THE CAC REVIEW:
NEWSLETTER OF THE CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN CENTRELINK
Volume 2,
Issue No. 1,
January, 2001.
© 2001, Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Updates
2. New Free Book, a Related Article, and New
Publications
3. Caribbean Amerindian News and Media Service
4. New and Updated Websites
5. The Latest Websites that have Won a CAC
Site Award
6. 'Amerindian', 'Indigenous', or 'Aboriginal'...Is
there a difference?
7. Article: "Virtual Imperialism?" by Maximilian
Forte
8. We Need Your Feedback
All the editors of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink wish you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR and would like to warmly welcome all our new subscribers. This will be the first newsletter many of you will be receiving, thus you may not have noticed the change in the name of the newsletter: from "The Editor's Review" to the current "THE CAC REVIEW: NEWSLETTER OF THE CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN CENTRELINK".
Well, we are finally back on track after a prolonged transition process to our new location. In addition, a text-only, no frills, no advertisements, and fast-loading version of the CAC is now available at:
http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/index.html
Special thanks also to GÉRARD COLLOMB, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Institutions, at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, for his many valuable suggestions that helped us to develop our Amerindians of French Guiana page as well as our Library resources page. Gerard is also currently doing fieldwork on the Amerindians of French Guiana. He can be found at the relevant Masion des Sciences de l'Homme website at:
http://www.laios.msh-paris.fr/indexenglish.html
and Gerard can also be contacted at: collomb@msh-paris.fr
Lastly, Maximilian Forte, on the editorial board of the CAC, has recently been selected as the Society/Ethnicity/Indigenous_Peoples/Caribbean editor for dmoz.org (The Open Directory Project), which provides the core database of site lisitings for most of the major search engines and directories. Having expanded the ODP listing for Caribbean Indigenous Peoples from four sites to almost 100, he is well positioned to ensure greatly increased traffic to Caribbean Amerindian websites which, hopefully, will aid in increasing public awareness of their existence. This listing can be seen at:
http://dmoz.org/Society/Ethnicity/Indigenous_People/Caribbean/
with links to its various subcategories.
We have a lot of ground to cover in this issue of the newsletter, so let's get right to it.
(2) NEW FREE BOOK, A RELATED ARTICLE, AND NEW PUBLICATIONS
The CAC is now offering a plain text version of Frederic Fenger's ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN: Being the Yarn of a Cruise in the Lesser Antilles in the Sailing Canoe "Yakaboo", first published in 1917 and now free of copyright.
One of the most noteworthy chapters of this book is Chapter Six: DAYS WITH A VANISHING RACE, which refers to the Caribs of St. Vincent. To get even a brief sense of some colonial travel writing and representations of the Caribs, the forte of Peter Hulme's work in this area, this chapter and some other parts of the book are well worth reading.
The plain text version of this book can be downloaded from:
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Fenger.txt
or
http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/Fenger.txt
Both of those servers are in the United States, though I suspect that the second is indeed faster than the first. The text should open in your browser window.
A version of Fenger's book, replete with its original illustrations, is available from a Belizean website at:
http://ambergriscaye.com/pages/mayan/alone_contents.html
I mentioned that colonial travel writing and representations of the Caribs is one of the specialties of Peter Hulme, based at the University of Essex in the UK, and author of a series of important books including Colonial Encounters and the forthcoming Remnants of Conquest. Peter Hulme has a paper online located at:
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~phulme/Travel,%20Ethnography,%20Transculturation.htm
and is titled, "TRAVEL, ETHNOGRAPHY, TRANSCULTURATION: ST VINCENT IN
THE 1790s". This paper was presented at the presented at the conference
"Contextualizing the Caribbean: New Approaches in an Era of Globalization"
at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, during 29-30 September, 2000.
Lastly, for our French subscribers, we have received the following new
book notice from Ibis Rouge:
IBIS ROUGE EDITIONS
Guadeloupe-Guyane-Martinique-Réunion
NOUVEAUTÉ OCTOBRE 2000
L'HUMANITé RECONQUISE, Gérard BULIN-XAVIER
Contenu
Cet essai rend compte de la hiérarchisation des ethnies et de
la discrimination raciale qui constituent actuellement les sources principales
de conflits dans le monde. Si l'inégalité attachée
à toute organisation sociale paraît malheureusement faire
partie de l'histoire de l'humanité, l'inégalité ethnique
ne se justifie en aucun cas. Cependant on trouve dès l'époque
où les premiers explorateurs ont été confronté
à la diversité humaine des concepts et des thèses
les plus dangereuses étayant l'idéologie d'ethnies supérieures
à d'autres et justifiant par là même toutes les formes
de servilité et de génocide qui ont frappé les peuples
dits
primitifs. Le xxie siècle s'inscrit dans une période où
le problème de définition de soi et du monde se pose avec
acuité à tous les hommes et dans tous les pays. Il s'agit
de trouver des stratégies identitaires qui tiennent compte de deux
paradigmes: la transculturalité et la transethnicité. L'auteur
propose un certain nombre de voies dont la coopération transculturelle
où les cultures mises en interaction se rejoindraient et où
des hommes de différentes origines ethniques s'allieraient.
L'auteur
Gérard Bulin-Xavier est consultant en développement social
et économique. Il est inscrit dans un cycle de recherche en anthropologie,
et cet essai est son deuxième ouvrage.
L'humanité reconquise
Gérard BULIN-XAVIER
ISBN 2-84450-086-2
170 pages - 14 x 22 cm - couv. quadri - dos carré cousus.
Prix : 100 FF (15,24 Euros)
Pour commander ce livre et pour plus d'informations, nous vous invitons à consulter notre site: http://www.ibisrouge.fr
(3) CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN NEWS AND MEDIA SERVICE
As of the date of this issue of the newsletter, a new page is being added to the CAC, providing a centralized source of past and present newspaper and media coverage of Caribbean Amerindians as available online from various newspapers and other agencies. Some of these links already exist on different CAC pages, however, from this point forward all relevant newspaper articles online will be available on this new page.
Please see:
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Media.html
OR
http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/Media.html
Hopefully, in future issues of this Newsletter, we will be able to provide our subscribers with more regular and up to date regional news coverage of Caribbean Amerindians. In addition, various editors also plan to submit reports of recent events.
From the newspaper coverage point of view, we are still fairly limited to coverage offered by the following agencies: The Chronicle (Dominica), The Independent (Dominica), The Trinidad Guardian, The Express (Trinidad), The Guyana Chronicle, Starbroek News (Guyana), the San Pedro Sun (Belize), and the Caribbean News Agency (CANA).
If you know of any other regional newspapers, online, that have had articles on issues of relevance to the CAC, in any language, please suggest them to us.
Trinidad and Tobago is the featured area this month. A new website, AMERINDIAN TRAIL.COM has recently emerged, an elegant and informative website created and presented by Ryan Marchock. The site is located at:
http://www.amerindiantrail.com/
AmerindianTrail covers South America and the Caribbean, with a special emphasis on Trinidad and Tobago's Santa Rosa Carib Community in the Borough of Arima. It includes pages on cassava processing, Chief Hyarima (one can even send an electronic postcard featuring Hyarima), the Carib Community, Amerindian place names, Amerindian tales, and notes on the 1699 Amerindian uprising at the Mission of San Francisco de los Arenales (located near today's village of San Rafael, a short 15 minute drive immediately south of Arima). This website has won a well deserved "Cool Site Award" from dmoz.org.
