The Garifuna in SVG hid their own history in order to survive – historian

For a period of more than 200 years, people of Garifuna descent in St Vincent and the Grenadines hid their own history of being survivors of genocide and legally sanctioned discrimination in order to protect themselves.

Dr Garrey Michael Dennie, associate professor of history made this point on August 22 while delivering the Oscar Allen Memorial Emancipation Lecture under the theme ‘Emancipation still Coming’.

Addressing the audience gathered at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Global Campus in Kingstown and those listening online, Dennie said: “What I wanted to do tonight is to bring attention to a specific moment in the history of St Vincent and the Grenadines which has gone absolutely unnoticed. That is between 1797 and 1838 where in the normal dispensation of Vincentian history we are still basically a slave society.”

Dr Dennie, who is one of four historians engaged by the Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) to write a text on the history of SVG said the scholarly literature is silent on the post 1797 world.

“However sufficient colonial records exist from which we can break the silence and tell the story. It is not simply that scholars have hidden the history of the Garifuna, the Garifuna people themselves in St Vincent and the Grenadines hid that history,” the historian said, referring to the period between when Chatoyer was killed at Dorsetshire Hill in 1797 and when the enslaved people on the island were emancipated in 1838.

He explained: “That history was hidden [by the Garifuna] because to reveal that history would have subjected them to discrimination. This discrimination began in the post 1797 period.”

The historian said there was, living in St Vincent and the Grenadines, a group of persons who were never slaves.

But “what does freedom mean?,” he asked.

“… What does it mean to be a Garifuna in an enslaved society, because in theory they are supposed to be free, but they are living in a society that is a slave society.”

He commented: “Slavery is awful and so is genocide, and that is the experience of the Garifuna.”

Dr Dennie noted: “When we speak of emancipation, we must remember that there was once a people in St Vincent who were free, and then the British and others arrived.”

He said two calamities descended on the Garifuna between 1797 and 1838 and their “suffering was immense”.

“The first was their erasure from St Vincent and the Grenadines. The Garifuna were, in fact, the inheritors and custodians of a habit of culture that had developed in St Vincent and the Grenadines over 3000 years. Almost in the blink of an eye, the British had destroyed a 3000 years old civilization.”

The historian revealed that this tragedy was followed by a conspiracy of silence on the impact of the civilizational collapse on the Garifuna who remained in St Vincent and the Grenadines. This collapse, he said, brought mass impoverishment, destruction of language, a crisis of fate, and an indigenous Vincentian transformation into something less than equal citizens in the land of their birth.

“Militarily defeated and robbed of their lands they were sent into internal exile to survive on small tracts of infertile land granted to them by the triumphant British government.”

An example of this discrimination is revealed by way of the “Act for the Relief of His Majesty’s Free Subjects of Colour” passed in 1830 which declared, “Whereas by various Acts of this Legislature certain restraints and disabilities are imposed on the free persons of colour in this Island and its dependencies, it is hereby enacted that all Acts under free persons of colour who are natives of this island and their descendents shall be and the same are hereby repealed. Be it further enacted that nothing in this Act shall extend to any Carib and their descendents, remaining on these islands under the Act passed on the 18th day of May 1805.”

“In plain language, the 1805 legislation that stripped the Garifuna of their lands confined them to specific areas of St Vincent and the Grenadines, denied them equal citizenship, and all other forms of discrimination which float from this law, all of these restrictions on Garifuna freedoms remained in force against the indigenous peoples in 1830,” Dr Dennie explained.

He added that from the perspective of the planter class, some freedoms were extended to the people we call “Black” today, but who were called “persons of colour” then. But the planter class insisted that the restraints on the Garifuna would remain.

“… So we are confronted here with that complexity of what it means to be free – the Garifuna free in the sense that they cannot be bought or sold, but simultaneously they are confined within a legislative prison which guaranteed that they could not enjoy equal citizenship in St Vincent (and the Grenadines) under the law.”

Dr Dennie said to protect themselves against legally sanctioned discrimination, the Garifuna therefore silenced themselves.

“That silence was in and of itself another erasure of the Garifuna from the history of St Vincent and the Grenadines. This legacy of Garifuna silence across 200 years tell us that to fully explore the meaning of freedom in St Vincent and the Grenadines during the era of plantation slavery, we have to unveil the experiences of the indigenous Vincentians who had to confront the twin horrors of surviving genocide and finding a place on the periphery of the Vincentian slave society.

“And it is perhaps the experiences of the indigenous Vincentians which underline most powerfully a central truth of Vincentian history between 1797 and 1838: the burdens of un-freedom extended far beyond the presence or absence of a whip.”

The Oscar Allen Memorial Emancipation Lecture was hosted by The University of the West Indies Global Campus in collaboration with ‘the Friends of Oscar Allen’ and Diamonites. The lecture honours the legacy of Oscar Allen for his contribution to the socio-political, cultural, and religious life in St Vincent and the Grenadines and the region. It is part of the Global Campus’ mandate to celebrate and recognise the outstanding contribution made by Vincentians at home and abroad.