‘Our history is intertwined’: heirs of Jamaican enslavers apologise to descendants of the enslaved

At midnight, a hush fell over the crowd at Jamaica ’s annual Emancipation Jubilee. The pageantry and performances that led up to that charged silence had been designed to evoke the anguish of slavery. Re-enactments and poignant poetry set the scene, erasing the centuries between the audience and the enslaved men, women and children who once stood on Jamaican soil – abused, oppressed and voiceless.

As the hand of the clock passed midnight, the silence was broken by a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, signalling freedom, hope and the definitive end to the centuries-long transatlantic slave movement that allowed Europeans to abduct, traffic, murder and inflict unimaginable suffering on African people.

Emancipation Day is celebrated across the Caribbean on 1 August and is a public holiday in many of the islands. In Jamaica, the jubilee event at Seville Heritage Park in Saint Ann has been a feature of the celebrations since 1997. This year there was a historic twist: organisations and descendants of those who enabled, partook of or profited from the transatlantic slave trade were there – virtually or in person – to apologise to the descendants of those who were enslaved.

Organised by the Jamaica National Commission on Reparations, the Jamaica National Heritage Trust and the country’s ministry of culture, the landmark event included interventions and apologies from members of the Heirs of Slavery , a group of people who have discovered that their ancestors facilitated or profited from transatlantic slavery.

The Guardian was also represented, with Joseph Harker, the paper’s senior editor of diversity and development, delivering an apology via video message. Harker reiterated the commitment made last year during an apology from the Guardian’s owner to “raising awareness of this brutal and dehumanising era, and to creating a 10-year programme of restorative justice in full consultation with communities still affected by its legacies”.

But at the centre of the event was an emotional apology from Kate Thomas and Aidee Walker, two New Zealand sisters who had travelled to Jamaica to address the atrocities of their ancestors, the clan Malcolm of Argyll.

“We acknowledge the wealth created by our ancestors through the chattel enslavement of your ancestors, and the injustice of financial compensation paid by the British government to the enslavers. The enduring and damaging legacy of this injustice continues to the present day,” they said.

These apologies may be small steps, but they are important steps on the journey [toward reparatory justice]

Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s culture minister

The sisters received applause from the audience as they pledged to continue working to turn their apologies into concrete reparative action.

Earlier on Wednesday, Walker and Thomas said that their involvement with New Zealand’s Māori people had prompted them to explore their ancestry.

Walker, a film-maker, spoke about the trauma of having your identity stolen by colonisation: “My partner is Māori and his grandparents were beaten for speaking Māori in school, and we have seen the effects that losing their language has had on his family.”

But their story also demonstrates the intrigue and complexities of the reparations movement : their fourth great-grandmother, Mary Johnson, was of African descent and a housekeeper in the Malcolm household. She had five children with John Malcolm, including their third great-grandfather, Neill Malcolm.

“We share a history as descendants of both enslavers and the enslaved. Our history is intertwined with your history, and your history is intertwined with ours,” the sisters said in their apology.

According to their research, John took care of Mary and their children, moving them to the UK, providing a house and education for the children and even leaving her money in his will. However, he was also complicit in the 1824 Argyle war, an uprising of enslaved people which resulted in 12 men being executed for fighting for their freedom.

“I just couldn’t get my head around the contrast between those two decisions and personalities. I couldn’t let it go. And it was really the Argyle conflict that made me think that something needs to be said and more needs to be discovered about this,” said Thomas, who works for the non-profit Spark Foundation.

Laura Trevelyan, a British journalist and member of the Heirs of Slavery group , supported the sisters through the reparations process. She said their apology “shows how global the influence of the transatlantic slave trade truly was, reaching across the Pacific Ocean”. She hoped their actions would open up a debate in Oceania region about the region’s historical links to slavery.

The sisters have promised to ask the New Zealand government to acknowledge that link to injustices in the Caribbean and consider the 10-point plan for reparatory justice created by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to address the persisting impacts of transatlantic slavery.

Related: Six in 10 in UK poll say descendants of enslaved people owed formal apology

The 10-point plan, which is managed by the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC), includes calls for debt cancellation and investment in socio-economic development in the Caribbean nations affected by slavery. This week, the movement gained fresh momentum as Haiti said it would join the commission.

Accepting the apology on behalf of the Jamaican government, the culture minister, Olivia Grange, commended the families for their action but stressed that more work remained to be done.

“We have a long way to go, but we are focused on seeking reparatory justice. These apologies may be small steps, but they are important steps on that journey … It’s not just about money but [the families] can assist in many ways in contributing to programmes that will make a difference while we push for Britain to apologise, while we push for true justice,” she said.

Verene Shepherd, the director at the University of the West Indies’ centre for reparation research, also welcomed the apologies.

Urging the families that apologised to press governments to engage with the reparations movement, she said: “Many struggles in history have seemed like uphill tasks, and many of them have been successful. We never thought emancipation would come, but it did, and it took centuries. Compared to some of those moments, which were successful, this is a young struggle. We are on the path, and we will not give up.”