After 1492: The Nature of the Damage (UWI Symposium on Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Sustainability)

On Monday, October 12, 2020, it was my special honour to participate as the Featured Speaker at a symposium hosted at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad. The symposium was co-organized by the Faculty of Law and the Santa Rosa First People's Community and it was titled, "Our First Peoples: Leading Us Toward Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Communities". The timing of the event was pertinent: held on the 528th anniversary of the entry of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean, it was also timed to coincide with "The First Peoples' Day of Recognition" and "Heritage Week," with activities running from October 9-14, 2020. One of the most impressive features of this wonderful event was that it involved a live gathering of Indigenous representatives from across the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and North America.

My feature address was titled, "After 1492: The Nature of the Damage". The presentation was cautious and sceptical about the sudden intrusion into the region of notably foreign narratives about "environmental sustainability" and the assumption that there must be "Indigenous perspectives" ready-made and waiting for the arrival of this narrative. I alerted those present to the dangers of a Green Imperialism and Green Structural Adjustment by pointing to the historical and geopolitical context in which this narrative has been granted prominence by powerful political and corporate interests.

The focus of the presentation was on three dimensions of Indigenous knowledge that I think have gained new prominence, and even new urgency, in the present so-called "pandemic": one involves the long-standing question of how we manufacture problems for the world by adhering to clearly flawed dichotomous frameworks that separate humans from nature, and set the two in opposition. The second concerns the need, in the case of Trinidad, to draw inspiration, strength, and practical solutions not just from Amerindian Indigenous knowledge, but from what we might call the Exogenous Indigenous—peoples from Africa and India who brought with them not just some implements, and even some seeds, but also a wealth of agricultural, horticultural, and herbal knowledge, much of which has survived and blended with other knowledge systems in the Trinidadian context. The third, is the recurring and still unresolved issue of food security, or food insecurity, a problem laid bare in the sun by the current "pandemic".

The event was followed by a joint appearance by Chief Ricardo Bharat Hernandez and myself on Tony Fraser's radio programme on Power 102 FM on October 14, 2020.

All of the files for these two events follow below: a flyer for the symposium; the program of the symposium; a video showing my presentation alone; the complete proceedings of the symposium (which can also be viewed on Facebook); and, a podcast of the joint radio interview on Power 102.

Flyer for October 12, 2020 ... by Maximilian Forte

Conference Program, "O... by Maximilian Forte

After 1492: The Nature of the Damage

 

Maroons, Indigenous Peoples, and Self-Determination: The 13th Annual Charles Town Maroon Conference

 

On Thursday, June 24, 2021, I was honoured to participate (by virtual means) in the 13th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival. My presentation focused on The State, the Church, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Trinidad & Tobago. You can listen to the audio file of the spoken presentation, or watch the video presentation of the proceedings below. The conference program follows next.

The purpose of the presentation was to outline both the advances and successes of the work done over the past four decades (45 years) by the leadership of the Carib Community in seeking greater national visibility, official recognition, and a land grant. At the same time, I discuss some of the constraints that have been imposed by the Community's relationships with both the state and the Catholic Church. This information can be used to reflect on the strategy of trying to build autonomy at the same time as leading a cultural resurgence, in the absence of significant economic resources.

13th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference Programme - June 23 and 24, 2021 by Maximilian Forte on Scribd

The Pandemic: Indigenous Perspectives on Survival, Adaptation, Rebuilding, and Preparedness

Statement released by Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez,
Santa Rosa First Peoples Community,
Arima, Trinidad & Tobago,
June 16, 2020.

As Amerindians/Indigenous Peoples in the Caribbean, we are historically well acquainted with a series of epidemics and pandemics. We therefore have a lot of historical experience in suffering and surviving from both local epidemics and regional pandemics. We have seen some of the worst in the past, and now the rest of the world is getting a small taste of what we had to go through. The big difference is that we did not have a World Health Organization looking into our situation; nobody came to our assistance; there was no protection or support from the authorities; we were left to our own devices. We have survived the very worst, rebuilt our economies, and we are still here today thanks to our ancestors’ survival skills. We have some lessons to offer from those experiences.

Here are some key points from our historical experience:

(i) “by 1518 only 16,000 [Taino] survived. That year a smallpox epidemic swept through the Spanish colonies, a pandemic, according to the historical demographer Henry Dobyns, that by 1525 had left no American culture untouched. By 1545 the 29 sugar mills on Hispaniola were using nearly 6,000 non-Taino from the South American mainland and the Lesser Antilles and 3,300 Africans as laborers”.ⁱ

(ii) In 1739, a smallpox outbreak “decimated” Trinidad’s Indian population.ⁱⁱ

(iii) In 1817 the Yellow Fever Epidemic swept Trinidad, followed by the cholera epidemic in the 1850s; and, smallpox in the 1870s.ⁱⁱⁱ

(iv) “In 1854 a cholera epidemic struck North coast Indians* heavily” (pp. 14–15); “The same epidemic decimated the Amerindian population living in the hills around the old Arima mission”.^iv

(v) “On the north coast...the surviving Amerindian families were brought together in the mission at Cumana (Toco); but they disappeared inexorably, and the cholera epidemic of 1854 apparently exterminated nearly all the north coast Indians. By 1885 there were only perhaps a dozen half-caste Amerindian families on the north coast”; “In Arima the story was the same. In 1840 there were only about three hundred Indians of pure descent in the old mission, mostly aged. Occasionally surviving members of a group of Chayma Indians used to come down from the heights beyond Arima to the Farfan estate, to barter wild meats for small household goods. But after 1854 they were seen no more: cholera had extinguished the Chaymas”.^v

Chief Ricardo leading his people in prayer

Our Amerindian/Indigenous peoples are closely connected to Mother Earth and all the life she sustains. Of benefit to the modern world are the Caribbean Indigenous lessons on listening to and learning from the natural environment; revising our relationships with animals; and building self-sustaining local agriculture.

