This is my story: Bringing voice to the violence of anti-Black racism trauma with African Nova Scotians through digital storytelling
| dc.contributor.author | Willis, Rajean N. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-01-14T18:35:57Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-01-14T18:35:57Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This qualitative research study explored and examined with six African Nova Scotian participants (co-researchers) their experiences of race-based trauma, and the ways these experiences impacted their overall well-being and quality of life. Specifically, I addressed the research question: What are the Indigenous ANS’ experiences of race-related trauma and how have these experiences impacted their overall well-being and quality of life? The study used an arts-based research method: digital storytelling. There is a growing body of literature examining the intersections and complexities of race-related experiences that have been identified as traumatic by those who experience them. This study looks explicitly at the relationship between racism, trauma, and Indigenous African Nova Scotians’ overall quality of life through their own accounts with a group of six co-researchers. Indigenous African Nova Scotian refers to those whose ancestors had arrived in Nova Scotia as early as the early 1700s, which are a group distinct from more recent Black immigrants (Elliott Clark, 2012). Using Digital Storytelling (DST), co-researchers created a two to five-minute mini-movie articulating their traumatic experience(s) with racism and its impact on their lives. Co-researchers participated in three two-hour group workshops, during which they engaged in finding their story, telling their story, crafting the story and sharing the story. Informed by theories such as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome Theory, Africentric Theory and Critical Race Theory, this study acknowledges the intersectional nuances of how anti-Black racism has been experienced with co-researchers. The recognition of structural and systemic anti-Black racism is reflected in the co-researchers’ digital stories. The resiliency and critical hope for equity and healing have also been made evident through their ability to take appropriate action against the assaults of anti-Black racism. Study recommendations point to the need to expand education, including African Nova Scotian-centred/Africentric pedagogies, to contextualize this reality into trauma-informed care in education. Additionally, this study provides further evidence of the value of DST as a research method for individual, communal, institutional, and structural transformation. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://ec.msvu.ca/handle/10587/2307 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Mount Saint Vincent University | |
| dc.title | This is my story: Bringing voice to the violence of anti-Black racism trauma with African Nova Scotians through digital storytelling | |
| dc.type | Thesis |