What to expect at Yellowknife’s 2025 Black History Month Gala

This year’s Black History Month events in Yellowknife culminate in Black advocacy coalition BACupNorth’s annual gala at the Chateau Nova Hotel on Saturday, March 8.

Tickets are available online.

Malian-Canadian musician Djely Tapa is the night’s headliner with support from the likes of Yellowknife’s Munya Mataruse.

Ahead of the gala, Cabin Radio’s Shenay Williams spoke with BACupNorth’s Ambe Chenemu and Gilbert Langsi about the event, Black History Month and the organization’s broader goals.

This interview was recorded on February 18, 2025. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Shenay Williams: For those who may not be familiar, what is BACupNorth and what does it contribute to the community?

Ambe Chenemu: We started in 2020 with the rallies across North America and across the world, with the murder of George Floyd. We did hold a rally here in Yellowknife, and I always refer to it as the two pandemics because we had the George Floyd situation and then we also had Covid-19.

Lots of people came out to stand up for justice and we did a march across town – we ended up at the RCMP detachment here in Yellowknife and we held a rally there to speak out and stand against racial discrimination and anti-Black racism.

After that, we thought: “Try not to react when things happen, but be more proactive.” That became the origin of how BACupNorth was founded, by a group of community members coming together to establish an umbrella that could be representative of Black voices in the North.

Gilbert Langsi: It’s not just Yellowknife, because BACupNorth serves the interests of the Black community here in Yellowknife and other remote communities. We’ve tried our best to see how we can better the lives of the Black people who are here in Yellowknife and the communities outside of Yellowknife as well.

Ambe Chenemu: Black History Month is definitely that time of the year where you want to see visibility of the Black community and we take that very seriously.

We use it as a venue to amplify our voices, to be more visible, to get more comfortable within our community, to also just interact within ourselves as Black people. Because sometimes life gets really busy, you know? And sometimes we’re curious about… just like this morning when I met you, and I was like, “How long have you been in town?” You know, I haven’t seen you around.

These are the kinds of things we like to see during Black History Month, that moment where people take a break and try and recognize each other and the successes we have had in our community.

More: This year’s Black History Month events

What’s the theme for the Black History Month Gala? What can we expect?

Gilbert Langsi: The gala is a combination of all the activities that went on throughout the month. It’s going to be a night of elegance, a night of dressing up, a night of networking, a night of musical performances, live shows, traditional and cultural musical dances. It’s for people to come from different communities, meet and exchange, learn our culture.

It is going to be a night of celebrating our Black excellence, celebrating the achievement of all Black people, our contribution to the fabric of society.

March 8 is also International Women’s Day, where we intend to celebrate our women who have been the backbone of our community, especially when it comes to planning our activities and Black History Month.

Ambe Chenemu: We are bringing artists from across Canada to participate and perform live. We have an incredible returning artist and band, Djely Tapa. She was here for our inaugural Black History Month Gala and it was just an incredible show.

She’s also nominated for the Juno Awards this year. She’s a Juno-winning artist and has her second nomination this year, so it’ll be just an incredible celebration having Djely and her band back with us. We also have artists coming from Ottawa and local bands performing, including Munya Mataruse.

Everybody knows we’ve always delivered. When you buy your ticket and you show up to the gala, the food is excellent, the performances are fantastic. And when Gilbert talks about International Women’s Day, we have a little bit of a surprise for how we’ve set up this year in terms of where people are sitting. If you’ve been online and bought a ticket, you probably have identified that we’ve named our tables for incredible women across the Black community.

What kind of support does BACupNorth needs to continue hosting events like this in the future?

Ambe Chenemu: We definitely need to get sustainable funding. It’s very expensive when you’re flying a Juno-winning artist up to Yellowknife to perform. It doesn’t come cheap, right? That takes a lot of financial power, and we’re also trying to invest in our local artists as well. Finding that balance and the resources to do that is always challenging, especially in the times we are in right now.

Part of the challenge is also just getting capacity. You can only ask people to keep volunteering for so long and then everybody gets burnt out. We need to start looking at how to build more long-term, sustainable, paid employment so that people are actively going out there and growing the capacity of the organization for an event like this.

The planning takes months – at least seven, eight months before the day. You don’t have a large reservoir of resources to pull from, so it becomes very strenuous. For us to keep doing this, there will have to be a sustainable way to keep it up. With the resources we have out there, and with the local support we’ve been getting from the community, we definitely will find a way to move forward.