Part of this pandemic appears to stem from an imbalance between humans and other animals. We cannot afford to continue viewing the natural environment with contempt, or as something to be devoured. The “Medicine Man or Woman” is very important in our culture, with knowledge of the healing herbs and minerals which are gifted to us in the natural environment. The Caribbean Amerindian/Indigenous relationship with the natural, animal world was intensely intimate. It was not just a matter of living in a “harmonious relationship” with nature—it is about being one and the same with nature, inseparable, indivisible, and indistinguishable. On the mainland Amerindian ancestor communities in places such as Guyana, heralded themselves as members of the “Jaguar clan” or the “Eagle clan”—this was not just a matter of empty symbolism. They firmly believed that their ultimate ancestor was a jaguar, or an eagle, and so on. We need to reinstitute that relationship of respect, knowing our limits as human beings, and being attentive to the realities of where we live.

Instead of being constantly and repeatedly exposed to destruction from recurring phenomena, we must learn lessons from the past, and implement changes.

A hurricane will flatten one of our Caribbean neighbours, razing as many as 90% of all structures. So what do they do? They rebuild the same sort of structures that are vulnerable to destruction from hurricanes—square or rectangular houses, with jagged rooftops. The best structure is the Amerindian/Indigenous one, which is conical, and at the very worst is easy to rebuild.

The same is true about having an abundance of root crops (ground provisions), as practised by the Amerindians/Indigenous People. Ground provisions cannot be destroyed in a hurricane, thus ensuring that people have a ready supply of food in order to rebuild.

This pandemic revealed similar frailty. We are fragile by design: it is an outcome of inappropriate policies, and inadequate planning. Our dependency on foreign imports of food placed us in a situation of great insecurity. People were also dependent on going out to buy food, rather than turning to supplies that could have been provided by their own gardens—we were over exposed, and for no good reason.

In rebuilding, there needs to be a dramatic new investment in local agriculture, and a national plan that includes everyone—not just career “farmers”. Every yard needs to be planted. There should be an abundance of cassava flour that renders imported wheat flour too expensive, and is even a less healthy alternative to cassava flour. We need to teach our people what they can do with local products, that they are not currently doing. A national farming system could turn every household into a unit of production, with excess supply purchased by the state, and processed into items with a long shelf-life. National education, through government media programming, could teach people how they can contribute, or how they can use items such as cassava flour.

What can we do to make life during the next pandemic more bearable? How can we act now, to not be like victims in the future? What must change? How can the Indigenous People of Trinidad & Tobago offer some vital guidance?

Trinidad’s Indigenous People are prepared to lead in establishing the foundations of a national cassava industry. We already have the support of the University of Trinidad and Tobago. The First Peoples Heritage Village, currently under construction, is well positioned to become the nucleus of an expanded agricultural enterprise—it will be a true model, to all other Trinidadians.

Notes

i “Indians” here as stated by the Authors, refer to the Amerindians, and not East Indians. From: Keegan, William. (1992). “Death Toll”. Archaeology (January/February), p. 55.

http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/ant/KEEGAN08.ANT

ii From: Ottley, C. Robert. (1955). An Account of Life in Spanish Trinidad (From 1498-b 1797). 1st ed. Diego Martin, Trinidad: C. R. Ottley, p. 42.

iii From Page 253 in: Joseph, E.L. (1970 [1838]). History of Trinidad. London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd.

iv From: Goldwasser, Michele. (1994-96). “Remembrances of the Warao: the Miraculous Statue of Siparia, Trinidad”. Antropologica, p. 15.

v From: Brereton, Bridget. (1979) Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 130–131.

Trinidad: Chief Asks How Does Removing Columbus Statue Improve First Peoples?

Reproduced from Stabroek News, June 15, 2020

Defaced: Red paint is splattered on the statue of Christopher Columbus in Columbus Square, corner of Independence Square and Duncan Street, Port of Spain.

Don’t kill Christopher Columbus a second time just for killing sake.

It will not do the First Peoples any good unless it’s accompanied by tangible measures to advance the indigenous people of Trinidad and Tobago.

So said Chief of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, Ricardo Bharath.

“We want to kill Columbus a second time and it doesn’t do one blooming thing for us,” Bharath told the Express yesterday.

His position comes even as another indigenous group, supported by the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) through its Cross Rhodes Freedom Project, is making a call for the removal of Columbus’ statue in Port of Spain.

Bharath said he was invited by the ESC to make a statement at a recent indigenous ritual ceremony where the call for the removal of Columbus’ statue was made.

He said he made his position clear but it was drowned out.

Bharath said there remain several issues relating to the First Peoples which have not been addressed.

