Africans are not "foreigners" (but racists are racists even if they are Caribs)

For a decade now I have personally known about the racial views of today's Chief of the Dominica Carib Territory, Charles Williams, and was quite willing to keep debates and discussions that we had in private, until I saw the Associated Press possibly tarnishing the image of all Dominica's Caribs among those who might mistakenly think that the Chief speaks for all Caribs.

Chief Williams, who does have Internet access and an email account, is very welcome to post his response on this blog, and I commit myself to publishing it. Again, I wish to reiterate that the views expressed below are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my fellow CAC editors.

I believe that the most respectful way to behave, as an anthropologist, is to speak frankly and directly (as I did in person back in 1998), and to even argue with one's hosts and collaborators, rather than write about them behind their backs, which I have not done and am not doing now. I will reiterate what I said in 1998, in what was otherwise a very warm gathering at which Carib senator Kelly Graneau, James Frederick, and Irvince Auguiste (a former chief) were also present.

I do so, quite plainly, to distance myself from views that I think are completely reprehensible: the Caribbean does not need any more racism, and it especially does not need any racism to be reinforced by those who suffered some of its worst effects for the longest.

Africans in the Caribbean, in Dominica, are not "foreigners."

Africans did not choose to be in the Caribbean, they are not tourists, they are not invaders. Africans were stolen from their homes, and would most likely never have chosen to be in the Caribbean, or to remain, were it not for the fact that their homes were destroyed and return proved impossible.

Africans literally spilled their blood on Caribbean soil, labouring, toiling, and fighting for freedom. They have a place in the Caribbean not just because they have been born there for generations, but because they have earned that place like few other people anywhere on Earth can claim.

Africans and Caribs, who merged to form the people we know today as the Garifuna, the last speakers of the Island Carib language (not spoken in Dominica), have long had mutually supportive relationships, have long intermarried, have shared their cultures, have adopted each other's customs and practices, and have fought together for freedom.

One does not turn one's back on such a history in the name of anything--not in the name of a quick buck made by selling baskets to tourists, not in the name of possibly seeking to boot families out of the Carib Territory, and certainly not in the name of "racial purity."

I ask that Chief Williams reflect on the destructive impact of his messages, that he reconsider, and that he publicly apologize for seeking such odious legislation and withdraw his comments.

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Dominica Carib Chief Seeks Legislation Barring Intermarriage

Allow me to post the news article before proceeding to offer a personal comment.

The Associated Press, in rare coverage of a Caribbean indigenous community, published the following news on Friday, May 9, 2008:

Dominica rejects legislating intermarriage to save tribe

Fri May 9, 11:12 PM ET

ROSEAU, Dominica - The leader of the last remaining pre-Columbian tribe in the eastern Caribbean says outlawing marriage to outsiders can save Dominica's dwindling indigenous population, but legislators are balking at deciding who can marry whom.

Chief Charles Williams has proposed a law requiring ethnic Kalinagos to marry only each other for self-preservation. He also requested that foreigners be barred from living on the tribe's 3,800-acre reserve.

"We would like as many Kalinago people to respond and pair off so that we can multiply and protect the race," Williams said during a recent news conference.

An estimated 1,000 Kalinagos of the roughly 4,000 who live on the reserve are considered full-blooded Indians. Carib women who marry non-Indians traditionally leave the reserve, while men who do the same are allowed to stay.

Several legislators said Friday that they refuse to entertain the marriage proposal.

Such a measure would be "legislating who a person can marry, and this cannot be so," Sen. Claduous Stanford told The Associated Press.

Kent Auguiste, a member of the Carib Indian council that oversees the reserve, said the culture should be preserved but not at the expense of personal freedom.

The impoverished Kalinago tribe relies mostly on banana and citrus farming.

Editorial comment:
Chief Williams is pursuing a very questionable goal of racial purification, presumably with the goal of protecting the economic viability of the limited territory that a growing population of Dominica Caribs must share. Chief Williams is himself the product of intermarriage, as is the overwhelming majority of Dominica Caribs, as they have been since at least the early 1600s. Any impediment to intermarriage is not only too much that is too late, it goes against Carib postcolonial traditions, and it reinforces the idea held by some Dominicans that the Caribs are incurable racists. Indigeneity, construed as located in the blood and visible on the face, is a notion pushed by some Caribists in Dominica not only to the detriment of peaceful relations within their own community, but to the detriment of regional indigenous solidarity networks and to building alliances with Garifuna communities. It is also bad politics: a small community does not need big enemies, and such a move would hardly have won Chief Williams much in the way of sympathy from overseas. Speaking only for myself, I find Chief Williams' message to be a deplorable one, and I totally repudiate it.
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Indigenous Protests at the UN's Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues

In an article by David M. Kinchen in The Huntington News titled, "Indigenous Peoples Groups Demand Right to Speak at United Nations" (09 May 2008) we are told that:

Indigenous Peoples put pressure on the chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, demanding to have the right to speak on the recommendations of the Permanent Forum.