Ryan Marchock outlines the objective of Amerindian Trail as follows: "Our objective is to promote our Amerindian heritage that has been neglected, which is an itegeral part of today's society in the Caribbean. In keeping with eco-tourisim drive to preserve the planet and abort the destruction of the natural environment and wild life. Encourage visitors to view and appreciate the aesthetics of the Caribbean other than the sand, sea and surf destination".
Also, the unofficial website of the Santa Rosa Carib Community was updated and redesigned during October-November 2000, now offering a series of documents of the Carib Community. This site can be found at:
http://members.tripod.com/~SRCC1CaribCommunity/index.html
Lastly, we received news that Taino Ancestry Legacy Keepers (TALK Inc.) has updated and redesigned aspects of its website, having added Flash interactive pages to its Taino Education Center. The site can be accessed at:
Moreover, Francisco"Coqui"Baerga was named Cacike of the Tanama Taino Yukayeke on Sept. 27, 2000 and on his site,
he has added new graphics on Taino daily life.
(5) THE LATEST WEBSITES THAT HAVE WON A CAC SITE AWARD
GARIFUNA WORLD, one of the leading sources of online information on the Garifuna of Belize, St. Vincent, Honduras, and other areas, was awarded the CAC award for "Best Caribbean Amerindian Information Resources", on Saturday, 23 December, 2000. The award was merited for consistently providing a large volume of informative and substantive Internet pages over the past several years, and for promoting and leading in the establishment of the Garifuna presence on the Internet. The site can be found at:
http://www.garifuna-world.com/
THE PAN-TRIBAL CONFEDERACY OF AMERINDIAN TRIBAL NATIONS OF AMAZONIA was also awarded the "Best Caribbean Amerindian Community Sites Award" by the CAC on Saturday, 23 December, 2000. The award was merited for an informative and substantive Web site, that is also fairly well designed and provides a concentration of materials on Caribbean Amerindian community issues. The site can be accessed at:
http://www.pantribalconfederacy.com/
Previous awards granted by the CAC, and descriptions of the award categories can be seen at:
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Awards.html
and
http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/Awards.html
(6) "AMERINDIAN", "INDIGENOUS", or "ABORIGINAL"...IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?
First, let me outline that which motivates this question. One, in recent months, and perhaps much later than those of you reading this, I have encountered a debate over whether one should use the term "Amerindian" or "Indigenous" in speaking about diverse groups such as the Tainos, Caribs and Garifunas. Some argue that "Amerindian" is more appropriate since it refers to people whose ancestry they say is "Mongoloid", whereas "Indigenous" can include those who also have "Negroid" admixture, as they put it. None of these concerns were behind the naming of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink. When first founded, I may well have been influenced by the Trinidad-Guyana preference for use of the generic term "Amerindian", without realizing that there was a debate surrounding the term. In addition, I also encountered debates amongst some members of the groups comprising the former Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples, who argued that "pure Caribs" and not "Black Caribs" should form the core alliance of groups in the region, with some also arguing that Dominica, Guyana and Trinidad should form one group, and Belize and St. Vincent another, or some rearrangement to that effect.
Secondly, as an editor in the Open Directory Project, I am part of a current debate over reorganizing the Indigenous Peoples category. Currently the category is framed as such:
Indigenous Peoples/
--Canadian
--Caribbean
--South American, etc.
Some editors want to see the "broad name" for the Indigenous Peoples of a region being used instead of the place name. My response was that I do not know of any single, commonly accepted "broad name" for those in the Caribbean. Given the "Indigenous" versus "Amerindian" debate, I am not sure there is an easy answer.
Others might ask, at this point, "why not Aboriginal?" Interestingly, while in Trinidad, I heard some spokespersons for the Carib Community argue that the term "Aboriginal" was offensive to them since it was used by local writers as a way of denying their "Carib specificity", in other words, as a means of sidestepping or not validating the fact that the Carib Community asserts its identity as "Carib".
My questions to you are:
A) Is this debate even important?
B) Do these labels make any difference to you?
C) Do you think any one of these labels should be chosen over the others?
TO ADDRESS THESE QUESTIONS, please feel free to post your comments and insights on the new CAC Message Board, located at:
http://www.insidetheweb.com/mbs.cgi/mb1275689
ALSO, please JOIN ME LIVE in the new CAC Chat Room, accessible at:
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Discussion.html
on this coming WEDNESDAY, 17 JANUARY, 2001, between the hours of 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM (US Eastern Standard Time),
and/or,
on FRIDAY, 19 JANUARY, 2001, between the hours of 8:00 AM and 12 NOON (US Eastern Standard Time),
and we can thrash this issue out in real time. If you log in, and I fail to indicate any signs of life on my part, it only means that I stepped away from the computer to attend some urgent need (i.e., the need to smoke), and I'll be back in a few moments.
Both of these times, for our European visitors, are equal to GMT -5 hours.
'See' you then,
Max Forte.
VIRTUAL IMPERIALISM?
By
Maximilian Forte
Is there such a thing as “virtual imperialism”, that is, an imperialism that is specific to the Internet itself? Normally, the associations one would make with the term “imperialism” is that of a dominant power, or a power that seeks to be hegemonic, expanding outwards from a centre and appropriating the wealth of other territories, by either direct or indirect forms of rule. Military occupation and/or economic domination are often cast as the two favourite means of asserting control on the part of an imperialist power. So what is “virtual imperialism”? Have Websites been “colonized”? Have virtual “territories” been occupied by an invading power? Has a power expanded outwards and displaced the virtual “indigenous” inhabitants from their virtual “homelands”? Obviously, when we speak about “virtual imperialism”, we are dealing with an abstraction and a translation of “real world” phenomena, using the imperialism of the non-cyber world as a metaphor more than a model.
Instead, I propose to use the term
“virtual imperialism” as meaning the dominance of particular representations
and the heightened visibility of those making particular representations,
to the exclusion of competing representations and without any reference
to, or acknowledgement of, the existence of alternative representations.
Virtual imperialism is not just a matter of dominant ideas (i.e., as in
orthodox ideas), but also of the dominant control over the means by which
ideas are disseminated and orthodoxies maintained. In other words, there
is an actual financial and technological side to this issue as well. Moreover,
the uneven development of the real world—with some regions of the world
underdeveloped for the sake of the development of the powerful nations—can
also be witnessed on the Internet. There are, indeed, “maps” of the Internet,
that show the skewed distribution of Internet communication worldwide.