He said indigenous people of T&T were the ones most affected by the coming of Columbus in 1498.

He said it was 200 years after Columbus came, however, that the Spanish authorities began the decimation of the First Peoples.

“They forced them to give up their religion and their language. If they did not accept the new religion, they were sometimes put to death. Some of them fled and killed themselves,” he said.

“You hear about so many suicide points around the country. Many accepted the new religion because they did not want to face death or starvation.”

Bharath said only a fraction of the First Peoples remain today, most of them having intermarried.

Leader of another indigenous group, Queen of the Warao Nation, Donna Bermudez-Bovell, last week called on Port of Spain Mayor Joel Martinez to remove the statue of Columbus from Columbus Square and replace it with an indigenous freedom fighter.

The Warao Nation and the ESC have begun an online petition for support and thousands have responded.

Their calls to remove Columbus and other “racist” monuments comes after the removal of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Britain by Black Lives Matter protesters.

But Bharath cleared the air on the Santa Rosa First Peoples community’s position on the matter.

“I am not a Columbus fighter saying his statue must remain and neither am I asking for its removal,” he said yesterday.

“How does the removal of Columbus’ statue improve the lives and the plight of the descendants of the First Peoples today?

“If it is just removing Columbus’ statue for the sake of removing it, I see no benefit and no merit. The removal must be replaced with something significant to advance our cause today.

“And if that cannot be done, it’s a waste of time in fighting for the removal of a statue. What is done is done. By removing Columbus’ statue we cannot undo the past.”

Bharath said they have already presented a model of a monument to a government committee concerning the removal of the bones of indigenous peoples during excavation works in the restoration of the Red House.

He claimed funding has been the cause of the keep back in the setting up of this monument, which comprises an indigenous figure and remains of the First Peoples.

The Red House, site of Parliament, is a colonial relic allegedly constructed on a burial site of indigenous peoples.

Bharath listed some present and ongoing issues affecting the First Peoples of Trinidad and Tobago.

He said even though the descendants of indigenous people were considered a small group, they want a political voice, both at the local and central government levels.

He said they were promised assistance to establish an Amerindian village in Blanchissuesse and, to date, were still struggling with this with a small UNESCO grant.

“There are funds in the Public Sector Investment Programme for this but nobody seems to be able to get this out.

“We have land issues. There are areas we would like to see protected which are now being destroyed by quarrying.

“If none of those things can’t be done, I don’t see what is the fuss about this Columbus statue,” he said.

Trinidad & Tobago Government Breaks Ground on First Peoples' Site, Pledging More Support

Originally published as:

"Gov’t breaks ground on First Peoples site, pledges further support"

on Loop News, by Nneka Parsanlal, February 4, 2020

Minister of Education, Anthony Garcia has pledged $5000 of his own money to the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community. 

He made the promise at the sod turning ceremony for the construction of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Village in Arima today. 

Garcia says that as the Member of Parliament for Arima and as President of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Trinidad and Tobago, he’s pleased to be part of the progression of the First Peoples in T&T. 

Calling the Santa Rosa community, ‘the official indigenous community in Trinidad and Tobago’, Garcia also said that he’d be ensuring that they get further governmental support for their community. 

Earlier in the ceremony, Chief of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, Ricardo Bharath Hernandez lamented that the community felt forgotten and overlooked by successive governments. He said that the community was ready and willing to meet government agencies halfway to get their village constructed, but the government never held up their end of the bargain. 

Garcia promised that this time around would be different.  

“You have my fullest commitment in the two roles I represent here today,” he said.  

Hernandez also raised concerns about the First Peoples not getting their budgetary allocations, but Garcia promised that they wouldn’t have to worry for much longer. 

“I want to assure you also that we will be speaking to the Minister of Culture, Community Development and the Arts, Dr Nyan Gasby Dolly to make sure that the allocations in the budget will be made available to you,” he said. 

The proposed village will feature a number of traditional and indigenous depictions, including a cacique’s (chief) home, a kitchen and other familiar structures. 

They'll also be hosting a fundraising event on May 23, in order to further facilitate works within the community. President Paula Mae Weekes has pledged her attendance.

UNESCO T&T pledges $176,000 to Santa Rosa First Peoples Community

Originally published on LOOP NEWS, February 5, 2020

Education Minister and President of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) of Trinidad and Tobago, Anthony Garcia.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) of Trinidad and Tobago, an agency of the Ministry of Education, has approved US$26,000.00 which is equivalent to TT$176,000 to the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community (SRFPC) to finance the construction of phase one of the First Peoples Community in Arima.

Speaking at the sod-turning ceremony on Tuesday, the President of UNESCO Trinidad and Tobago and Minister of Education, Anthony Garcia, said the investment highlights the importance of the project for the preservation of history and culture.

“Through the involvement of UNESCO we will be able to share with the wider society of Trinidad and Tobago insight into a culture that is so integral into who we are as a people today. Trinidad and Tobago boasts of an eclectic and cosmopolitan mix of religions, people, traditions and beliefs and this, is evident simply by looking around at the persons gathered here today. For many of us, tracing our lineage and understanding our heritage is difficult because of generations of misinformation, separation or migration. Therefore, to be able to engage in the establishment of this Heritage Village will be to the benefit of so many people who will now be able to have a better understanding of where they came from and what has contributed to the life that we know today.”

