The First Peoples Narrative in Trinidad and Tobago

The First Peoples narrative

Originally published here
By Bridget Brereton
November 5, 2014

In my last few pieces, I’ve been writing about different narratives of T&T’s history—last time I looked at the Chinese-Trinidadian narrative.
 

There’s another old/new narrative of our past which is rightfully gaining much more public recognition these days. This is the Amerindian or First Peoples narrative, which puts the indigenous (aboriginal) inhabitants of the two islands at the centre.

A magazine type supplement was published by the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies and printed by the Express last month, in connection with the First Peoples Heritage Week 2014. Its several essays provide an in-depth version of the narrative. The authors include community leaders like Ricardo Bharath Hernandez and Rabina Shar, historians or archaeologists (the late Peter Harris and Angelo Bissessarsingh), and younger activists like Tracy Assing, who made the excellent film The Amerindians in 2010.

The narrative has a political (not party politics) agenda: to write the First Peoples back into the national (and regional) story. For too long, the “extinction narrative” has prevailed in T&T and the Caribbean islands (not in Guyana or Belize). This insists that all the Amerindians were “wiped out”, they “disappeared”, and they are no longer part of the living history of these islands. (As someone who has written about T&T’s history, I am as guilty as anyone).

This “extinction narrative” was linked to an argument about “purity”: No “pure” Amerindian descendants have existed in T&T since the 1800s, and mixed-race people with surnames like Bharath or Assing have no right to claim indigenous identity. We need only to think about the nature of T&T’s present-day population to see how ridiculous this argument is.

It’s the group led by Bharath Hernandez, originally called the Santa Rosa Carib Community and more recently renamed the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, which has done the most over many years to insist that the story of our indigenous peoples is the foundation of the nation’s (and region’s) existence. And, more than that, to insist there are still thousands of people in T&T today who are descended from those peoples, even if they don’t (yet) know it. There is also a newer organisation, the Elders Council of the Warao Community, which is based in the south and represents the Warao people.

In 2005, Canadian anthropologist Maximilian Forte published an excellent book with a very long, typically academic title: Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post) Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in T&T. This book narrated the history of the islands’ Amerindians during the colonial period, and documented the efforts of the Santa Rosa Carib Community to claim indigenous identity and to seek greater public recognition for the people it spoke for.

Of course this is an academic work, with a limited readership, so the supplement published last month, with its short, simply written essays, is very welcome. Hopefully, it introduced many readers to the First Peoples narrative of the nation’s history, and informed them about the efforts being made to raise public awareness of our indigenous heritage.

Speaking at the launch of First Peoples Heritage Week last month, President Anthony Carmona called it a “statement of resilience” and expressed a “sense of pride in history emanating from them” (the representatives of the First Peoples). Past wrongs can’t be altered, he noted, but we can influence the present and future. (Sunday Express 12 October).

It’s important to understand and support the multi-faceted movement to ensure our First Peoples are re-inserted into the historical narrative of T&T. The statement from the Ministry of National Diversity and Social Integration (co-sponsors of the Heritage Week along with the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community), “The foundation of our society is built on the legacy of our First Peoples”, should be taken seriously.

Introduction to the Smithsonian Taino Symposium, August 2011

  Uploaded by eliudbonilla on Dec 29, 2011

"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."

David Maybury-Lewis: Notes on the Abolition of the Indigenous

The following paragraphs come from the late David Maybury-Lewis, Harvard anthropologist, co-founder and director of Cultural Survival [(1993) A New World Dilemma: The Indian Question in the Americas. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 46(7), pp. 44-59].

Regarding the vision of Latin American liberals:

"The liberals demanded freedom for all, including the Indians, but what they meant by this for the Indians was the freedom to cease being Indian altogether. They considered Indio a derogatory word and Indianness a stigma--a kind of royalist, conservative, ecclesiastical device for maintaining indigenous peoples in a state of savagery. In the liberal vision of the future there would be no more Indians; the very word would be prohibited. The new constitutions therefore promised freedom and equality for all, with no mention of the Indians and no special provisions for them. It was assumed that they would disappear into the mainstream" (p. 48).

The Americas as a vast laboratory for the eradication of the indigenous:

"...the Americas since the conquest have been a vast laboratory for the eradication of indigenous cultures. As one studies the record, one cannot help being struck by the effort and ingenuity devoted by the conquerors to this task. They attacked indigenous religions. They imposed forced labor of various kinds. They invented a whole series of ways to lure or trick those not already forced to work into peonage through debt (the debt could only be worked off-and only with difficulty). Here and there they simply abolished Indians by a stroke of the pen and followed that up by trying to break up indigenous communities. They took Indian children away from their parents, sometimes by force, to be educated in alien schools that taught them to despise the ways of their peoples and discouraged them from speaking their own languages. The assault on indigenous landholding makes for the most remarkable reading of all: it is clear that the invaders not only coveted and seized Indian lands whenever they could; they were also affronted by those peoples and communities that held their lands in common. The Europeans considered that concept the very essence of savagery, for it departed from the ideas of private property and individual title to land that were considered central to Western civilization. It was thus with a convenient conviction of moral superiority that the invaders constantly tried to break up the communal landholdings of the Indians" (pp. 50-51).

"Emancipated Indians" in Brazil:

"until recently the Brazilian government had an official policy of 'emancipating' the Indians. They were not held in servitude but were considered wards of the state. The only way the Indians could be emancipated, therefore, was if they legally gave up being considered Indian and were thus deprived of their indigenous identity" (p. 55).