At the end of its two-week conference at the United Nations Headquarters, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) said the World Bank funding for carbon trading had set "good examples" for partnership with Indigenous Peoples.

The protesting Indigenous peoples disrupted the start of the meeting, and refused to sit down, shouting in Spanish "La palabra", and in English "we want to speak".

The protesters requested the elimination of paragraphs 5 and 37 of the document E/C.19/2008/L.2, saying Indigenous Peoples recommendations had generally not been reflected in most of the Forum's final documents on Climate change, the theme for the 7th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).

"This is not our Forum, it doesn't reflect our opinions," shouted one of the protesters.

"It was a loud and very assertive effort, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, the chair of the Forum did not want to recognize the speakers for the South American Indigenous Caucus," said Arthur Manuel of the Secwepemc Nation of British Columbia, Canada.

"The effort of the Indigenous Peoples to be heard resulted in U.N. Security try to remove an Indigenous Elder from the room, The situation got very tense until the UN Security were asked to leave the Permanent Forum Assembly Room because their involvement only intensified the situation," added Manuel.

"We are the Ongeh-Huh-Weh people, the real people of Mother Earth -- you have to listen to us," shouted Douglas Anderson down from the the upper level of the plenary room, before U.N. Security officers moved in to forcibly remove him from the conference room.

"I did not resist when they pulled and pushed me towards the door, but I asked the U.N. security officers to show me the law that we cannot speak at our Forum. I was worried what will happen next, I knew that the Indigenous Peoples would not allow this to happen, I feared a erruption of violence, don't forget, most of us deal with this type of police oppression back home on a daily bases," added Anderson, from upstate New York, Tuscarora, 6 Nations Iroquois Confederacy.

It was a dramatic moment when Rocio Velanda-Calle, one of the few persons standing at the upper level, rushed to Mr. Anderson's rescue, while the Indigenous Peoples at the lower level of the room shouted in shock, anger and objection to the actions of the U.N. Security forces.

Most indigenous peoples attending the forum felt unable to participate. "We Indigenous Peoples had to make a stand to be heard at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – the lack of real participation is a complete contradiction of the very existence of the Forum," said Mrs. Velanda –Calle after the U.N. security officers were ordered to leave the room. "Our views and recommendations were neglected by the so-called experts, the members of the Permanent Forum, and the Chairperson," she added.

...

"There are many grievances -- just this year the Permanent Forum announced new rules, so called guidelines, which are hindering Indigenous Peoples to show films or videos at the Forums side events. Now, films can only be screened, if sponsored by a government, " said Rebecca Sommer, from the Society for Threatened Peoples International. "These new UNPFII rules are raising serious questions in our human rights circles, they are, in our view, in contradiction with Article 19, of the Universal Human Rights Declaration."

"We understand that the 16 PFII experts are independent, their Report is based on their personal views and decided by consensus," said Andrea Carmen, the executive director of International Indian Treaty Council, a NGO in consultative status to the UN. Carmen added: "The Report did not reflected key aspects of what the Indigenous Peoples actually said on this issue. During the two-week session, there was such a overwhelming opposition expressed, including by the Global Indigenous Caucus, against these market based so called solutions." Carmen added: "Instead they have a huge impact on our human rights. In the future, we need to work with the PFII members to ensure that the Report will accurately reflect the input of the nearly 2000 participants, to avoid problems like this in the future."

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Dreaming of a New World (Movement²)

The New World Movement
The New World Movement that originated among Caribbean scholars and public intellectuals in the late 1960s, can probably be seen as part of that region's experience of what Immanuel Wallerstein has called the World Revolution of 1968. Many figures, locally prominent and some internationally famous as well had roots in this movement, or were associated with it, including: Norman Girvan, George Beckford, Clive Thomas, Walter Rodney, Orlando Patterson, Trevor Munroe, Lloyd Best, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Richard Bernal, and many others.

Added to the independence movement of the 1960s throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, what was then a still recent Cuban Revolution, the rising to prominence of Rastafari and Reggae, and various open lectures in the region by C.L.R. James, and Dr. Eric Williams' speeches to public audiences in Port of Spain at what was dubbed the "University of Woodford Square", where he spoke both as a historian of repute and as an independence leader--these times were momentous and of lasting importance. Lloyd Best, Trinidadian, recently passed away and his work especially as published in the T&T Review, and the work of the associated Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies and the Tapia House Group, also had a strong formative impact on my own thinking. Between Tapia, based in Tunapuna, and C.L.R. James who was born in Tunapuna, they managed to turn this otherwise marginal and rundown "town" in Trinidad into one of some world importance, and coincidentally I lived there for one rather trying year as a student (memories of hunger, heat, blackouts, rats, and huge toads).