Garcia said the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community is recognised by the Government as the official representative of the country’s indigenous people. In December 2012, the Government agreed to allocate 25 acres of forested lands in the Arima Forest Reserve, to this community. The intended purpose was to demonstrate how a community could engage in sustainable forest-based livelihoods and contribute to the socio-economic development of the wider community while maintaining traditional cultural and spiritual values.

Minister of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries, Clarence Rambharat, also attended the sod-turning ceremony. He urged society to begin recognising the First Peoples with the degree of pre-eminence which they deserve and that is now the norm in other countries, such as in Canada.

Chief of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, Ricardo Hernandez Bharath, in delivering remarks, thanked UNESCO for the assistance. He said this First Phase of the Heritage Village will consist of a building depicting the traditional home of an Amerindian Cacique/Chief, the traditional home of an Amerindian family and a traditional kitchen for the preparation of indigenous foods. These structures will serve as the genesis of an established physical Community for the Santa Rosa First People.

“Counting ‘Indios’”: Review by Bridget Brereton

Originally published in the Daily Express, 

by Dr. Bridget Brereton
January 29, 2020

Dr. Bridget Brereton, Trinidad Historian

The history of Trinidad’s First Peoples before the coming of the Europeans has been researched by archaeologists like John Bullbrook, Irving Rouse and (more recently) Arie Boomert. After European contact (from 1498) written records are available to reconstruct what happened to these people, and the Arima based Santa Rosa First Peoples Community (SRFPC) has worked hard over several decades to remind us that their descendants today form an important part of the national population.

Maximilian Forte, a Canadian anthropologist at Concordia University in Montreal, has researched the history of Trinidad’s First Peoples, especially those associated with the Arima Mission, for many years. He published an important book in 2005, with the (typically academic!) title Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post)Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago, and is a long-standing collaborator with the SRFPC.

Last month, I was lucky to attend the launch of Forte’s new book, Arima Born, held at the SRFPC Centre in Arima. Introducing him, Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez described him as a friend and “documentalist” of the SRFPC for over 20 years, a counsellor and teacher “with the characteristics of the eagle”.

In a fascinating presentation, Forte explained that his new book was based on the baptism registers of the Arima (Roman Catholic) Mission Church, covering the period 1820 to 1916, plus various other documents of the same period. In Trinidad, as in many other places, surviving church registers (baptisms, marriages, burials) are a key source for historians, especially when we remember that government or “civil” registration of births, marriages and deaths typically began only in the 1800s (1847 in Trinidad).

Forte said that his research for Arima Born has led him to expose what he called four “myths” about the Arima Mission, which was the main Catholic-run centre for surviving First Peoples (whom Spanish priests called “Indios” or Indians) in Trinidad from 1786. (Overall, 630 “Indios” appear in the Mission’s baptism registers.)

First, Arima’s population in the early 1800s was predominantly African not “Indian”: most baptisms recorded in the Mission registers for the 1820s were of enslaved (African) children. Arima was a small settlement surrounded by plantations, many owned by French Creole families, and worked by enslaved Africans, who outnumbered the First Peoples (“Indios”) in the “Indian Mission”.

Second, what Forte called the “myth of Christian protection”: in fact, the Church could and did sell or grant the lands of the Mission (in theory vested in the resident “Indios”) to others for plantation development, such as the Farfan family. And the Mission ran its own rum shop and allowed the “Indios” to run up debts to the shop, a way of controlling their labour and maybe forcing them to sell their lands.

Third, the myth of “assimilation”, the idea that the First Peoples of the Mission adopted Christianity and its associated lifestyles with little resistance. In fact, many fled from the Mission; disobeyed church teachings; buried their dead in the hills not in the Mission cemetery; and rejected Christian marriage (53 per cent of the baptisms of “Indio” children were “illegitimate” between 1820 and 1852).

Finally, the myth of “extinction”, the “vanishing Indian”: the “Indios” didn’t vanish, of course, but the Mission was disbanded when slavery ended in the 1830s. Now, their labour was no longer needed and their lands in Arima were wanted for plantation development. And so they were no longer counted; in the baptism registers, they were no longer identified as “Indios” from the 1840s, but given a new ethnic identity, such as “mestizo”.

Sadly, Arima Born was not available for purchase at the launch, but Forte’s new book—from his presentation clearly a major contribution—can be ordered online from Alert Press.

Community centre on ancient burial ground?

Originally published in the Daily Express,

by Kimoy Leon Sing,
June 14, 2019

Community centre: The newly opened San Fernando North Community Centre.

Flickering lights and power failure marked the official opening of the San Fernando North Community Centre on Wednesday.

Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly and mayor of San Fernando Junia Regrello were at the site to open the multi-storey facility, which has had several unexplained occurrences since 2009.

It was reported during the initial phase of construction that these incidences were believed to be the work of spirits.

Some of these unexplained occurrences included falling tools and various accidents, after members of Amerindian tribes visited the site in 2009, claiming it as a First Peoples burial ground.

However, these claims were never confirmed.

According to Gadsby-Dolly, the centre sits on one acre of land along St Vincent Street, San Fernando and has taken 11 years to build to the tune of $16.8 million.

The multi-million dollar facility is a four-storey structure which consists of an auditorium with a capacity to hold 275 people along with changing rooms and washrooms, all located on the top two floors of the facility.

