A History of Violence

A History of Violence

by Oscar Baker III | Illustrations by Aziza Asat

What’s Written in Blood

Night sinks in deep. It’s August 2009; I’m 18 years old, six-foot-nothing, and brown: half-Black, half-Mi’kmaq. I’m eight beers deep, which is nothing for Kent County, New Brunswick, and I’m lost, stumbling through the dark trying to find myself.

The history of our region is rarely told with the nuance it deserves. Violence is often framed as an isolated incident, a rupture in an otherwise peaceful history, rather than a thread that has run through our collective experience for generations.