Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Planet B. Everything Must Change. I'm

Harpreet Corpall. This episode features an extended edition of our interview with Indigenous

Reparationist, Activist and Advocate, Esther Stanford Cossay. You may have already heard

clips of this interview in our final Planet B documentary on Debt and the Global Green

New Deal. If you haven't, don't forget to check that out on the Navara Media Podcast

feed. Before we get started, a reminder that you can order a free copy of perspectives

on a Global Green New Deal, the illustrated book on which this series is based at www.globalhifengiendy.com.

I am Esther Stanford Cossay and my work is primarily that of a reparationist, which is a

reparations scholar activist and I'm based in Southeast London. Esther, thank you so much

for joining us. The International Social Movement for African Reparations is one of the oldest

traditions of pan-African-organising going as far back as the 1700s. Could you tell us about

the history of this movement and what it stands for? Sure. So this movement is actually the subject

of my own research, PhD research in history and I've charted the movement back to the mid-1700s,

around 1726, in terms of African activists who were championing reparations. And so the landmarks,

there were various landmarks throughout the centuries and 1726 is a key landmark because it was

when there was an intervention made by somebody called Fyaga, Agagya Trudo Audati, who addressed a

correspondence to King George I, really calling for an end to the trafficking of African people.

And later on in that century there are other key landmarks such as in the late 1790s, there was

an organisation called the Funds of Africa, which had been formed around 1797 by well-known African

abolitionists such as Aluda Aquiano and Ottobu, Ottobu Cuguano. And this organisation and those

activists in particular, especially led by Ottobu Cuguano in 1787, he wrote a book which was called

the Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the slavery and commerce of the human

...