Introduction to the Smithsonian Taino Symposium, August 2011

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"José Barreiro, director of the Office of Latin America at the National Museum of the American Indian, introduces the participants of the Smithsonian Latino Center's "Beyond Extinction: Consciousness of Taíno & Caribbean Indigeneity" symposium on August 26, 2011.

"Text from the invitation: This symposium features scholars on Taíno and Caribbean indigenous themes who will discuss the survival of Taíno language, identity, and material culture in contemporary Caribbean consciousness.

"Participants include archaeologist Osvaldo García Goyco, historian Alejandro Hartmann Matos, and biologist Juan Carlos Martínez Cruzado. Roberto Borrero, president, United Confederation of Taíno People, will serve as respondent. Moderated by José Barreiro, director of the Office of Latin America at the National Museum of the American Indian.

"This program is organized by the National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Latino Center and is supported by the Consortium for World Cultures, Smithsonian Institution."

What Does it Mean to be "Indigenous" Today in the Caribbean?

A new forum discussion has been started on the Indigenous Caribbean Network. Depending on the level of interest, we might take this into the new chat room on the ICN. The outline of the intent of the discussion is as follows:

Indigenous can be read in many different ways. Some link the idea of indigenous to notions of race, to being "Amerindian", to ideas of ancient ancestry that predates that of all other groups resident in a given territory. Others see indigenous as being local, as belonging here, as being native in a broad sense.

Sometimes the differences in these ideas of indigenous can occasion real struggles, for example, the way the Guyanese Organisation of Indigenous People wants the Guyanese Government to stop using the term Amerindian (as in Minister of Amerindian Affairs) and to use the term indigenous when speaking only of those who have been called Amerindian. The government refuses, thus far, saying that all Guyanese are indigenous, as in native, as in born in Guyana and belonging in Guyana.

There doesn't appear to be a "correct" answer here that everyone will agree with, let alone a simple solution. I think the best we can do is to fully air all possible sides on this issue. Can "indigenous" in the Caribbean today really be a matter of "race"? Is indigenous rooted in DNA percentages? What do you think?

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Indigeneity, Créolité, and Independence: Mylène Priam

In an April 3, 2008, article in the Harvard University Gazette we are introduced to Mylène Priam, an assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, who argues that French citizenship for the locals of Guadeloupe and Martinique does not necessarily translate into their possessing a French national identity. Priam studies “Créolité” (Creoleness) which is a literary movement that developed from the 1980s onwards in the French Caribbean. The guiding idea is that a locally fashioned Creole identity and not French continental identity should lead in defining the islands’ cultures and literatures. As the article explains:

According to the authors, Créolité could provide a way for West Indians to have a say in their destiny. Furthermore, they argued, Caribbean identity could be defined not only by the legacy of French Colonialism and slavery, but rather by a flexible and unlimited combination of influences that might include indigenous Caribbean, European, and even Asian culture (among others).

Priam will be exploring these themes further in an upcoming book titled, Creole Soup for the Caribbean Soul: The Créolité Manifesto.

The reason for singling out this notion of Créolité is that it opens a long closed door to indigenous identity and indigenous presence in the Caribbean. It does so in a way that allows indigenous identity to be expressed not in the form of over emphasized indigenous authenticity, that could lend itself to the reproduction of well worn stereotypes that might be alien to the Caribbean region, but in a more realistic sense as part of a wider Caribbean fabric. One can see emerging ways that indigenous creoleness is being expressed on Trinidadian blogs for example (e.g. see Guanaganare in the recommended blogs list on this page), where aboriginality is fused with a broader sense of localness, of human universality, and of national identity, an uneasy mix but a much more lived and everyday mix rather than a bookish ideology, I think. This is another reason why we have so much to learn from the Garifuna--the only Caribbean culture (outside of the Guyanas) to retain an indigenous language (Island Carib), within a cultural frame that easily incorporates African and other elements, without any attempt to produce a hard edged look of indigenous purity. There is nothing "obvious" and plain about the Caribbean, and this has applicability for both the presumed absence or sometimes overstated presence of indigeneity.