Abolishing Indians, Since 1492:

"It is one of the many ironies of the American experience that the invaders created the category of Indians, imposed it on the inhabitants of the New World, and have been trying to abolish it ever since" (p. 55).

From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, decrees of abolition, plans of eradication:

"In many countries it was decreed that Indians would no longer be referred to as Indios but would instead be called campesinos (peasants); Indianness was thus abolished by a stroke of the pen. In Chile, General Pinochet's government tried to destroy the identity of the large Mapuche (Araucanian) minority by forcing them to divide their lands into privately owned lots. Even the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which is widely thought to be one of the more generous settlements made with indigenous peoples, was drafted to turn Indian communities into corporations and their members into stockholders. Future members of the community will not acquire stocks unless stocks are bequeathed to them by those who originally received them. Meanwhile, stocks can soon be given, willed, or sold to people who are not members of the communities. The effect of the act, if not its intention, is to provide a mechanism for phasing out the native communities altogether" (pp. 55-56).

New Book from the Kalinago of Dominica

YET WE SURVIVE
The Kalinago People of Dominica: Our Lives in Words and Pictures

is a new book created by the Kalinago people of Dominica, recently released by Papillote Press in London.

The book is edited by Mary Walters, with a foreword by Lennox Honychurch.

This book tells the story of a remarkable people. Nowadays the Kalinago (Carib) people live in a corner of Dominica as farmers and fishermen, taxi drivers and teachers; they make baskets and build canoes and preserve what is left of their rich cultural legacy.

With their own words and pictures, this book offers an extraordinary insight into the Kalinago people as they see themselves today: at work and play, shopping, schools, religion, the differences between women's and men's lives. It illustrates who they are, how they live, how they see their future.

Yet We Survive is fully illustrated and supports the teaching of social subjects, history, geography, language, expressive arts, ICT, global citizenship and enterprise for pupils at Key Stage 2 in England and Wales, and Primary and S1 in Scotland.

Editor and teacher Mary Walters says: “There is a wealth of material here for students to explore a unique Caribbean culture while comparing and contrasting it with their own lives.”

Professor Peter Hulme, University of Essex, says: “Just 515 years after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, these indigenous people finally get to speak here through their own words and photographs, showing what it means to maintain a traditional culture while living in the modern world.”

Professor Hulme adds: “Most history books say that the indigenous population of the Caribbean has been extinct since the sixteenth century. As its title suggests, Yet We Survive shows that the Kalinago (Carib) population of the island of Dominica is still alive and kicking in the 21st century. In turn dramatic and commonplace, heart-rending and uplifting, Yet We Survive offers a unique window into a unique culture.”

Irvince Auguiste, former Carib chief writes: “Yet We Survive has been the most interesting literature on the Kalinago people of Dominica because it provided a number of our young people with the opportunity to collect the information and to work on it while they acquired new skills in photography and techniques in conducting interviews. Since the work was done, the infrastructure has improved and new projects are being explored for economic development, particularly in tourism. Congratulations to Mary Walters.”

Excellent teachers’ notes available from www.papillotepress.co.uk or email pollyp@globalnet.co.uk

Publication date: April 16 2007 ISBN: 078-0-9532224-2-1 Hardback £9.99
Title : Yet We Survive - The Kalinago People of Dominica: Our Lives in Words and Pictures
Editor : WALTERS, Mary
Hardback : 40 pages
Publication Date : April 2007
ISBN10 : 095322242X
ISBN13 : 0780953222421

For further information: Polly Pattullo on 0207 720 5983 or email: pollyp@globalnet.co.uk
23 Rozel Road, London, SW4 0EY, UK. www.papillotepress.co.uk

Untold Origins -- Caribbean Indigenous Museum Exhibition

"Untold Origins," an exhibition dedicated to indigenous Caribbean heritage and identity, took place under the auspices of the Cuming Museum in Southwark, London, from October 19, 2004 to February 26, 2005.

The Cuming Museum sought to challenge several myths of Caribbean history, such as those of the cannibalistic Caribs eating their way through docile Arawak communities, or those pertaining to the often repeated notion that indigenous peoples in the Caribbean are extinct. In this vein, the organizers of the exhibition explain, "the Cuming Museum wanted to explore their survival in more depth and to discover whether there are any echoes of indigenous culture surviving in Southwark's Caribbean culture today." The Untold Origins exhibition was originally presented for Black History Month in 2004. It sought to explore "the untold history of the indigenous people of the Caribbean and their contribution to the Caribbean culture of today." An attempt was made to join reflection of Caribbean indigenous survival with contemporary ways of making sense of one's identity, and how movement and cross-cultural contact could affect the process of making one's identity.

The Cuming Museum has since decided to provide online the various photographs and information boards that were used for the exhibition, for the sake of those who could not have been present.

These materials include the following:

• The tradition of cassava production (1mb)
• Untold Origins introduction (742kb)
• The Schomburgk collection (624kb)
• History of migration from South America (165kb)
• The shared culture (152kb)
• Women’s' role in indigenous culture (1mb)
• The impact of European contact and conquest (280kb)
• Resistance and survival (280kb)
• The indigenous craft tradition (96kb)
• Indigenous contributions to Caribbean culture today (96kb)
• The continuity of Caribbean indigenous people (196kb)
• The gli-gli carib canoe project (136kb)
• Useful websites and references (1mb)

Please click here to go to the original site for the exhibition.