Stories on racial justice give power of memory to the slain

“In French schools, we do not learn anything about the French Caribbean and the history and culture of slavery, nor do we learn anything on Black figures of resistance,” said Léonard Cortana, a former UN Human Rights Fellow of African descent whose familial roots are in Guadeloupe. “I have always had one foot in the post-colonial context and the other still, somehow, in a European country.”

For the past decade, Cortana has been on a quest to know more about his own history. That pursuit led him to the United States where he applied for a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies, with a focus on race theory, postcolonial theory and human rights at New York University. He is also an Affiliate Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center, Internet and Society at Harvard University, and has written articles in publications such as Jeune Afrique and the online presence of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Cortana’s research examines discourse around racial justice in the African diaspora as well as anti-racist activist movements in different countries, putting a particular emphasis on the memorialization of assassinated human rights defenders and the continuation of their legacies.

In 2022, at the end of his PhD, he applied for and was accepted into UN Human Rights’ Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent to find different avenues to practically use his knowledge.

The Fellowship programme is an intensive human rights training for people of African descent living in the diaspora, who work to promote the rights of people of African descent. It enables participants to learn about and deepen their understanding of the international human rights law and the UN human rights system, the international legal framework to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and intersecting issues with a focus on people of African descent.

Cortana said that he also wanted to influence others through his own experience to try to change perceptions about the Global South and the Global North, as well as about the UN.

“I was lucky enough to live in different countries and I believe that, knowing my own positionality, I can also translate part of the struggle,” he said. “I can also understand, even if sometimes it makes me angry, that Europe does not want to hear about a specific context so you have to translate it in a certain way to make it more understandable.”

Perpetuating legacies and creating community

Cortana’s PhD research and search for his identity led him to documentary filmmaking. In that medium, he found a new methodology to teach newer generations about Black history, but also to celebrate Black social leaders speaking truth to power whose assassinations may be trivialized by mainstream media.

“As a Black diaspora, we need to know more about our own history and we need to find new methodologies to learn about that history. We live in a world where the teaching of global history is still very Eurocentric,” he said. “Human rights defenders from the Diaspora can be part of these new methodologies to unravel history and help us learn from the past, challenge the status quo of the present and also envision the future. The younger generation need a new way of understanding Black political figures and history.”

His latest film, Marielle’s legacy will not Die, follows Afro-Brazilian activists fighting for justice and to preserve the legacy of slain Black Councilwoman, Marielle Franco. Franco was shot dead on her way back from a public event in March 2018. She was an outspoken critic of police brutality and an advocate for the rights of women, LGBTI and young people from the favelas of her city, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Cortana’s documentary has been screened in several countries around the world where killings of other human rights activists have occurred. He has invited activist groups to these screenings to create what he called networks of solidarity and made connections between Franco’s story and local contexts.

In his PhD dissertation, Cortana, who also calls himself a “transnational translator”, analysed the questions and answers sessions after film screenings as a political forum. He also examined methodologies used to free speech and challenge Eurocentric views on Brazilian politics and the African diaspora during those sessions. At his screenings, many in these activist groups recognized their own struggles in Marielle Franco’s story put to film, and realized their existence as an African diaspora.

Cortana, who has lost many friends in defence of human rights, said he wanted to make their legacies more readily accessible to the general public. People often default to the convenience and the immediacy of visual media without going as far as reading the writings of some of these political figures, in particular women leaders whose literature remains unknown, he said.

“We know the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, but who knows of the radical feminist literature of Rosa Parks?” he asked. “[Filmmaking] is my way of decolonising knowledge. I know that not everyone likes to read academic articles or has the time to do that, so I use the visual medium to speak to the communities I work with and try my best to not be ‘extractivist’ but rather to develop an ethics of collaboration. I still collaborate with the filmmakers and human rights defenders I met during the time of my research.”

Cortana found his place in that socially and politically aware African diaspora and wanted to share his approach to self-discovery with other racialized and stigmatized youths. Working with social workers and artists, he created INFORM’ART France, a collective where he designed new methodologies around different forms of storytelling to promote social inclusion and create spaces conducive to freer speech.

“We created human libraries. Instead of borrowing a book, you can borrow people and have them tell you their stories,” he said. “When entering the library, you see a page with a 10-line synopsis and, without knowing the gender, the race, or anything about the person behind that page, you just become drawn to them because of their story.”

Discovering a new human rights language

Cortana said that when he joined the Fellowship, he discovered a new language.

“The UN and human rights language. It is a toolbox, you can use it, you can expand it, and it opened an imaginary for me,” he said.

The Fellowship also allowed Cortana to meet other people of African descent from different regions who live their Blackness in different ways but share some of the same struggles. Black people from the Francophone Caribbean are often made invisible, he said, and he was happy to highlight the issues around their unequal access to human right rights , as well as participating in UN fora such as the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, that held its first session in December in Geneva.

“The Caribbean has small island nations that are much more than touristic postcards. They are doing amazing work and trying to push their reparation agenda but many are under the shadow of European countries and colonization processes,” Cortana said. “So I thought since I have one foot on both lands, I might have a voice that could influence structural change.”

Cortana currently coordinates the "September in March” project, where he runs workshops with high schoolers from the periphery of Paris to create media around the legacy of Dulcie September. September was an anti-apartheid activist, member of the South African National Congress, and political prisoner. She went into exile in London in the seventies and was assassinated in Paris in March 1988.

The DILCRAH (a French governmental delegation that defends human rights and combats racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-LGBT hate) selected Cortana’s project to be featured in France’s week against discrimination, 20-26 March 2023.

“The next generations from the periphery must create un-erasing and counter-memory projects from an early age to diversify the curriculums and spread the legacy of Black figures of resistance,” he said.

This story is part of an occasional series of stories of individuals or organizations that stand up for human rights. Throughout the month of March, chosen by UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, to highlight Racial Justice as part of his Human Rights 75 Initiative, we hear the voices of defenders acting against racism. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect the position and opinions of UN Human Rights.