THE TERRITORY OF THE WORLD INTERNET SYSTEM
Attempts have been made to “map” the Internet. Indeed, the idea seems to be a feasible one. We all know that the world is covered by telephone lines, satellite communication systems, and intercontinental cable links. What this does not mean is that the Internet is also spread worldwide—it could be, potentially, but is not actually. Servers and computers are required for Internet transmission and reception, and these networks are not spread as widely as the telephone network. Some images of what the Internet Atlas might look like are featured on the Website titled “An Atlas of Cyberspaces” based on the work of Donna Cox and Robert Patterson of the NCSA (the site is located at: http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/geographic.html). Images of alternative depictions of the Internet Atlas are included below, as reproduced from the Website I just mentioned:
1) This visualization is from the work of Stephen G. Eick and colleagues at Bell Laboratories
2) A Usenet flow map from May 1993
produced by Brian Reid
3) A charting of Web usage courtesy of John Quarterman and colleagues at Matrix Information Directory Services (MIDS)
All three images show a heavy concentration of the Internet in “developed” areas such as Europe, North America, Australia and Southeast Asia, with far less presence in most other parts of Asia, Africa, or South America.
Given the uneven development of the “real” world, representations made in the “virtual” world emanate only from certain centres that have the power to make their representations “stick”. Moreover, the “digital divide” (the divide between those who can afford computers and Internet access and those who cannot) obtains not just between countries but also within countries. We are often told that the Internet has negated physical space; unfortunately, that is not as true as it should be. Where one lives, and what socio-economic rank one occupies, both play a fundamental role in determining the actual population of the World Internet System. This is one difference between the World Internet System and the World System itself: the latter excludes most people from obtaining membership in the privileged classes, while the former simply excludes most people.
A recent NUA survey (see: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/world.html) estimated the world Internet population, and its distribution by region, as follows:
World Total 377.65 million
Africa 3.11 million
Asia/Pacific 89.68 million
Europe 105.89 million
Middle East 2.40 million
Canada & USA 161.31 million
Latin America 15.26 million
According to an April 13, 2000, report from Reuters, only 2.7% of the Latin American population owns a computer that can access the Internet (see: http://news.excite.com/news/r/000410/13/net-latam-internet).
Even for people
in the United States who are online, a report published on March 16 2000
stated: “the content and information needs of 50 million Americans are
not being catered to online. Content aimed at low-income Americans and
those with poor literacy is next to invisible online” (see: http://www.childrenspartnership.org/).
According to a US Department of Commerce report, publicized on July 09,
2000, “ethnic minorities, rural communities and the poor are still being
left behind in the Internet society” (see: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide/).
The same report found that while a third of “white” households had Internet
access, only 11% of “black” households had such access. However, a study
by the Tomas Rivieria Policy Institute (see: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctc609.htm?st.ne.fd.mnaw)
revealed that 30% of US Hispanics owned computers, while computer ownership
was put at 43% of the wider US population.
PAX BRITANNICA(.COM) AND THE NEW COLUMBUS (COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPAEDIA)
In addition to the fact that there is unequal global access to, and thus use of, the Internet, on the Internet itself certain agencies and institutions are able to exercise a more prominent presence than others, either due to custom or due to commerce. This observation is not based solely on recognizing the fact that corporations have the means to hire a substantial staff of Web technicians who can spend every day in marketing corporate websites, ensuring top rankings in search engine results, and paying to be promoted to the top of the list of various directories, as well as developing various software tricks that ensure maximum spread and the highest visibility on the Internet. Prestige garnered in the “real world” also works to ensure that certain sites are relied upon for “reliable” information more than others.
One example of a “prestigious” source of information consists of encyclopaedias, often a favourite for students who are looking for easy-to-get concise information as well as for those members of the general public looking for just a simple and brief overview of a topic, much like consulting a dictionary for the meaning of a word. With the Internet, one no longer needs to either go the library or purchase an expensive encyclopaedia to access its contents.
So what are the encyclopaedias saying about Caribbean Amerindians? Even a quick perusal of the entries listed on the CAC’s reference page shows the following patterns. First, for the most part, the encyclopaedia entries for “Carib” and “Arawak” tend to reaffirm the thesis that these groups are now extinct. In some cases, they blame the Caribs, not the colonizers, for the extinction of the Arawaks. Secondly, and related to the latter, the encyclopaedias tend to also reaffirm the colonial stereotype of the man-eating, war-like Carib versus the docile, if not effeminate, Arawak.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica claims that the Caribs drove the Arawaks out of the Caribbean as much as a century before the Europeans even arrived in the region. Britannica also refers to the Caribs as “a West Indies tribe well known for their practice of cannibalism”. The Columbia Encyclopaedia makes identical assertions in these regards. Needless to say, both of these sources have nothing to say about current Carib and Arawak communities in the wider Caribbean, nor make any reference to any of their Websites. They are extinct, it seems, because “they just gotta be!” Once you discount the notion that any of these groups survived, then there is no need to try to include their perspectives. In the meantime, the Internet student is confronted with prestigious sources asserting the extinction of Caribbean Amerindians, versus Caribbean Amerindians online claiming survival (assuming that they will even visit such sites—some, of course, do, but we don’t know what proportion they represent).
In its entry for Trinidad and Tobago, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has this at the very start: “The original inhabitants of Trinidad were chiefly Arawak. Although there are inhabitants of the town of Arima who claim descent from Carib royalty, it is doubtful that the land was settled by Caribs”—in other words, while they may call themselves “Carib”, they are probably ignorant of their true identity and are thus pretty well “fake” Caribs. This kind of assertion also goes back to a colonial legacy of debating who the “true” natives of Trinidad “really” were, and they could be only one of two possible groups: Caribs or Arawaks.
The Tainos of today fare somewhat better in the encyclopaedias. The Britannica entry for “Taino” still tries to stick to the extinction thesis, but seems somewhat embarrassed by the presence of current Taino groups, and thus relents: “Although Taino culture was largely wiped out, groups of Taino survived colonization….In 1998 the United Confederation of Taino People was created as an umbrella organization for the affirmation and restoration of Taino culture, language, and religion”.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica online allows visitors to rate its pages, but does not seem to encourage more substantive feedback. What Britannica seems to prefer, instead, are the easily tabulated survey responses, without their underlying substance, and without any indication of possible action on its part. After all, would the staff of Britannica necessarily know WHY a visitor rated a page “0” instead of “5”? This seems more like an attempt to just pay lip service to visitor demands.
Lastly, there is the additional fact
that far more information is on the Internet that is ABOUT Caribbean Amerindians,
than there is BY Caribbean Amerindians. This fact also accounts for the
somewhat ambivalent nature of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink itself,
which tries to list all these sites but is faced with the fact that very
few are actually designed and produced by Caribbean Amerindians and reflecting
their perspectives.
UNEQUAL COMMUNITIES AND UNEQUAL REPRESENTATIONS
Amongst the Indigenous population of the Americas as a whole, there is differential representation on the Internet. If one looks at the dmoz.org directory listing for “Indigenous Peoples”, one immediately notices that there are as many as 2,000 Websites listed for Indigenous Peoples in North America, yet, South America, which has an Indigenous population that may be as much as several times larger than that of North America, has only about 18 Websites listed. The Caribbean is somewhat anomalous here, with almost 100 Websites listed. The anomaly of the Caribbean can thus be summed up: a smaller Indigenous population than either North or South America, yet a higher per capita proportion of Indigenous-related Internet sites. How could this be so?
