Happy Garifuna Settlement Day: Cheryl Noralez

HAPPY GARIFUNA SETTLEMENT DAY TO ALL MY GARIFUNA BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

As we celebrate our arrival to Honduras let us not forget how we came to be in Central America. Let us not forget our history. Let us not forget that we are one people, the Garifuna Nation. We have always had a free body, mind, and spirit. The blood, pride, and courage of our Arawak and African ancestors remain in all of us. On this day take the time to learn and teach our history to the next generation. Tell them to not be ashamed to claim their heritage. Let us not just be proud to be Garinagu on April 12, November 19th & 26th. We should be proud to be Garifuna everyday of our lives.

"Garifuna Nuguya..Pantatina Lau"

Cheryl Noralez

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Art About Arawaks: New site from Penny Slinger

In previous years, dating almost to the inception of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink, we featured some of the paintings of Penny Slinger, a British artist who for many years resided in different parts of the Caribbean. The paintings we directed attention to focused on images of Arawaks, as they might have been preceding the arrival of Europeans. Penny Slinger has clearly dedicated a great deal more attention to these themes and has recently produced a large new website featuring a vast array of her images, including blockprints, drawings, pastels, paintings, and a video. Her site encompasses two themes: Arawak Art, and what she calls Island Art.

Penny Slinger's Arawak Art can be seen at: http://www.arawakart.com/

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The Garifuna Women's Project - Umalali

Richard Marcus in Blogcritics Magazine for April 7, 2008, has published a review of The Garifuna Women's Project - Umalali, which in what is overall a very enthusiastic piece (enough to convince me to see them in Montreal later this month, a stop in their Andy Palacio memorial tour), he explains:

Until now the only music from the Garifuna communities the world has heard has been that performed by the men. Now, after ten years of extensive field research and recordings, Ivan Duran, producer of Stonetree Records in Belize, has released Umalali, featuring the voices of The Garifuna Women's Project.

These women have learned the music and the rituals of their people from their mothers and grand-mothers in an unbroken chain that stretches back to their ancestors who first landed on these shores in the aftermath of the shipwreck which gave them their freedom. The songs that they sing are about their lives; the heartbreak of losing a son, the joy of a new born child, or finding a job.

For more on Umalali, I warmly recommend the beautiful and informative website at:
http://www.cumbancha.com/albums/umalali

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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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Condolences to Carib Queen Valentina Medina and her family

John "Bertie" Medina, husband of Valentina Medina the Queen of the Arima Caribs, and great uncle to CAC Editor Tracy Assing, passed away today (Wednesday, 02 April, 2008). According to Cristo Adonis, in a phone call this evening, the tentative plans are for a funeral on Monday, 07 April, 2008.

I also knew Mr. Medina from the two previous times I lived in Arima (1997-1999, 2001-2003) and he was always a warm, gentle, humorous person. The photograph shown here was taken in August of 1997 at the Santa Rosa Carib Community Centre, where he was helping to clean rods used for the flags of the Santa Rosa Festival.

Roll Call for the Ancestors

It is very sad that in my limited time I have seen the passing of so many elders and key people in the Carib Community, including:

• Justa Werges, the former Carib Queen
• Alexander Calderon
• Julie Calderon
• Nemencia Calderon
• Elma Reyes
• Lawrence Augustus
• and now Bertie Medina

Our condolences to the family, relatives, and friends.

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