A well-regarded documentary about one American woman's investigation into her family's background in the slave trade is to be shown around Bermuda.

The film 'Traces of the Trade: A Story of the Deep North' directed by Katrina Browne, airs tonight at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo and will be shown at a number of other venues around the Island, throughout the week. It is being presented by Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda (CURB).

Ms Browne told The Royal Gazette that the idea for the film was germinated by a few lines in a family history booklet penned by her 88-year-old grandmother, Rosalind Sturges Allen.

In the booklet, Mrs. Allen matter-of-factly stated that Ms Browne's ancestors had built their fortune on the slave trade.

Ms Browne, now 43, was then 28-years-old and in graduate school at a seminary. "It was like a double shock the first moment I read it," said Ms Browne. "I thought this was horrible. It was incredibly upsetting."

But within a few seconds she realised that she'd already known that and repressed it because it was too painful to consider.

"It might have been mentioned in passing," said Ms Browne. "But no-one ever sat down and said to us 'we have something to tell you'."

One of the reasons the information came as such a shock was because Ms Browne's ancestors, the wealthy DeWolfs, weren't from the South, they were from Bristol, Rhode Island.

When she recovered from the shock, she was overcome with the desire to know more. But the information only got worse.

It turned out that for three generations the DeWolf family brought more Africans to the United States on their ships than any other American family. And after they stopped transporting slaves, they were slave holders for a much longer period.

"When I first found out I had a very intense feeling of guilt as if I did inherit the particular burden of guilt connected to my ancestors," she said. "It was very emotional."

She said in some ways this was healthy. Although actual money from the slave trade had run out generations ago, it brought her to see that her family's privileges, good education, high social standing, were originally built upon the trade.

The experience of researching her family history started to become a window into understanding not just her family, but also the history of the United States.

"I started to understand how slavery built this nation," she said. "In school, we were taught that the North was the good guy and had nothing to do with slavery and it was just the South that was involved.

"As I did more reading I realised that although the South had slaves working on plantations, the North was more involved in actual slave trading.

"The entire North economy was wrapped up in the slave economy," she said. "The factories in the North were using materials harvested by the slaves."

It made her take a new look at the legacy of slavery. "It made me look at the gaps between blacks and whites that persist up to the present day.

"There is still a disparity in terms of health outcome, access to education, jobs and more."

She said slavery and Jim Crow laws left such a legacy that it was impossible for all the resulting problems to be solved in just one or two generations.

She said making the film helped her to grow as a person, and improved her ability to look at racial dynamics and her relations with African Americans.

"I can say I am a healthier communicator and more grounded," she said.

She hoped that the film would provide a space to have some honest dialogue and discussion. One reaction she often has from white Americans is that their ancestors had nothing to do with the slave trade because they were immigrants who came after the fact.

"You have to think why there were jobs in America for them to come to," she said. "You have to think about why America was so prosperous in the first place."

She said she often gets angry letters and e-mails from white Americans, usually people who have read newspaper stories (like this one) and not actually seen the film.

"Even if none of us alive today created this problem, we all inherited it," she said. "Some white people get up in arms because they think it will be a guilt trip. They feel they are supposed to feel bad about themselves."

She said she does not feel bad about herself, but she feels a sense of moral responsibility to make things right today.

"When I started doing that I felt better about myself rather than worse. We have to understand that suffering can pass through the generations. What happened in the past has created really complex, painful, life and death circumstances that people in the black community are still struggling with.

"They shouldn't have to bang so hard on the door to get people to wake up and address the issues."

The film took nine years to make. She started making it in 1999, and it premiered in January 2008, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

One of the reasons it aired on that date was to mark the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade that was officially ended in England in January 1807.

'Traces of the Trade' was picked up by the PBS show series Point of View (POV) Series in June 2008.

In Bermuda, the film will air at 7.15 p.m. today at Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo, in Flatts.

It will also air tomorrow at 7.15 p.m. at the Liberty Theatre, in Hamilton.

It will be shown at 7:15 pm on Wednesday at St. James Church, in Somerset. Admission is free.

The film showing is also being supported by the Association of Bermuda International Companies, Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers, the Commission for Unity & Racial Equality (CURE) and Bermuda Sloop Foundation (BSF).

For more information about Traces of the Trade go to the website www.tracesofthetrade.org .

l For more information about CURB check out their Facebook page, or websites www.uprootingracism.org or www.curb.bm .