On the one hand, the Caribbean contains a number of middle-income countries, such as Trinidad and Barbados, with Trinidad experiencing two economic booms over the last thirty years and with a population that, by Caribbean standards, is relatively better off economically. Moreover, the Caribbean also includes Puerto Rico, which, for some time, has been the model for development looked up to by other Caribbean territories. In addition to this, the Caribbean has a large diaspora population resident in nearby North America. Computer ownership and Internet access are not all that hard to come by in either case. However, let’s not overstate matters.
The fact remains that a larger proportion of Caribbean Amerindian Websites have been produced by Caribbean people resident in North America, such as Taino individuals based in New York. The Caribs of St. Vincent, on the other hand, most of whom live in conditions of serious poverty, do not have a single site on the Internet, and were it not for their Garifuna comrades from Belize and residing in places such as New York, there might have been no mention of them at all on the Internet. While there are about seven sites on the Caribs of Trinidad, there are only about three for the Caribs of Dominica whose population is as much as 100 times larger than that of the current Santa Rosa Carib Community of Trinidad. Guyana, with one of the largest Indigenous populations of the wider Caribbean, and as much as 500 times larger than Trinidad’s Caribs, does not have a single Website belonging to any of its Amerindian peoples.
Recent economic developments are not very promising where the future is concerned. Some have referred to the supposed “dot.communism” of the Internet, where so much has been free: free e-mail, free Web development tools, free Website hosting, and even free Internet access. However, this “free” culture, funded as it has been on the basis of advertising revenues, is on a steep decline, for reasons you have all heard about in the daily news. Free Internet access is being cut back in the United States; in Australia it promises to falter even before it is up and running nation-wide; in the UK, the performance of the free ISPs has been less than sterling (pun intended). Free Website hosting is also under attack—indeed the CAC has recently had to move precisely for that reason. In a report on February 4, 2000, C/NET, in an article titled “Online Communities Face Bleak Future”, stated: “industry analysts say the online communities have a bleak future. Companies that focus on providing personal publishing facilities to Internet users cannot hope to survive in the increasingly competitive Internet market. Companies have to diversify or sell their business to bigger Web firms” (see: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1533819.html?dtn.head).
If it can be said that there is a “virtual imperialism”, I think that it rests on this ground: Exclusion—the exclusionary practices inherent in prestigious sites reaffirming colonial perspectives and not including the perspectives of contemporary Caribbean Amerindians, and in the general fact of the Internet not catering to poorer Internet users. Also, there is the exclusion of the majority of the planet’s population due to uneven technological development and the inequality of income. Inequality, exclusion, and the high visibility of prestigious institutions of the “real world” make up what, I think, can be referred to as “virtual imperialism”.
However, this is perhaps just one side of the story. If this is what “virtual imperialism” looks like, then what does “virtual resistance” look like? What should it look like? Please feel free to write your responses to us, or post messages on the CAC message board (see the link above).
Speaking of representation, we need to hear from you! There are many ways of doing this: e-mail us, post a message on our message board, send us your views for publication in this newsletter (but tell us explicitly that is what you want if you send us something for the newsletter).
Or, if you could just spare us 5 minutes--come on, 5 minutes, must I beg?--you could fill out our survey. Your identity is kept secret from us. Besides, the CAC does not distribute information on any of its users, sell e-mail lists, or violate basic rights of privacy.
So please visit the link below and fill out our survey:
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Survey.html
OR
http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/Survey.html
Editor:
Maximilian C. Forte,
Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
Copyright: Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink, 2001
e-mail: cariblink@email.com
Editors: http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Editors.html
USA E-Fax/ Voicemail: 1-651-328-2375
*** CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN CENTRELINK ***
Volume
2,
Issue No. 2-3,
February-March,
2001.
© 2001, Caribbean
Amerindian Centrelink
IN THIS DOUBLE ISSUE:
- Updates
- New Articles in Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies
- Featured Website: Guyana's Amerindian Peoples Association
- CAC Website Award
- Jorge Estevez: Report on the Dominica Carib Delegation to the National Museum of the American Indian
- In the News: Tainos and El Museo del Barrio, in The New York Times
- In the News: Tainos at the Vatican
- In the News: Trinidad's 2000 Regional Gathering of Indigenous Peoples and the Proclamation of Amerindian Heritage Day in Trinidad
- "Some important research contributions of Genetics to the study of Population History and Anthropology in Puerto Rico: An interview with Dr. Juan Carlos Martínez Cruzado, Dept. of Biology, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez", from the Delaware Review of Latin American Studies.
- Report on the Australian Association of Caribbean Studies Conference, Canberra, Australia, 8-10 February, 2001.
- Film: "Awara Soup"
- You are invited to contribute to the Newsletter
Since the last issue of the newsletter, 66 new pages have been listed in the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink. Virtually all of the CAC's pages have been updated. The CAC's volume of listed resources has continued to grow by roughly 10% each month.
(2) NEW ARTICLES IN ISSUES IN CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN STUDIES (ICAS)
We are now into our third volume of articles in ICAS, located at the following addresses:
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Papers.html
and the plain text version is at:
http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/Papers.html
The following three articles have recently been added:
"What Really Happened at Santo Cerro? Origin of the Legend of the Virgin de las Mercedes" - Lynne Guitar, PhD
"A Re-consideration of the Native American and African Roots of Garifuna Identity" - Joseph Palacio, PhD
"'Our Amerindian Ancestors: The State, the Nation, and the Revaluing of Indigeneity in Trinidad and Tobago" - Maximilian C. Forte
Please be aware that if you are using Netscape, you may experience some difficulties in accessing the papers. In that case, either use Internet Explorer, or, you can access the plain text versions (also listed at the above addresses) which can be read using Netscape.
(3) FEATURED WEBSITE: GUYANA'S AMERINDIAN PEOPLES ASSOCIATION (APA)
Normally, what I don't like about having to eat my words is that it makes for a pretty bland meal. In the last issue of this Newsletter, in the article entitled "Virtual Imperialism" (all back issues are available at the addresses listed at the top of this issue) I claimed that there was not a single Website that belonged to any of the Amerindian communities in Guyana. Lo and behold, there is, indeed one that belongs to a whole array of Amerindian communities.
Guyana's Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) has an extensive Website located at:
The site features reports, a newsletter, press releases, documents, and information about the APA. Clearly, this is Guyana's leading Internet resource on its Amerindian population, the largest of the Association of Caribbean States.
One of the last CAC Best Website Awards was conferred on the Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation, in the "Best Caribbean Amerindian Community Sites" category. The award was granted on Saturday, 23 December, 2000.
The award was merited for the JTTN's work in producing an informative and substantive Website, that has exercised a significant presence on the Internet for the past several years, whilst also offering a wide range of information resources, articles, and essays. This site has been linked to from a wide array of other Websites across the Internet and is still one of the most heavily visited sites focusing on Caribbean Amerindian issues.
