Historian and Author is the 2022 My People Award Recipient

By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed    Natasha Henry-Dixon, recipient of the 2022 My People Award

Blackhurst Cultural Centre: The People’s Residence will present the 2022 My People Award to historian and author, Natasha Henry-Dixon at the opening night of the four-day Black and Caribbean Book Affair on October 12 in Toronto.

The My People Award is presented to an African, Black or Caribbean writer in Canada who is excelling at their craft and telling the stories of our heritage in their work.

Henry-Dixon is an educator and curriculum consultant specializing in the development of learning materials that focus on the African diasporic experience. 

The historian is the author of Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada (2010), Talking About Freedom: Celebrating Freedom in Canada (2012), and has written several entries for The Canadian Encyclopedia on African Canadian history. She is the president of the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS).

In 2020, when the murders of two Black men in the United States — Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd — thrust a spotlight on anti-Black racism and issues articulated by the Black Lives Matter Movement seven years earlier, Henry-Dixon’s books became must-reads again as North America, and by extension the world, grappled with its anti-Black racism practices and policies. 

Henry-Dixon has consistently documented the contributions of African diasporic people to what Indigenous peoples have named Turtle Island (North America). She is also helping to ensure that plaques are placed at landmarks significant to the history of Black people in Ontario.

She is a lecturer in the professorial stream in the Department of History at York University and also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. The 2018 Vanier Scholar is researching the enslavement of African people in early Ontario. 

 

Through her various professional, academic and community roles, Henry-Dixon’s work is grounded in her commitment to research, collect, preserve, and disseminate the histories of African Canadians.