The multiple currents of the New World Movement defy an easy summary, but I will try nonetheless. These currents included political economic analyses of the legacies of slavery and plantation society that paralleled the development of Latin American Dependency Theory. The foci were on greater economic, political, but also cultural autonomy; a quest to build the bases for a new Caribbean autochthony; a search for a new indigeneity; regional integration and collaboration between Island territories; a focus on local industry, self-reliance, and pride in local traditions, local foods; a sharp stance against transnational corporations and American cultural imperialism; a critique of monoculture and import dependency; calls for a new politics focusing on real and popular democracy rather than ossified forms of Westminster parliamentary democracy that allowed for bureaucratic and populist authoritarianism; a revalorization of local language and arts; the construction of a Caribbean philosophy and an investigation of the existence of a Caribbean civilization--all momentous, magnificent, and without rival since.

These were both popular and academic currents, where scholars communicated with broad publics, narrow audiences, and among themselves. The university was no longer an Ivory Tower but a hotbed for social transformation, sometimes to the great ire of national political leaders (Walter Rodney banned from Jamaica, and C.L.R. James ostracized by Eric Williams).

New World²
Since the late 1960s, a number of new schools of theory, research, and anaylsis have developed and taken root, in a ways that furthered, added to, or otherwise amended the research and activist orientations of the New World Movement. Among these we can include world-systems analysis, practice theory, Third World feminism, some form or variant of what some call post-modernism, post-colonialism, and critiques of Orientalism and Eurocentrism.

Perhaps it is due to the plethora of voices, of shades and inflections of tendencies, of overlaps and sometimes very abstract dividing lines, of a massive literature, endless conferences, and so forth, that I personally have lost a sense of the ‘crispness’, the sharp orientations that produced statements in bold relief that for me characterized so much of what was produced by the New World Movement, where “nuance” would have sounded like compromise, where compromise sounded like a call to more of the same old collaboration. Even in my relatively short life experience, nuance and negotiation, as academic buzz words are still relatively new, definitely post-1980s in my case.

More importantly, I have lost sense of locally rooted scholarship with clearly defined political orientations. I wonder if there are scholars “out there”, especially those with some connection to the Caribbean, who have had the same dream of “reviving” the New World Movement, with the aim of reexamining and building upon some of its central tenets:

• bringing the promises of independence and decolonization to life;
• achieving the development of local economic self-sufficiency;
• popular democracy;
• cultural autochthony; and,
• social transformation

With the exception of perhaps a few holdouts, such as Latin American Perspectives and The Monthly Review, I can’t think of when the last time was that I reencountered such goals being openly espoused in scholarly writing, despite the mass-mediated notions that universities are bastions of some kind of socialist radicalism.

Principles, such as those listed above in rather un-nuanced form, in my mind become pertinent and valuable once again, if one sees the world as not having outlived and overcome colonial legacies; a renewal of imperialist projects (i.e., the “Project for a New American Century”); the revitalization of old discourses of civilization vs. savagery; the undermining of national independence; the hegemonic grasp of a capitalist world market that can be seen at its worst in bleeding nations that became dependent on imported foods rather than putting their faith in unfashionable ideas (for free marketeers and technocrats) of food sovereignty; the spread of a Western consumer culture and the expanded projection of Western tastes and values, with consequences for the environment, political independence, and sustainable lifeways.

The Caribbean, for those who live there, were raised there, or have developed personal connections to the region, stands out as one of the regions on earth that is most vulnerable to all of these changes. It would be fitting if a new, New World Movement were to emerge for what is, arguably, a region of world historic importance. This idea was well expressed most recently by Junot Diaz, the Dominican winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, in an interview with Newsweek:

The Caribbean generally and the island of Hispaniola specifically is the linchpin, the pivot point where the old world swung into the new world. If you want the transformation point, if you want the ground zero where the Old World died and the New World began, it’s there. I mean, nothing is more quintessentially American-in the entire span of that description-than the Caribbean and more specifically the Dominican Republic. If you want to be incredibly grandiose, the entire world, we’re all the children of what happened in the Caribbean, whether we know it or not. I mean, the extermination of indigenous people, the conquest of the New World, slavery and in some ways the rise of this form of capitalism that we all live under. I mean really the modern world was given rise by what began in the Caribbean.