The Website of the Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation can be located at:
(5) REPORT ON THE DOMINICA CARIB DELEGATION TO THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN NEW YORK
BY JORGE ESTEVEZ
Museum Liaison
Officer and
Personal Testimonies
Editor at the CAC.
Native American Film & Video Festival 2000 - National Museum of the American Indian
Every two years, the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City hosts the "Native American Film & Video Festival. Native Film makers from across the Western Hemisphere participate in this event. The event took place on November 13-19, 2000.
This year we had the honor and pleasure of viewing the "Carib Canoe Project". We also had Chief Garnette Joseph, Jacob Fredrick, and Charles Ettiene from the island of Dominica.
We had a surprisingly large audience. Many of the people that attended were from Trinidad as well as New York based Tainos from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
The film was about Jacob Fredrick and fellow Caribs who sail in a hand-built canoe over a thousand miles down to their ancestral homelands in South America. They navigated over through the sea and rivers to rediscover their mainland heritage. Their aim was to help rebuild their fragmented nation and to share their stories of their homeland with our audience.
We hope to be able to present more programs dealing with the Indigenous Caribbean in the near future.
(NB: More information about this
film can be found at:
http://www.latinamericanvideo.org/
and at
http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Reference.html)
(6) IN THE NEWS: TAINO CULTURE HISTORY AND EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO, IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
An article by Mireya Navarro, titled "Expanding a Museum's Identity", appeared in the 15 January, 2001 issue of The New York Times. Here is a summary of the article for those of you who missed it:
In 2000, New York's originally Puerto Rican-centred Museo del Barrio, located at 104th Street and Fifth Avenue on Manhattan's "Museum Mile", obtained its first endowment, $1 million from the Ford Foundation. In October of 2000, Mireya Navarro writes that the Museo installed a "permanent exhibition of Taino art, from the indigenous people of the Caribbean, which has 125 pieces and is the most comprehensive presentation of such art in the country, said the museum's director, Susana Torruella Leval".
Most of the Taino items are on loan from private collections and major museums. Navarro writes: "The installation, with pieces from Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, is a major step toward making the museum a center of Taino scholarship, Ms. Torruella Leval said".
Those interested in reading the full version of the article, which concerns issues beyond that of the Taino items on display, MIGHT still be able to find it at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/nyregion/15MUSE.html
(7) IN THE NEWS: TAINOS PROTEST AT THE VATICAN
A newspaper article in The Record (Northern New Jersey), dated 13 October, 2000, and titled "Indigenous Peoples Appeal to Vatican to Cancel Edict", begins by saying: "Hawaiians and Caribbean Indians lit candles and sang in St. Peter's Square on Thursday, appealing to Pope John Paul II to repeal a 500-year-old edict they claim justified colonialism. The approximately 12 men and women ended their protest by presenting a copy of the 1493 papal edict, 'Inter Caetera,' to the Vatican's Swiss Guards". According to the report, The edict, known formally as a Papal Bull, was issued by Pope Alexander VI and it "authorized Christian countries to occupy and convert any non-Christian nation". As employed by Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Bull asserted "the supremacy of Christianity over paganism, making non-Christian indigenous people subject to the domination and enslavement of the Spanish crown", the report explains. There was no indication of how, or even if, the protest was received by the Vatican.
On 27 October, 2000, The National Catholic Reporter also carried a story titled "Indigenous Demand Revocation of 1493 Papal Bull". This report suggests that the Swiss Guards who received a copy of Inter Caetera, handed back as a sign of rejection, were somewhat bemused or nonplussed. The article goes on to refer to the protesters as a "quixotic band of nine native persons from Hawaii, Oregon and Puerto Rico", adding that, "[d]uring their brief stay, Vatican officials were alternately elusive or befuddled in their dealings with this unusual pilgrimage". Interestingly, though the Pope recently issued an apology for the injustices that the Catholic Church aided and abetted, some still seem "befuddled" that representatives of the "natives of the New World" should have something to complain about. The article also reports that Naniki Reyes Ocasio of the Taino people in Puerto Rico stated: "In the name of Christ, horrible things have been done....We're offering the Vatican a chance to cleanse that, to say this is not what Jesus stood for". The article indicates that this group's efforts dates back to 1992, "when the Indigenous Law Center of Eugene, Ore., a research and advocacy group for native persons, wrote the pope asking that Inter Caetera be revoked. Since 1997, indigenous persons have gathered each Oct. 12 in Honolulu to burn copies of the bull". Though the article labels the delegation "quixotic", it later adds that they carried a supportive letter from Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of Honolulu. While not allowed to meet the Pope, the article says that they "they settled for a meeting with Msgr. Giampolo Crepaldi, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, whom they described as sympathetic but noncommittal".
Lastly, the article gives a Website address for the Burn the Bulls Campaign:
http://www.bullsburning.itgo.com/papbull.htm
(8) IN THE NEWS: TRINIDAD'S 2000 REGIONAL GATHERING OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE PROCLAMATION OF AMERINDIAN HERITAGE DAY IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO.
While news of the Third Gathering of Indigenous Peoples held in Arima, Trinidad, in August of 2000 was reported in a previous issue of this newsletter, it is only recently that international press coverage of this event has come to the newsletter editor's attention.
The Inter Press Service News Agency, in a report dated Thursday, 13 July, 2000, and titled "Caribbean: Indigenous Peoples Welcome New Government Concessions", states: "When the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean region assemble in Trinidad and Tobago for their 'International Gathering' in August, they will have cause for celebration. The Caribs from Dominica will annouce the establishment of the long-awaited 'Carib Model Village,' while the Santa Rosa Carib community in Trinidad and Tobago will welcome delegates with the news that the government is designating Oct. 14 'A Day of Recognition' of the country's indigenous peoples". The IPS quotes Trinidad Carib President Ricardo Bharath as saying: "We see this gathering as not just another celebration or reunion, but as a vehicle that will seek to put in place an organized structure to address the concerns of indigenous peoples of this hemisphere". Some suggest that Bharath may be trying to revive the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP). Indeed, the report itself also states that, "The Carib community is also hoping that the International Gathering will lead to the establishment of a permanent secretariat for the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples, to be located in Trinidad and Tobago".
The IPS article also reports Bharath
as saying that they are requesting 25 acres of land from the government
of Trinidad and Tobago " 'to re-establish a village site' and a further
375 acres of 'forested land to be kept in its natural state' ". While Prime
Minister Basdeo Panday has not indicated that the government will fully
accede to Bharath's requests, the report mentions that "it has indicated
that 'some state lands' would be made available". At the opening of the
gathering, Prime Minister Panday stated, according to the report, that
"the country had to recognize that Trinidad had been the home of the Caribs
long before Indians, Africans and Europeans arrived in this country". The
IPS also reported: "Panday told the ceremony he was instructing his Culture
Minister Dr. Daphne Phillips to bring a note to cabinet to make Oct. 14
a 'Day of Recognition' to celebrate the Carib
community, which has already indicated
that the day will be known as 'Amerindian Heritage Day' ". The IPS quotes
Panday as saying: "Let me stress that the Carib Community has not petitioned
for a public holiday. The members of the community have simply asked this
country to give recognition and respect on a special day to its indigenous
people". The article explains that, "On the Carib calendar, Oct. 14 is
a significant date. On that day in 1637, the Carib Chieftain Hyarima attacked
and destroyed the Spanish colony and former capital of the country St.
