“I always wished I could go to school.”
Those simple words from her grandmother, Orion Johnson, changed the way Dr. Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean understood her own educational journey. Struggling with the demands and loneliness of doctoral research, she was reminded that the opportunity she found so difficult was one her grandmother had longed for.
Years later, that memory became the starting point for a powerful message: Bahamian freedom must include healing the wounds of the past and creating opportunities that earlier generations were denied.
Delivering the keynote address at the Conference on Trauma, Healing and Social Transformation in The Bahamas, Campbell-Dean, a community psychologist and chair of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, emphasised that reparations must address the psychological wounds, educational inequalities and lasting social effects of slavery and colonialism.
Organised by Helen Klonaris, assistant professor of creative writing at UB and co-founder of Sacred Islands Sanctuary, in collaboration with the University of The Bahamas and the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, the conference took place from October 1–4, 2026, with activities at UB and Sacred Islands Sanctuary.
The collaboration involved UB’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts and its Schools of Communication and Creative Arts, and English Studies as well as the College of Education and Social Sciences, including faculty such as Keisha Ellis, Tonette Minnis, and Chair of the School of Social Sciences Michael Stevenson, and students, including Edward Russell. The four-day programme brought together scholars, artists, cultural activists, therapists and healing practitioners to explore how trauma affects people and communities, and how healing can contribute to social transformation.
Campbell-Dean thanked Klonaris for her vision in convening and hosting the conference. Her keynote, “I Want My People to Be Free: Reparations as Wellness, a Case for Bahamian Emancipation,” connected personal and family experiences with the wider pursuit of justice.
“Communities without justice suffer while communities with justice thrive,” she said. “Justice is the component that determines community wellness.”
Reflecting on the exchange with her grandmother, a Crooked Island woman respected as a nurse and musician, Campbell-Dean explained that the response helped her see her studies through a different lens.
“She did not deny my experiences and feelings, but she highlighted a perspective that I had not fully taken into account,” she said.
She also honoured her maternal grandmother, Ida Ophelia Rolle Hall, who, despite having only a third-grade education, contributed to the building of the Bahamian middle class through her work as a straw vendor in the Nassau Straw Market.
The experiences of both women framed a wider examination of who historically had access to education, what Bahamians were taught and how colonial priorities shaped the country’s institutions.
Campbell-Dean emphasised that educational reform must go beyond changing school names or placing Bahamians in leadership positions. It must also examine whether curricula help students understand their history, value their culture and recognise their capacity to shape the nation.
She recalled the story of Kate Moss, an enslaved girl on Crooked Island whose abuse and death she discussed as an example of historical suffering that must be acknowledged. Campbell-Dean said she had not learned Kate’s story during her formal schooling in The Bahamas.
Confronting such histories, she maintained, is part of understanding the present and creating the conditions for healing.
She described reparations as a broad undertaking encompassing restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, truth-telling, public apologies and reforms designed to prevent future harm.
Psychological rehabilitation was central to her message. Drawing on scholarship in Black psychology and community wellness, she explored how generations of oppression can influence identity, relationships and people’s understanding of themselves.
She stressed that healing requires individual care alongside collective action.
“Our harm was and is enacted collectively and in public,” she said, explaining that individual approaches alone would be insufficient to address injuries rooted in shared historical experiences.
Campbell-Dean encouraged an embrace of Ubuntu, expressed through the principle “I am because we are,” and a renewed commitment to relationships, cultural belonging and community responsibility. The opening ceremony featured the Ubuntu Drum Circle, whose vibrant rhythms evoked the voices of the ancestors, echoing through the halls of the UB Library Auditorium and setting the tone for four days of reflection, healing and connection.
She pointed to the Indaba Project as an example of community work in practice. What began as an after-school programme under a tarp developed into a community initiative offering beach cleanups, swimming lessons, public lectures and opportunities for young people to experience the Family Islands.
Those experiences, she explained, helped young Bahamians recognise that the beaches, cultural traditions and wider archipelago belonged to them too.
Campbell-Dean also called for a full and formal apology from the head of the country’s parliamentary constitutional monarchy for his family’s role in slavery. She placed that demand within the committee’s wider advocacy for reparations for the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the trafficking and enslavement of Africans.
Alongside that advocacy, she highlighted local efforts, including public education, historical tours and community gatherings.
“This is a collective rallying cry for the acknowledgement of our humanity and the humanity of our ancestors,” she said. “This is the practice of healing in community and out loud.”
The conference programme extended those conversations across education, parenting, climate disasters, workplace experiences and creative expression.
Presenters listed in the programme included Jasmine Allen, whose presentation examined intergenerational trauma in Black populations; Tonette Minnis, who explored parenting practices and the inheritance of harm in The Bahamas; and W. Jason Stubbs, whose topic addressed the country’s hidden mental health crisis.
Other presenters included Ian Bethel-Bennett, Michael T. Stevenson, Mayuri Deka, Nakia Pearson, Natino Thompson and Kreimild Saunders, with topics exploring trauma, tourism, emotional expression and social experience.
Indira B. Martin addressed health and self-efficacy, Dale Marshall focused on social-emotional learning and wellness in educational settings, and Ian G. Strachan explored restoration and redemption in the classroom.
Juliette Storr’s contributions included a presentation on climate change, disasters, collective trauma and healing, along with a scheduled screening of her film We Are Not Okay. Nicolette Bethel’s presentation explored making theatre in the face of a storm, while Jim Lawlor examined healing through meditation on beauty.
The programme also featured Shara Goldsmith, an intersectional and interdisciplinary artist, advocate and educator; Angelique V. Nixon, a senior lecturer and researcher at The University of the West Indies’ Institute for Gender and Development Studies; and Klonaris, a writer, educator and holistic healer, in a session on healing as social change.
Workshops included contributions from Will Simmons, Keva Fawkes, Lisa Lawlor-Feller, Tamarah Moss, Simmone Bowe and Robin Lightbourn.
Together, the presentations and activities created space to consider how historical and contemporary experiences shape Bahamian life—and how education, cultural expression, justice and community care can help people move towards healing.
By A. Felicity Darville
