Needed: A comprehensive Garifuna action plan

St Vincent and the Grenadines has experienced its most positive National Heritage Month this March since Paramount Chief, Joseph Chatoyer was officially declared as our first National Hero, and March 14 made a public holiday in his honour in 2002. The high point of the celebrations this year was the historic acquisition of the island of Balliceaux and the commitment to make it a heritage site in tribute to the thousands of indigenous people who perished there between 1796 and 1797.

It is heart-warming to hear of the commitment given by the government to develop a Balliceaux Development Plan, not based on the stereotypical “tourism” style associated with exotic Caribbean islands, but grounded in the cultural experience of the island as a memorial to the heroic Garifuna and Kalinago people. It is also refreshing to note the government’s recognition, publicly, that such a venture will be costly. Many friends or not, this cannot be accomplished without the active involvement and participation of the indigenous people, here and abroad, as well as the wider Vincentian populace.

It is my view that in addition to the Balliceaux Plan and the participatory nature proposed both for its development as well as implementation, we should go even further where our indigenous people are concerned. Since 2001 we have loudly proclaimed the concept of “Righting historical wrongs”. There is no better place to start than at the beginning, the European invasion and the crimes of British colonialism in the seizure of indigenous lands, the dispossession of the original owners of what we today call St Vincent and the Grenadines, the genocide and acts of ethnic cleansing as manifested in Balliceaux, and the exile to Central America.

As happened during slavery, it is easier to quantify the disastrous effects of colonial pillage than its more insidious and longer-lasting effects. The descendants of African slaves and those of the indigenous people suffered, and continue to suffer, from far more insidious effects in relation to the mental scars, the forced imposition of inferiority and a loss of pride in themselves because of a conscious colonial policy denying the value of their history and cultural heritage.

It is encouraging that the wider process of obtaining Reparatory Justice has begun, but we can also pay specific attention to actions we can take right here at home in relation to our indigenous folk. Colonialism imbued in us all, including the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants, divisive and demeaning concepts of our fellow sufferers, the rightful owners of the lands, the indigenous people.

Hundreds of years later, even though there has been progress in eradicating some of these concepts, too many of our own people still have implanted in them these concepts of the inferiority of the indigenous people. We were taught that they were “lazy”, and untrustworthy, that the women were promiscuous, that they were alcoholics, (incidentally, what should we have called the high society men who used to be seen emerging at nights from the Kingstown Club in a state of inebriation?) and that they deserved their place at the bottom of the societal rung. It is also interesting that the residents of the indigenous communities which put up the fiercest resistance to brutal colonial rule such as Greigs, were branded as “violent people”, a concept still very much alive today.

Of course, the descendants of the African slaves suffered similarly as colonialism needed to divide its victims. Even the Indian immigrants, called “coolie’ as we were branded “niggers”, and the poor European indentured labourers also had negative terms associated with them, (Put-a gee and Whitey Bajan).

Each of these suffering groups got their branding but the so-called “Carib” was worse of all, the very bottom of the social ladder, left at the mercy of rapacious plantation owners, physically isolated in difficult terrain and seemingly doomed to a life of inferiority and subservience.
Today we have living proof how attention to social services such as education and health, to access to decent housing and roads can help to eradicate some of the stigma, but there needs to be more than that, we need to dig deeper into the psyche. So, what about a programme aimed at the very roots, in the context of “righting historical wrongs”?

SPECIAL AND DIFFERENTIAL ACTION

In recent trade and economic negotiations on the global stage, former colonies such as the many in the Caribbean argued for what was called “Special and Differential treatment” based on their colonial experience which had disadvantaged them in many ways. Even as we contemplate the Balliceaux Plan, we have never addressed the odious psychological damage, so why not begin with our indigenous people?

There are the physical aspects, special budgetary allocations, preferential allocations, to begin redressing the most odious wrongs inflicting on our indigenous people. More must be done to address the existing attitudes perpetuating inferiority, no more “Carib bwoy and gel”.Education and culture have special roles to play and the multiple arms of the state media need to re-educate their journalists to permit them to play a leading role.
Any such initiative must be led by representatives of the indigenous people with the two existing Parliamentary representatives from the North Windward community, Minister Daniel and Senator John, along with representatives of the indigenous people’s organisations among others playing leading roles. There are many other ideas, but we must start somewhere. I offer these humble thoughts.

• Renwick Rose is a Social and Political commentator.