Joseph, located along the east-west corridor". (The article omits mention
of the fact that Hyarima was not acting alone but in alliance with Dutch
imperial interests.)
Lastly, the IPS quotes Carib President Bharath as saying that "while Trinidad and Tobago has been home to 'a multitude of peoples' who were all victims of history, 'all the major cultures that have come to this country have flourished more than the original culture of this land' ".
(9) "SOME IMPORTANT RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS OF GENETICS TO THE STUDY OF POPULATION HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN PUERTO RICO".
This article, consisting of an interview with Dr. Juan Carlos Martínez Cruzado, of the Department of Biology, at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez", is posted on the Internet courtesy of the Delaware Review of Latin American Studies. The Web address for this interview is:
http://www.udel.edu/LASP/Vol1-2MartinezC.html
Many thanks to Jorge Estevez for forwarding news of this article--it is well worth reading by anyone interested in contemporary debates surrounding the survival of a Taino population in Puerto Rico, in opposition to the popular and once unchallenged extinction thesis.
(10) A REPORT FROM THE FOURTH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION FOR CARIBBEAN STUDIES: CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA, 8-10 FEBRUARY, 2001.
The topic of Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean was very much present at this recent conference, despite how Canberra is so far away from the Caribbean. This presence took different forms.
Peter Hulme (University of Essex--see
the links to some of his recent work both on the CAC pages for Dominica
and Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies' related links) presented a
paper entitled, "Ethnographic Origins: St. Vincent and Tasmania", Friday,
09 February. Professor Hulme's paper may be accessed at the following address:
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~phulme/Ethnographic%20Origins.htm
Also, I presented my paper, " 'Our Amerindian Ancestors': The State, the Nation, and the Revaluing of Indigeneity in Trinidad and Tobago", the full-length version having been added to Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies as pointed out at the top of this newsletter (see: http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/Forte.html, or, if you use Netscape click on: http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/Forte.txt).
The conference organizers prepared an Aboriginal welcoming ceremony for the conference participants, with the "Welcome to Country" done by Canberra Aboriginal representatibe, Agnes O'Shea. In the preface to this ceremony, one of the organizers pointed to the revival and recognition of Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean, noting that as little as only 20 years ago in Canberra people would have said that there was no Aboriginal presence in the area. Now, instead, the Aboriginal presence in Canberra is recognized and there are those who are proud of this heritage, the speaker said, making a comparison with the case of Trinidad.
Lastly, a number of other papers presented at the conference also included some content or some mention of Caribbean indigenous peoples, with two papers on Guyana and one on the Dominican writer, Jean Rhys. The two papers on Guyana were presented by: Russell McDougall (University of New England, Australia), "On the Significance of Couvade: The Place of Australia and British Guiana in the fin de siecle Debates Concerning the History of Humanity", which had substantial material on Dr. Walter Roth's work, Roth having been Protector of Aborigines in both British Guiana and Queensland, Australia; a second paper with some content on Guyana's Amerindians was presented by Rosamund Dalziell (Australian National University), "Botanical Autobiography and Vegetable Wonders: 'Botanical Reminiscences of British Guiana' (1876), by Richard Schomburgk, Director of theAdelaide Botanical Gardens".
This is quite an interesting little film, that happened to be aired on SBS television here in Australia. It is set in a village in French Guiana, and there is an Amerindian presence in the film which is entirely focused on a village preparing a gigantic soup consisting of virtually every item one could imagine, short of chocolate cake and ice cream. I gathered that the soup theme, its tremendous mixture, and the communality inherent to its preparation (over several days) was meant as a symbol of creolization.
The following is a more 'official' description of the film:
"Le bouillon d'awara (Awara Soup)":
"A documentary set in a French Guyanese village, centred on the making
of this soup, a symbolic metaphor for the mixture of peoples in what the
promoters argue is one of the most cosmopolitan places on the planet--We
meet descendants of indigenous Galibi Indians, of Bushnegroes who escaped
slavery in the jungles, of mixed race Creoles who remained in the French
towns and of Javanese
contract rice laborers, as well
as more recent immigrants, Taki Taki-speaking refugees from political strife
in next-door Surinam, Brazilian migrant workers and Hmong farmers resettled
after the Vietnam war".
More on this film, and how to obtain it, is available at the following link:
http://www.newsreel.org/films/lebouill.htm
(12) YOU ARE INVITED TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE NEWSLETTER
We are always interested in receiving news and short articles for this newsletter. Please feel free to contribute anything of relevance, or author an article, and we'll publish it for you.
Please help us to make this as valuable a resource for readers as it can be.
Contact the newsletter editor, Max Forte, with details and make specific reference to the fact that you wish to contribute to the newsletter. He can be contacted via:
We look forward to hearing from you!
Editor:
Maximilian C. Forte,
Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
Copyright: Maximilian C. Forte,
2001
e-mail: cariblink@email.com
CAC: http://www.kacike.org/cac-ike/index.html
USA E-Fax/ Voicemail: 1-651-328-2375
*** CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN CENTRELINK
***
Volume
2,
Issue No. 4,
April, 2001.
© 2001, Caribbean
Amerindian Centrelink
Dear Subscribers:
In addition to some important site news (see below), this is just a note to inform you that there will be no issue of the CAC newsletter for April and May. We hope to have an issue later in the year.
First of all, welcome to all of our new subscribers!
Secondly, the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink has moved! The "free service" offered by NBCi was actually quite deplorable. Besides the rather ugly and intrusive imposed advertising, the CAC was down for almost as long as it was up. Too many individuals contacted me with complaints that they could not access the site. To make matters worse, we needed to preempt the possible closure of NBCi, like so many other free sites, given its recent sale, restructuring, and immediate layoffs as NBCi employees found out in an article in the New York Times.
The CAC has now moved to a host based in the United Kingdom and can be accessed at:
The address is fairly easy to remember, and this is a private site, hence no more ugly corporate impositions.
PLEASE: all subscribers who have links to the CAC on their websites are urged to change their link to the CAC as soon as possible, especially those who have received CAC site awards and need to have a link back to the CAC for visitors to verify their awards.
Third, some new pages have been produced for the CAC:
Museum Resources
Cultures and Lifeways: Ethnographic
and Ethnohistoric Materials
Instructional Materials (i.e., lesson
plans)
Business and Development
Language Resources
...and the General Information page has been reorganized and subdivided with categories for History, Cuba, Grenada, Jamaica, Haiti, and so forth.
To see these pages, please go to
the CAC front page at:
http://www.centrelink.org/
Fourth and last, some important Websites:
The Carib-Spanish dictionary, originally compiled by Father Raymond Breton during his stay in Dominica in the early 1600s, and translated by Duna Troiani in Paris at CELIA-CNRS, is now available in full, online, at:
http://www.sup-infor.com/ultimes/breton/dico_gari.htm
You will get a sample online, and
have to click on the download icon to have the full text transmitted to
your
hard drive.
