic work in terms of wanting to be thoughtful about things. So I'd say that. And then what comes to mind in terms of -- the art that's on my mind in the moment -- there are two things. One, I think, is Ground Up. And the other is Free, which are two songs from my last album. Free comes from listening to records with my dad. We used to listen to records. And I wouldn't say that he was deep into -- I mean, he just liked a wide range of music. So I don't know that the genre would be reflective of our conversations as much as the content is. And so Free, for me, is like too many live in a tenement, facing problems that just won't relent. Too many failed by the government. The politicians need to repent. They give excuses in each instant, and tell lies, a regular event. Central result is our deep lament, but few want to hear us in the present. There's just one thing they must understand. They can't expect Black people to be bland. Peace and justice go hand in hand. Freedom for all is our demand. Free from labels. Free from chains. Free is what we're born to be. And free we'll remain. Yeah. Free from labels. Free from chains. Free is what we're born to be. And free we'll remain. So that comes to mind. And then Ground Up. Ground Up is -- that's been on my mind, too. These empty rooms, empty walls, we will fill them with our love. New memory. Make new memory. No tables yet, we've got no chance. But good times, we will share. New memory. Make new memory. If we build it from the ground up, build it on real love, build it on a firm foundation, oh, it could be amazing. If we build it from the ground up. That's what I'm trying to do with this work, build it from the ground up, build it on a firm foundation, and create new memories, while also being like -- I want us to be free from labels, free from chains. And that we're born free and that we will remain free and have -- Black people have remained free, regardless of all -- in the face of all of the violence and oppression, we have also found ways to hold our freedom out of sight and to be untouched by, and that that is a practice that is centuries old as well.

Thank you so much for sharing that with me and with folks that will be listening to this interview. So deeply impactful just to be present in this moment and listen to that -- to those words. So I guess any sort of final thoughts as we're coming sort of to close the interview. How important do you believe that these stories like yours, that they're recorded and preserved for future generations?

Respect my mind. Think things through. Respect my time. If not, we're through. Respect my body. I decide. Respect my wrath. Respect my rise. When I fall again, I will rise again. And I'll rise again. And I'll rise again. I'm not your superwoman. I'm a firewoman. A demanding woman. Not your superwoman. I'm a firewoman. I know what I need me. I know what I need. That's what I think.

We'll leave it there. I think it speaks for itself -- for itself. Sorry. Is there anyone else that you feel that we should interview?

You can talk to Emily Radcliffe, who's a student in the Faculty of Arts in the Department of Communication Arts. I would recommend speaking to Margaret Matumbo, who's a recent graduate, newly tenure track position at Western. Nadine Grant, who is a Head of Costume and Wardrobe in the Department of Communication Arts. Those are three people that come to mind. My pleasure.

And is there anything else that you would to share, any additional experiences that you felt we didn't get a chance to cover?

No. I've shared a whole lot. I'm pretty private, which is not always obvious from the work I do. I think folks -- I have received that feedback of the ways in which my work is so personal. And then, also, just my scholarship as well integrates a lot of my personal life. But I'm also quite private. So I do feel like I've shared a lot. So yeah, I'm like, I got nothing else to add.

Thank you for sharing all of that with us and with me.

Pleasure. Thank you for inviting me for the conversation and the time of reflection.

You're welcome.