Numinous Animal Tracing the Afrofuturism of Black Cowboys

Numinous Animal explores the eclipsed history of Black cowboys on the Prairies. Part memoir, part regional history, and part literary analysis, it follows a journey of discovery through 19th- and early 20th-century cattle brands. 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, the Underground Railroad to Cowboy trails. In this way, Numinous Animal serves as a bridge between African and Albertan historical legacies. The culmination of tracing these paths is a tantalizingly poetic collision between the oubli of the archive and the promise of Afrofuturism: the creation of a font traced from the cattle brands of Black cowboys and ranchers in Alberta. Bickersteth’s artistry deconstructs marks of livelihood, ownership, and dehumanization, and reconstructs them into a language of life, freedom, and love.

About the Author

Bertrand Bickersteth was the Athabasca University Writer in Residence for 2024-2025. He is a poet, playwright, essayist, and educator. His poetry collection, The Response of Weeds, was the winner of several awards. His current project features poetry about Black Cowboys from Alberta, for which he has designed a font based on their historic cattle brands. He lives in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary) and teaches at Olds College.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.