Also, Banyan productions in
Trinidad and Tobago, which has produced a very wide variety of documentaries
and shows on Trinidad and the wider Caribbean, has placed its footage database
online, including a considerable amount of material on the Indigenous Peoples
of the Caribbean. You can
see this at:
http://www.pancaribbean.com/banyan/archivedatabase.htm
The speech by Prime Minister Basdeo Panday of Trinidad and Tobago, at the 2000 International Gathering of Indigenous Peoples at the Santa Rosa Carib Community Centre in Arima: "PM Panday establishes a Day of Recognition for Trinidad's Amerindian heritage and promises to consider a grant of land for the Carib Community"--can be read at:
http://www.gov.tt/speeches/speeches/indigenous_gather.html
Best wishes to all!
Editor:
Maximilian C. Forte,
Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
Copyright: 2001
e-mail: mcforte@centrelink.org
CAC: http://www.centrelink.org
USA E-Fax/ Voicemail: 1-651-328-2375
*** CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN CENTRELINK
***
Volume
2,
Issue No. 5,
December, 2001.
© 2001, Caribbean
Amerindian Centrelink
"And two
such men I clearly see. The one shall gather what remains of all my people
under his protecting arms here in this place where I was the Chief, and
through his love and pity and by favours shown shall gently lead them on
to reconcilement and assuage the pain of being conquered. The other coming
next shall rescue all my people from a dark oblivion. And he by gracious
acts of courtesy and Love and sympathy for a fallen and a broken race shall
then create an interest in my unhappy people not felt before, a people
who were always here, and met Columbus when he landed on their hospitable
and friendly shores".
-----Chief
Hyarima, in Hyarima and the Saints
IN THIS ISSUE:
(1) FEATURED WEBSITES:
"The Fire This Time" (Black Indians, Indians in Jamaica)(2) NEW PUBLICATIONS
NY Boricua (Tainos of Puerto Rico/Boriquen)
Détsjing Foundation (Amerindians of Surinam)
Mundo Indígena de Nuestra América (Websites of/for Indigenous Peoples of South America and the Caribbean)
(3) ARTICLES ONLINE
(4)
GARNETTE
JOSEPH, CHIEF OF THE DOMINICA CARIB TERRITORY: Profile and Interview
"The Fire this Time" is an intriguing Website that is not so much devoted to Amerindians of the Caribbean--although it contains an interesting page on Amerindian cultural survivals in Jamaican Maroon communities, and, in the other direction, the spread of Jamaican Reggae to American Indian reservations--as it is devoted to challenging the often racialized construal of a cultural and biological divide between "indigenous" and "black" populations in the Americas. Jamaica, like Haiti, is perhaps one of the Caribbean countries to be usually described as being one of the most African nations in the region--the authors of this Website, on their page titled "Supai Reservation", instead note: "...after the Pequot English war in New England, many aboriginal prisoners were enslaved and sold in the West Indies. From 1670 onwards the British in South Carolina regularly engaged in the slave trade, sending tens of thousands of aboriginal people to the West Indies and other markets. It had been documented that in 1674 a group of Cherokees was sent to Jamaica and in 1693 a Cherokee delegation at Charleston unsuccessfully requested the return of their relatives who had been taken to Jamaica". This type of information has gradually come to light over the years, and, indeed, the noted historian of the region, David Lowenthal, wrote in his 1972 book, West Indian Societies, "the Indians were not all local, however; aborigines captured in North America were sent to the West Indies as slaves in exchange for Caribs and Negroes--for settlers in both places sought to discourage Indian tribal reprisals" (p.32). The Website's authors stress that "the lack of knowledge about their aboriginal heritage has affected people's perception of themselves in countries like Jamaica where people will tend to think of their identity in terms of only their African ancestry instead of being looking at the real possibility that they have a Blakk [sic] Indian heritage".
This site is also intriguing on other accounts. The first is its name. Anyone familiar with recent Carnivals in Trinidad might recall a song by the group 3Canal, "The Fire Next Time", also significant as they cast themselves in the "Black Indian" tradition of local Carnival. More than that, the Website's authors insisted on total anonymity in an e-mail to myself, not even indicating their location except to say that the site is not European or North American and "is launched from indigenous territory ". The author(s) of the site appear to have traveled widely in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the ease with which he/she/they make references to a wide body of literature suggests more than the usual secondary school education.
In addition to history, travel accounts ranging from Jamaica to Bolivia, this site also features a heavy mass of mp3's, with a focus on Dub music, thereby combining history, politics and popular culture in a somewhat seductive fashion. While it is now being reconstructed, the site usually features a heavy artistic element in terms of design. Moreover, whilst still new, and forced to relocate (like the CAC) given the recent shutdown of NBCi, this site may well be one that gains popularity, especially as individuals alienated from membership in indigenous organizations on racial grounds find the need for new associations that cultivate different understandings of what it is to "be indigenous".
NY Boricua (which might be translated as New York Puerto Ricans) is a site that is obviously proud and keen to emphasize the Taino heritage of Puerto Rico. Like many such sites, it is laden with graphics and music in one very long page that takes quite some time to load on slow (i.e. regular) connections. It is, however, a visually appealing attempt to educate a readership, with a focus on archaeology, history, and even physical anthropology, on the survival of Taino heritage in Puerto Rico, with a wide range of articles by noted specialists, supplemented by a carefully selected array of supporting links and links to recommended books. This site also features a myriad of excellent photos focused on museums and archaeological sites in Puerto Rico, i.e., Tumba del Indio and Piedra Tallada. While much of the information presented is by no means unique to NY Boricua alone, where the site does excel is in concentrating in one place some of the best, or at least most interesting, Taino-related material currently available on the Web. What is less clear is the logic motivating the selection of particular materials and articles, and one may well get the impression that the site's authors are labouring the notion of an almost uninterrupted continuity of Taino culture in Puerto Rico, which, if it were the case, would probably obviate the need for such sites to start with. However, this is not meant to take away from the appeal and content value of the site.
The Détsjing Foundation has produced a Website that focuses on the Amerindians of Surinam, who are largely invisible on the Internet especially when compared with the number of U.S.-based Taino Websites such as NY Boricua above (see the Surinam page of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink). The foundation, established in 2000 in Amsterdam, sets out its primary goal in these terms: "preservation of Surinamese indigenous knowledge and culture by collecting, analyzing and transferring it and communicating it to all people who are interested (the Surinamese/Dutch population in particular)". The Website itself was launched only within the last three months. The Website is itself one of the foundation's leading projects, designed with the intent to "create a digital meeting place for indigenous people in Surinam and the Netherlands", and, "create an opportunity for the indigenous people of Surinam to use the internet ". Media promotion, documentation, and a poverty survey are other key aims of the foundation. The site also provides a good map of the intricacies of diverse geographically situated Amerindian groupings in Surinam. What is left unclear is the degree to which the foundation may or may not be formally tied to any Amerindian bodies in Surinam, or whether it is simply a sympathetic brokering body. There is also very little in the way of an explicit history of the foundation, explaining why it came into being, who its founders are, and what their long range objectives may be. Nonetheless, as one of only a handful of sites on Surinam's indigenous population, this site is worth the visit. The site itself is well designed, easy to navigate, fairly informative, and is also bilingual Dutch/English.
