Professor Archie Dick presented at the National Institute of Library and Information Sciences, hosted by the University of Colombo. The virtual research symposium was held on 24^th of January 2022. The theme of the conference was: Cultural heritage: bridging the past, present and future through libraries, museums, and archives.

Professor Archie Dick presented a paper titled Bridging the past present and future of a Cape slave’s notebook.

The abstract reads as follows:

Over a decade ago, I transcribed and translated the text of a notebook kept by the Dutch East India Company slave, Johannes Smiesing. The text written in Dutch consists of personal information, examples of writing, reading, arithmetic, and a morning hymn. Across two pages, there is also a fascinating list of medical remedies in the Tamil language written into the notebook by Nicolas Ondaatje, who was exiled as a convict from Colombo in Sri Lanka. Johannes was born in the Old Slave Lodge in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1697 to a Company employee and a slave mother. He attended the Slave Lodge School, and at 17, he became a teacher there and a healer or a kind of doctor as well. His name, and that of his mother, are inscribed in the baptismal record of the Dutch Reformed Church archives. And it appears on the bright red front cover of his notebook that was deposited independently and anonymously in the Cape Archives in 1969. A member of the Council of the South African Heritage Resources Agency, who established family connections with Johannes on his mother’s side, is also a co-founder of the recently established and primarily online Camissa Museum in Cape Town. This museum features Johannes Smiesing and his notebook in its section for African and Asian Enslaved Peoples. This paper argues that South African libraries, archives and museums should collaborate to bridge the past, present and future of this important piece of international cultural heritage