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Ottawa to Appeal Expansion of Indigenous "Status"

As expected, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to appeal a recent Canadian provincial high court ruling that struck down a long-standing restriction on legal recognition of indigenous identity.

For more on this see Bill Curry's "Appeal of native ruling likely, Ottawa says," The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, June 19, 2007.

Does Arima Matter?

Carib Community or Indigenous People?
In connection with the previous post about the Government of Trinidad and Tobago's purported acts of "recognition," I would like to draw readers' attention to an article posted in Newsday titled, "Carib descendants ponder another holiday" (Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006). The article, which tells us that Ricardo Bharath Hernandez called on Government to show more "meaningful recognition to the indigenous people," unwittingly confuses two separate issues when it adds that, "MP for the area, Pennelope Beckles said Cabinet has already appointed a committee to look into the needs of the group." I am not necessarily blaming the author of the piece here since it may simply be a case of directly quoting what was said at the event. Trinidad's "indigenous people," and the group known as the Santa Rosa Carib Community (SRCC) are two distinct entities, the former containing the latter. It is clear that Ricardo Bharath Hernandez was, however, speaking solely of the Carib Community when he said, "the Carib community will continue to struggle for meaningful recognition," and that maybe the author of the article is the source of the confusion.

Extinction by Localization
The SRCC is a formally constituted group; it cannot be equated with nor stand for all persons of indigenous descent in Trinidad, and to my knowledge its leadership has never made such a claim. Yet, typically we find in most Trinidadian publications--whether these be locally self-published books and pamphlets, tourist brochures, Trinidadian websites, newspaper articles, and school texts--that Arima is routinely hailed as the "home of the Caribs," or the home of the last remaining Caribs.

This form of localized recognition, besides being preposterous in ethnohistoric terms, functions either deliberately or by accident to delimit and contain indigeneity in Trinidad and Tobago. It is preposterous in the sense that the Indian Mission of Toco survived virtually as long as that of Arima, as did that of Siparia with its own long-lasting and still present festival of La Divina Pastora. Why would Amerindian descendants have mysteriously disappeared in such places and not at Arima? Indeed, many Amerindian descendants in Arima, of so-called "mixed race," were effectively barred from the mission and forced to leave Arima. In addition, with the de facto dissolution of the mission of Arima, many Amerindians had to move elsewhere and squat on lands. So it is not just the ex-mission towns that have Amerindian descendants, but a whole range of small rural villages and hamlets, e.g. Talparo, Brazil, Rio Claro, Paria, etc.

To delimit recognition to Arima, and to the SRCC, is to wipe the rest of the face of Trinidad clean of indigenous identification. This is reinforced by the deliberate omission of indigenous identity from any censuses. This is what is meant here by extinction via localization. Localization of indigeneity in Trinidad effectively serves to neutralize indigeneity, by evading recognition of the widespread dissemination of Amerindian ancestry, family lines, and cultural practices throughout Trinidad, and Tobago as well.

The Limits of Anthropological Advocacy
The author of this short essay is an anthropologist, and a foreigner and non-indigenous person as well. There is little such a person could, or even should, do to foster a broader movement for the recovery of indigenous identity in Trinidad and Tobago. However, it is a fact that numerous individuals, many more than are to be found in the SRCC, have contacted the writer over the past ten years that he has been active online, proudly proclaiming their Amerindian ancestry. Many (not all, maybe not most) of these individuals reside outside of Trinidad and Tobago. It will be up to them, if they wish, to find some way of communicating to a broader audience and to perhaps organize themselves in some shape or fashion. Such things cannot be dictated, not even urged by an outsider, and if such developments were to fail to take place then that would of course also be of anthropological significance.