On the ground floor, the centre is comprised of an audio-visual room, computer room, a gymnasium, administrative office, kitchen, and multipurpose room.

There is parking in the basement and outside the building. There is also an elevator and ramps for the differently abled.

Speaking to media following the unveiling of the commemorative plaque and ribbon cutting ceremony, Gadsby-Dolly chuckled when asked about the supernatural occurrences at the centre.

She said, the country is steeped in folklore, but the flickering lights and power failure at the start of the opening ceremony was not any foreboding of evil and doom, but there was a reasonable explanation.

“We are a country rich in folklore and heritage and that’s good too. Burial sites are revered by T&T’s first people and were happy to have done the right kind of ceremony, which had the blessings of the Amerindian descendants,” she said.

“We feel that we are honoured to be on this site. We feel that it is a good addition to the foundation and it means that the whole centre is steeped in the good values of our ancestors and we look forward to that continuing,” Gadsby-Dolly said.

She noted with the change of government in 2010, work at the center halted, but with PNM returning to office in 2015, work at the center resumed in 2017.

At the opening ceremony, residents of Spring Vale, San Fernando, and environs said the center was a great addition to the community.

Regrello said the centre will now be used for various events and outreach programmes spanning education campaigns, health activities, and many cultural items.

It will also act as a safe haven and be a central pillar in the community, he said.

“These activities are simply some of the everyday initiatives that community centres such as this can host. However, one of the most critical factors that we all must pay heed is ensuring that all those who utilise this facility take responsibility for it. Treat it as your own. The long-term sustainability of this building, as well as many of the other upcoming projects in San Fernando, hinge on our citizens accepting responsibility for the general upkeep of these buildings,” he said.

Project manager of UDeCOTT, Terrence Beepath attributed the flickering lights and loss of power during the opening ceremony as power failure.

He said, “UDeCOTT is going to be here one year after, on this project to improve all aspects.”

Trinidad's Indigenous Peoples, Reparations, and the History of the Arima Mission

On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, I delivered a presentation based on Arima Born at the Santa Rosa First People's Community Centre in Arima (Trinidad). In January (2020), on this site readers will be able to access a PDF with all of the slides used, plus there will be an accompanying video lecture. The event on Tuesday was covered by the local media--please see the article that follows.

Maximilian Forte at the podium.

Republished from Newsday, December 12, 2019

Originally published as:

First Peoples want HDC house for Carib Queen

by Tyrell Gittens

FIRST Peoples chief Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez is calling on the government to provide a house for Carib Queen Nona Aqua.

Bharath-Hernandez made the call on Tuesday while speaking at the launch of the book Arima Born by Maximilian Forte, at the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community Centre. 

“We have asked, recently, for a house for our Carib Queen to be made available”.

He said the recently built Carina Housing Development was one site where a unit could be made available, not only because of the location, but also because of its historical significance of the land.

“A house ought to be made available in one of these housing developments, preferably Carina Gardens on the By-Pass Road. 

“When you look at the (historical) maps you see the King of the Caribs, and all his descendants, occupying that land and they lost it whatever way,” said Bharath-Hernandez.

He said given the rate at which housing developments are being built, and houses distributed, he is puzzled as to why a house cannot be provided.

“In this development and this distribution of houses, one cannot be made available for our Carib Queen?

“And when you consider all the contributions that the early ancestors have made, to the (country's) development, tell me why it cannot be done. Why? Can anyone answer me that?” 

Forte’s book explores the birth and baptismal records of indigenous people in Arima in the 1800s. The records were maintained by Arima’s RC church during the church’s Arima Mission. 

Forte, a lecturer in anthropology and Caribbean history at Concordia University, in an hour-long presentation on Tuesday detailed the hardships of Arima’s indigenous population during the church’s mission. During that time, they were stripped of their lands and made to provide free labour for plantation owners. 

The way the First Peoples were treated, said Bharath-Hernandez, suggests why a house for the Carib Queen is the least that can be provided to descendants of the group. 

He said the book also informs on the need to renew wider discussions of reparations for descendants of indigenous communities. He called on Forte to use his knowledge to help advocate, on behalf of the communities, to Caricom's reparation committee. 

Noting that Caribbean governments are responsible for discussions on reparations he said that responsibility was not solely theirs but one they inherited. 

“We heard it here today (in the book), and this is the kind of information that informs reparation.

Acknowledging a verbal apology had been made by representatives of the Santa Rosa RC Church to the indigenous community Bharath-Hernandez said, “We do not really want an apology with words coming from the mouth. That apology must come with some depth, some meaning.

“We feel that the church, at the level of collective churches in TT, can come together and, in some way, do something towards the development of the First Peoples”.

The Santa Rosa First Peoples Community is now turning its attention towards building a heritage park. Bharath-Hernandez, holding up an artist's rendering of what the park will look like, said, “We, the descendants of the original peoples, of the mission of Arima, are striving to establish our heritage village.

“If we can accomplish the first phase (of building) – there are many phases – then I think we would be well on our way to doing many things”.

 Dr. Brinsley Samaroo shares a comment during the discussion following the presentation.

Arima mission a ‘slave colony’

Author explores records of First Peoples

First Peoples visits San Fernando last week. - Marvin Hamilton

By TRACY ASSING

Originally published in NEWSDAY, October 22, 2019.

