Uncovers the hidden history of Black cowboys on the Canadian Prairies, tracing family ties from slavery to Afrofuturism.
Numinous Animal explores the eclipsed history of Black cowboys on the Canadian Prairies. Part memoir, part regional history, and part literary analysis, it follows a journey of discovery through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cattle brands. Bertrand Bickersteth confronts the legacy of branding in his own family history as someone descended from people who were touched by slavery. In tracing his family’s complicated ties to slavery, he traces lines that connect West Africa to Nova Scotia, Edmonton to Freetown, and the Underground Railroad to cowboy trails. The culmination of tracing these paths is a tantalizingly poetic collision between the oubli of the archive and the promise of Afrofuturism: Bickersteth’s creation of a font traced from the cattle brands of Black cowboys and ranchers in Alberta. His artistry deconstructs marks of livelihood, ownership, and dehumanization, reconstructing them into a language of life, freedom, and love.