Those scholars and activists, writers, artists, anyone who would like to network and collaborate in collectively producing a new, New World Movement, let's get in touch, spread the word, and get started. We can't count on having the luxury of time.

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Aimé Césaire Has Passed on

Aimé Césaire died on Thursday, 17 April, 2008, in Fort-de-France, Martinique. Aimé Césaire was a poet and politician from Martinique whose influence in Caribbean philosophy and literature centered on the idea of "negritude" was as inestimable as it was transcontinental in spread. Césaire was a committed anti-colonialist and one who sought to cultivate pride in non-European heritage in the Caribbean, a movement that has inevitably informed and shaped some forms of indigenist thought in the region as well, even as in some territories it drew upon the indigenous experience as one parallel to that of Africans in the Caribbean. His Discourse on Colonialism, originally published in 1950, remains a vital text that has been through numerous reprints, translations, and republications.

He was born on June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, and was mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945 to 2001, apart from a one-year break in the mid-1980s. A former communist, Césaire served with the Socialist Party in France’s National Assembly, where he served from 1946 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1993. France's latest president, Nicolas Sarkozy, attempted to introduced a bill in 2005 that cited the positive role of colonialism, which Césaire stoutly opposed and which eventually led to the language being removed from the bill.

God rest Césaire's eternal soul and may his illuminations continue to guide us.

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Venezuela Indigenous News: Barí Disenfranchisement, and a new Yanomami Language Manual

Barí People Left Without Land by Oil, Cattle, Coal
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41953
By Humberto Márquez

KUMANDA, Venezuela, Apr 11 (IPS) - For 900 years, Barí indigenous hunters roamed freely throughout a vast region in western Venezuela. "Now they want to sentence us to die by locking us up in this corral, watching the white man get rich by destroying the land that used to be ours," says schoolteacher Conrado Akambio.

The huts and multi-family dwellings of the 150 inhabitants of the community of Kumanda are scattered over a hectare of heat-drenched grassland along the banks of the Aricuizá River.

The walls of their homes are made from tree trunks, the floors are packed dirt or a few wooden planks, the roofs thatched palm leaves. Everything is bleached a pale dry grey by the blazing sun. Children run and play among a handful of chickens as the adults seek a shady spot to sit and talk about their plight.

"Our grandparents fought to defend our land, but they lost their fight to the oil companies, who sent in men with rifles. Our people took refuge in the mountains, and then the cattle farmers came in and grabbed this," said Ignacio Akambio, another member of the community.

"We can’t hunt anymore, because all the animals have disappeared, and we have nowhere to grow crops," he continued. "And so we eat corn flour bread or spaghetti, and we don’t live to be old-timers like before; instead we are sick all the time and only live to about 60." It is a harsh fate for the people that Sabaseba, the creator, plucked from the inside of pineapples, according to legend.

Anthropologist Lusbi Portillo, from the non-governmental organisation Homo et Natura, told IPS that "the crux of the Barí people’s problem is that between 1910 and 1960, they lost their land and were decimated by the advance of oil exploration, first, and then by the cattle farmers who occupied and cut down their forests in the flatlands and pushed them towards the unproductive land in the mountains."...continue reading

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New Compendium on Yanomami Language
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26404

By Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Nov 23 (IPS) - When a Yanomami Indian dies, his or her name is not to be pronounced for some time, so as not to soil the memory of the deceased.

This may be a problem if, for example, someone is called Shoco, which is also the term for Tamanduá, an anteater that is common in the jungles of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil, where the Yanomami live.

However, the difficulty can easily be resolved thanks to the linguistic wealth of this indigenous group that has existed for over 25,000 years, a living testimony to the Neolithic era, the most recent period of the Stone Age.

There are several synonyms for the names of animals, and also of some plants. Therefore, ”aroto” means exactly the same as ”shoco”, and the community can use that word without violating the tradition that protects the deceased.

This explanation is provided by one of the 10,000 entries in the ”Compendio ilustrado de lengua y cultura yanomami” (”Illustrated Compendium of the Yanomami Language and Culture”), a book by French anthropologist and linguist Marie-Claude Mattéi that has just gone to print.

It is more than a mere dictionary, instead serving as an encyclopaedic manual that can be used in Yanomami schools and for outsiders studying the Yanomami language and culture.

After 15 years of research, ”we have concentrated our efforts on producing something more useful and rich in information than a simple dictionary -- a book that can support the didactic measures that the Venezuelan society and state have the obligation to undertake with respect to the indigenous communities,” Mattéi told IPS.

Venezuela's new constitution, which was approved by voters in 1999, dedicates an entire chapter to the rights of indigenous peoples, including ”the right to an intercultural and bilingual educational system that takes into account their special social and cultural characteristics, values and traditions.”...continue reading

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