In December, Maximilian C Forte returns with an exciting new text which deals specifically with the history of Trinidad’s indigenous population, titled Arima Born.

Forte has continued his research in the Carib/First Peoples' Community, which began in 1995, and has already contributed to the documentation of TT history with Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs, which was published in 2005. Forte’s other work on the Amerindians of Trinidad is titled Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival.

The new, self-published text (Forte’s Alert Press) is invaluable to any Caribbean history collection. Forte has based this new work on his study of the baptismal registers of the RC church in Arima for 1820-1916.

He is the first to admit that his work is incomplete, as huge chunks of the records were missing, illegible, and systems of record-keeping were flawed. He has included re-productions of the records he studied, bringing the page count to just over 300.

In the preface of the book he reveals that the registers he had the opportunity to examine were sent to the archives of the Archbishop’s residence and are now difficult to access.

Forte is a professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He first learned of the Carib Community in the early 90s through a newspaper article. He committed to sharing the results of his research with members of the Santa Rosa Carib/First Peoples Community, some of whom believe the very proof of their indignity lies in these records, but Forte says: “Identity is ultimately an idea.”

At Concordia University he teaches courses on indigenous resurgence, media and visual anthropology, political anthropology, Caribbean history and political economy, among other subjects.

He makes the point that the registers are “not only material evidence concerning the history of the Amerindians in the Arima Mission, they are also a detailed repository of data on African slaves in Arima and environs.”

This is so, he notes, “in a period when reparations are being studied and proposed at the highest political levels across the Caribbean.”

In Arima Born, readers learn that Arima was never actually a mission just for Amerindians. In fact, Forte describes it as a “slave colony.” Even though missions were initially conceived to “pacify” the Amerindian population, toward the end of the 1700s the Amerindians were, as ever, “caught between shifts of value.” The mission to “pacify” and Christianise failed. Then Don Miguel Sorzano, a Spanish slave owner who was the first corregidor, established the mission in 1784. There were other slave owners in Arima and at that time, the mission’s indigenous inhabitants included tribes forcibly displaced from their lands in Tacarigua, Caura and Arouca.

According to Forte: “Between field work, public works and armed security one cannot interpret the founding of the Mission as anything less than a form of state patronage in the service of landed capital and the existing oligarchy.” Amerindians even built homes for the disbanded 3rd West India Regiment.

Even when the British came, the Amerindians were only valued as long as their labour was valued. British authorities “imported” Amerindian/mestizo labourers from Venezuela, and they got to work shoulder to shoulder with the Amerindians of Trinidad: “Amerindian labour was utilised to create value in land, by clearing it for cultivation. Once that land was cleared, its value would have increased while the labour that produced that value would then become disposable.”

When the priests in the mission kept careful accounting through racial/ethnic registry, it was because real legal obligations and rights were attached to members of different groups. Forte concludes: “The Amerindians of Arima went extinct but in a political-economic sense only, rather in than either ethnic/cultural or biological terms.”

Arima Born shares more information about the socio-political structures which orchestrated this “paper genocide.” Two priests of interest who appear in Forte’s text are Fr Pedro Josef Reyes Bravo (1786-1818), who gave testimony in the trial of Luisa Calderon, and Msgr Charles de Martini (1895-1916), whose family came to own substantial cocoa estates during his tenure.

Forte also reveals that the position of Carib Queen did not exist before the 1800s and the first queen may even have come from Venezuela. In exploring the roots of the Santa Rosa Festival, which is essentially why a queen was appointed, he examines the similarities between the Santa Rosa Festival and the Cross Wake (Veloria de la Cruz). He also offers more information about the existence of Amerindians outside the missions, those who choose to live in the forests of the Northern Range. Add this to the fact that we have no way of knowing how many baptised children were not included in the register and how many were not baptised, or the numbers contained in the records which have been lost.

What becomes clear is that the assertion that Amerindians “died out” or “lost their heritage through miscegenation” is a myth. And, Forte wrote: “Far from offering the Amerindians ‘protection,’ the mission was an engine of their socio-economic demise."

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Trinidad Caribs Inaugurate New Queen

Republished from:
NEWSDAY, October 13, 2019

Caribs crown queen Nona
First Peoples conduct ceremony in Arima

by Janelle De Souza, with photos from Ayanna Kinsale

Carib royalty: Nona López Calderón Galera Moreno Aquan is regal, during her inauguration as the new Carib Queen in the Carib Centre on Paul Mitchell Street, Arima.

It was a very emotional moment for 63-year-old Nona Aquan when she was inaugurated as the new Carib Queen.

The indigenous ceremony took place yesterday at the Carib Centre, Arima, in the presence of First Peoples and political dignitaries alike.

Aquan, full name Nona Lopez Calderon Galera Moreno Aquan, shook, cried and smiled in her seat as she was surrounded and blessed by pyai (shamans or religious leaders) from TT, Suriname, Guyana, Guatemala, and Guyana. She, along with First Peoples chief Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez, will work together for the leadership and upliftment of TT’s indigenous people.

The ceremony started with Aquan cleansing her face and hands with consecrated water before seating herself on a chair at the centre of a large carat shed as Bharath-Hernandez explained the history of the institution of the Carib Queen.