Finally, and only briefly, another useful centrelink-type of site that features a range of Websites by and about indigenous peoples of Latin America is that of Mundo Indígena de Nuestra América, originating from the University of Chile. This provides a useful starting point for Internet based research into these various peoples and organizations.
Let me thank Roberto Mucaro Borrero, President of the United Confederation of Taino People for this message of 27 October, 2001, where he announces the re-release of a book discussed in a previous issue of this newsletter (Issue 6, July 2000):
"Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics
Edited by Dr.
Gabriel Haslip Viera
Markus Wiener
Publishers 2001
ISBN 1-55876-259-0
(162 pages)
A reprinting of the 1999 edition, this volume adds a reedited introduction by Gabriel Haslip-Viera as well as additional photographs by Holger Thoss. The cover art features the work of Joe Doc Sunshine Leon.
This collection is a scholarly examination of the Taino Revival Movement. While the academics take a harshly critical look at State-sponsored institutions and the grassroots movement, the essays provide interesting historical data.
Roberto Mucaro Borrero's precedent-setting response to the critical assessment made by the scholars is also included in this stimulating and historic volume".
(3)
ARTICLES AVAILABLE ONLINE:
Readers may be interested in the following articles available online.
The first is a 1993 featured address by Dr. Joseph Palacio at the Second Gathering of Caribbean Indigenous Peoples in Arima, Trinidad, held to commemorate the United Nations' International Year of the World's Indigenous People, available by clicking here. Joseph Palacio was the founder and first chairman of the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP). Dr. Palacio, an anthropologist, is currently a resident tutor at the University of the West Indies branch in Belize. The main thrust of his address at this historic gathering concerns the issues of situating Caribbean indigenous identity and seeking reparation.
Desrey Fox is a Guyanese Amerindian activist and resident in the Amerindian Studies Unit at the University of Guyana. In the early 1990s, when Amerindians in the Caribbean began to receive new attention and recognition, especially with the events surrounding the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean, media organizations such as the Trinidadian television production and video documentation firm, Banyan, conducted interviews with leading spokespersons such as Fox. Fortunately, we now have a complete transcript of the interview, available by clicking here. In this interview Fox describes her experiences growing up as Amerindian in Guyana, coming to a consciousness of herself as Amerindian, and the regionalized and internationalized revival of indigenous consciousness. What I personally found striking, from this first hand testimony, is that even in Guyana, long considered as a bastion of "traditional" Amerindian culture by Carib leaders in places such as Dominica, St. Vincent and Trinidad, there has been a recent revival of assertions of Amerindian identity and their associated traditions, and that the wider international context also plays a significant role in encouraging and perhaps even endorsing such identification.
Also focused on Guyana, Cultural Survival presents two articles online, "Guyana Government Grants 5.1 Million Acre Mining Concession on Indigenous Lands", and, "Indigenous Peoples in Guyana Seek Recognition and Enforcement of their Land Right in an Historic Lawsuit".
Finally, Aims McGuinness, a lecturer in the Department of History at Michigan State University, has produced, with content generated by his students, a "Annotated Guide to Internet Resources related to Caribbean History". Most notable amongst the collection of reviews are those of Lauren Gratz who reviews "A Virtual Dominica: Caribs in Dominica" by Kevin Menhinick; Jessamyn Ressler-Maerlender's review of "Taino Indian Fascinating Secrets" by Antonio Blasini; Gordon Greenaway's review of "A Note on Tainos: Wither Progress?" by José Barreiro; and, a few additional reviews of works dealing with Christopher Columbus and Bartolome de las Casas.
(4) GARNETTE JOSEPH, CHIEF OF THE DOMINICA CARIB TERRITORY:
As some of you may know, Garnette Joseph was elected as the new Chief of the Carib Council of Dominica's Carib Reserve in 1999. Joseph, a graduate of Canada's Saskatchewan Federated Indian College, also holding a Certificate in Management from the University of the West Indies, led the Karifuna Cultural Group in Dominica, an organization that seeks to cultivate youth interest in dance and music in the Carib Reserve (or Territory as Dominica Carib leaders prefer to call it). He also headed the Waitukubuli Development Agency, named after the Carib name for Dominica. A profile of Joseph was produced by the Saskatchewan Federated Indian College and is available by clicking here.
In addition, an interview with Garnette Joseph is also available online, held in February 2000, and is accessible by clicking here. In this interview Joseph describes the role and powers of the Carib Chief in Dominica today, challenges facing the development of the Carib Territory, as well as the issue of "racial mixing", one that is controversial in the Reserve as some challenge limited lands being parceled out amongst mixed African-Carib families. Indeed, in an interview with myself in 1998, former Chief Hilary Frederick expressed his view that numerous Afro-Dominicans were claiming rights in the Reserve as a means of "getting a slice of the economic pie especially now as foreign tourism is picking up in the Territory", which further underscores the racial divisions between certain Carib leaders and the wider population of the island.
The interview with Garnette Joseph was conducted by a member of Kalinago e.V., a German foundation that was established with the aim of promoting and preserving Carib culture in Dominica. The Website of this foundation can be found at: http://www.kalinago.org/.
COMING SOON TO THE CAC:
As the copyrights on certain rare and increasingly antiquated texts begin or continue to expire, the CAC will endeavour to digitize and make these books available online. This is especially important in the case of limited edition texts that were published and distributed locally within select Caribbean territories.
Thus, within a short time, CAC visitors will be able to download and read HYARIMA AND THE SAINTS, an excerpt of which was used to open this issue of the newsletter. The play itself has played a critical role in fostering consciousness of the Amerindian history of Arima, whilst also inspiring certain contemporary Carib leaders who routinely quote from the play in their public speeches.
The play itself is relatively short. The CAC also hopes to digitize and present at least relevant selections of older historical and travel accounts of Trinidad and other parts of the Caribbean with the passage of time.
If any reader
has any "antique" books that they would like to suggest for inclusion,
and/or volunteer a copy to be digitized, please contact the editor at the
e-mail address provided at the bottom of this newsletter.
COMING SOON TO KACIKE:
Kacike will soon be publishing the complete doctoral dissertation of Lynne Guitar (Ph.D., History, Vanderbilt University, 1998), titled:
CULTURAL
GENESIS:
RELATIONSHIPS
AMONG INDIANS, AFRICANS, AND SPANIARDS IN RURAL HISPANIOLA, FIRST HALF
OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
New visitor traffic statistics
for the CAC for 2001 are available by clicking
here. The CAC is seen in 1,881 cities spread out over six continents.
(The opening quotation is from Hyarima and the Saints, a play written by F. E. M. Hosein, a Mayor of Arima, Trinidad, in the 1920s)
Editor:
Maximilian C. Forte,
Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
Copyright: 2001
e-mail: mcforte@centrelink.org
CAC: http://www.centrelink.org
USA E-Fax/ Voicemail: 1-651-328-2375
*** CARIBBEAN AMERINDIAN CENTRELINK
***