He said the mission of Santa Rosa was established for the First Peoples but some Spanish people, and eventually others, settled and ‘mixed’ with them. He said while the chiefs had the authority there was always a female elder who would be their Keeper of Traditions. However, in the 1800s there was a crisis in the male leadership and so the Carib Queen was sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church.

Carib Queen Nona Lopez Calderon Galera Moreno Aquan receives her blessings from 100-year-old-Moruga Chief Paul Navarro during her inauguration at the Carib Centre, Paul Mitchell Street, Arima

Aquan was then blessed by the pyai. The smoke of incense and tobacco filled the air as the pyai, including 100-year-old Moruga Chief, Paul Navarro, prayed to the great spirits in their native languages, and blessed her by wafting and blowing the smoke in her face and on her body.

During the blessing by the Suriname contingent, the queen’s headdress was placed upon her head. She was then invested with special beads and a cape before several First People’s women held sacred palm branches over her head and sang spiritual songs in tribute to the queen.

Explaining the symbolism of the branches, Bharath-Hernandez said when Jesus was born and King Herod pursued the family as they fled, palm branches fell on Mary to hide her from her attackers. Therefore the branches was a symbol of protection.

For the last part of the ceremony, Aquan knelt in front of her mother to receive her blessing – a kiss on the forehead.

With tears in her eyes, Aquan told members of the media she was touched and overwhelmed to see and feel her connection to all the indigenous people in TT and abroad. In between numerous hugs, congratulations, and well-wishing, she thanked her relatives, friends and all other supporters for being at the ceremony.

Asked what she planned to work on as queen she said, 

“I want to see more things for the youth... get them more involved with the community because we are stronger in numbers. I think they should have a daycare for young mothers. There are a lot of aunties at home, providing (care) so the younger ones can go out and be comfortable.”

Carib Queen Nona Lopez Calderon Galera Moreno Aquan, right, dances with guests at her inauguration held at the Carib Centre, Paul Mitchell Street, Arima on October 12.

Arima Mayor Lisa Morris-Julian attended the ceremony. She said, 

“I am extremely proud. I love how the First Peoples took something so colonial and made it so much theirs. The queen of the First Peoples is not just a title. She’s going to be responsible for so many things in our community, keeping the children of the community alive, so I am very happy.”

There to witness the event were Permanent Representative to the UN, Pennelope Beckles; former culture minister Joan Yuille-Williams; Toco/Sangre Grande Regional Corporation chairman Terry Rondon; PNM PRO, Laurel Lezama-Lee Sing; and former minister of national diversity and social integration, Dr Roger Samuel. Also in attendance were visitors from the US, Belize, Dominica, and Japan.

The indigenous ceremony was followed by an inauguration mass at Santa Rosa RC Church, Arima.

Colonial Myth-Making and the Mission of Santa Rosa de Arima, Trinidad

Was the Arima Mission an “Indian Mission”? For what purposes, and in whose interests, was the Arima Mission established? How many Indigenous people lived in the Arima Mission, and in Trinidad as a whole? Who counted them? How were they counted, and why? Why did Arima come to be seen as a centre of Indigenous culture in Trinidad? Exactly how did the Amerindians “vanish” from the Mission? What “secrets” are revealed by the Baptismal Registers about the nature and impact of the Christian “civilizing mission”?

When under Spanish colonial rule the authorities approved the Catholic Church’s plans for building mission towns in Trinidad, it was as part of dual commercial and counterinsurgency strategy. Mission towns were established in the early to mid-1700s, in an effort to “pacify” the Amerindian population, and to incorporate Amerindians into profitable, market-oriented activities. Missions were multi-pronged: they combined religious, political, economic, and military objectives. While cocoa production increased under the direction of missionaries, and would eventually become a lucrative commodity destined for export, the missions had limited or mixed results on the other fronts. The missions were subject to attacks from Amerindians outside of the missions, and were subject to internal resistance, outright rebellions, and flight of the Indigenous population.

Myths

Among the many things that we learned from studying the primary sources and the baptismal records of the Arima Mission are that certain myths (working fictions) have been in operation and, like all good myths, they are contradicted by documentary evidence. The primary myths include the following:

1. The myth of the Mission as a form of racial segregation and exclusion;
2. The myth of protection of the Amerindians by the authorities;
3. The myth of the vanishing Amerindians; and,
4. The myth of successful assimilation and Christian indoctrination.

Let's start by looking at myth #3, one of the most popular, influential, and enduring because it has been institutionalized.

Extinction via Miscegenation

Extinction via miscegenation was the dominant and thus standard mode of rhetorically displacing Arima’s Amerindians (see Forte, 2013). This idea, that Amerindians became “extinct” by virtue of forming unions with members of other racial/ethnic groups, amounted to the most common and thus most taken for granted “explanation” that was widely reproduced in the literature on Trinidad in the 19^th and even the 20^th centuries. Writers of local histories, memoirs, and travel books reflected what was ultimately state policy: the Mission was only for those persons who were “pure” Indians. Any mixed offspring would lose the right (and the obligation) to reside in the Mission. This policy was succinctly explained by the corregidor of the Mission, Martin Sorzano, in testimony before the Burnley Commission on July 16, 1841. In response to the commissioner’s question, “To what, then, do you ascribe the gradual and rapid diminution in their number?” Sorzano replied:

“Chiefly to the gradual mixture of the races. As pure Indians they were compelled to remain at the mission, and conform to the regulations; but the children born of Spanish and Creole fathers could not be so classed, and would not submit to the restraint of remaining there”. (Burnley, 1842, p. 109)

As a fundamentally racial narrative, the idea of extinction via miscegenation found favour with colonial élites who has busied themselves with formulating and then disseminating—even legislating—the racial ordering of the working class in Trinidad, especially as material questions of rights to property and free labour were determined by such an ordering. Governor Woodford instructed Captain William Wright, on the latter taking charge of the Mission, to do as follows with the Indian residents: “You will then proceed to make a return of them by families, shewing their lineage or descent as well as their trades, and if intermixed with other than Indian blood” (quoted in Fraser, 1971[1896], p. 104). Dating from the earliest years of British colonization in Trinidad, an English writer described Mission Indians in one of the earliest recorded instances of the racial extinctionist theme: 

“Some of the Peons are Indians of South America,—others are the mongrel offspring of the white Spaniard and Indian, the Indian and Negro, or the progeny of any of them, united in such varieties of shade, as almost to have effaced the traits of the aboriginees [sic]. But there are many of the true Indians to be seen, at the different Indian villages, or missions”. (Letter to the Duke of Portland, 1807, p. 60)

One of the first and most prominent local history volumes was that authored by E.L. Joseph in 1838, which is a valuable source of insights into élite thinking of the time, and a source of tremendous misinformation as well. In one notable passage on this topic of race and indigenous identity, Joseph wrote the following:

“This indolent harmless race is here fast merging on extinction – from no fault of the local government, nor from any disease: the births amongst the Indian women exceed the deaths in the usual ratio; the fact is, that the Indian men, since they are obliged to live in society, choose mates of other races, and the women do the same (Mr. Coleridge was misinformed when he stated that the Indians will not intermarry with other races), hence out of every seven children born of an Indian mother during the last 30 years, there are scarcely two of pure blood, as I have been informed; this will of course decrease their population; for those of the mixed race, whether they be Samboes (between Negroes and Indians), or Mustees (between Europeans and Indians), or the countless castes that the admixture between the African, European, and Indian tribes produce, they are not the real aboriginal race, and leave the inactive community of Indians as soon as they reach the age of discretion”. (1970[1838], pp. 102–103)

As if to concretely prove Joseph’s adherence to plainly racial paradigms, he cited in one passage the argument that the Amerindian cranium “is uniformly superior to the cranium of a negro, whose powers of mind are as much inferior to those of the Indian, as those of the latter to the powers of the European” (1970[1838], p. 121).

Extinction via miscegenation as a narrative was as enduring as it was influential. The “approximate extinction” of the Amerindians, through the process of inter-marriage, was a concept used by De Verteuil (1858, p. 172). One travel writer asserted, presumably on the basis of what he was told by his hosts, that by 1797, “probably many of them [Indians] had been absorbed by intermarriage with the invaders. At present, there is hardly an Indian of certainly pure blood in the island, and that only in the northern mountains” (Kingsley, 1877, p. 74). Several decades after Joseph, Fr. Cothonay wrote, “The inhabitants of this earthly paradise are not in effect Indians….they are descendants of the Spaniards, more or less mixed with the Indians [Amerindians] and the blacks” (1893, pp. 241–242).

However, much is missed if we take sources at face value. On the one hand we are told that the Arima Mission was something of an exclusive racial zone designed to preserve Indian purity: thus Harricharan (1983, p. 22) asserts that priests “prohibited ‘mission’ Indians from contact with ‘bush’ Indians, Negro slaves, mestizos or other Spaniards and kept them confined to the missions”; Noel argued that one of the successes of the Capuchins “seems to have been the partial preservation of the Indigenous race as agricultural workers under the external guise of living a Catholic life” (1972, p. 18). How contact with other groups could have been prevented, when these other groups also formed the population of the Mission, would be something that strains credulity. Indeed, what if the opposite were true? What if, in a colony ordered by a racial hierarchy, the Mission Indians had been deliberately made to cohabit with members of other ethnic groups, knowing that the result would be miscegenation, and thus eventual removal from the Mission?

Ethnic Substitution

With the displacement of Indigenous residents of the Mission, which accompanied the rise of the cocoa industry, a new wave of migrants from Venezuela entered the area and furnished the workforce for the expanded industry. To get a sense of the magnitude of the immigration, Brereton (1979, p. 12) indicated that Trinidad’s population increased from 84,438 in 1861 to 200,028 in 1891. Some of the major cocoa estates in the Arima Ward Union included the Santa Rosa estate owned by C.G. Scheult; Buena Vista, owned by Jules Cipriani; and El Retiro, held by the De Martini family (Collens, 1896). Given that many of the migrants were of a similar cultural, religious, and ethnic background as the former Indian and Mestizo residents of the Mission, what transpired was a process of ethnic substitution and what then appeared to be a revitalization or resurgence of a number of key traditions and ritual practices, when viewed from a certain angle (Brereton, 1979, pp. 131–132, 152; Moodie-Kublalsingh, 1994, pp. 2–3, 4, 33, 41). In some areas, there was a fusion of the two groups, that is, the Indians already present in Trinidad and the Venezuelan migrants. The baptismal registers reflect all of these developments and transformations, except for the process of fusion.

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