Projects, Activities and Achievements of the Carib Community

Santa Rosa Carib Community

Projects, Activities, and Achievements of the Carib Community
©1998, 2006, Santa Rosa Carib Community, All Rights Reserved.

PRESERVING, MAINTAINING AND RETRIEVING TRADITIONS

Maintaining the "cassava culture": preparation of cassava bread, farine, and cassareep, using traditional instruments such as the manare (sifter), the wareware (fan), the matapí or sebucán (strainer), and the aripo (griddle).
Maintaining knowledge of using the terite reed in weaving the above mentioned manare and matapí, along with "finger catchers" (a woven, springy item such that an inserted finger can easily be pushed but cannot be pulled out), as well as a variety of baskets, mats, carry cases and fans.
Maintaining knowledge of the use of mamu vines in the making of heavy strength baskets.
Teaching classes in weaving for visiting groups of students, school-children, and Girl Guides.
Preserving methods of indigenous house construction: walls made of tapia (mud, grass and pebbles, on a frame, and plastered over); roofs thatched from timite and carat palms; internal partitions made from plaited coconut palms; floors made from compressed earth and "washed" over (lipé) with mud.
Preserving and Reviving "arts of the forest": hunting, herbal medicines, harvesting forest fruits, nuts, and building materials.
Retrieval of the Smoke Ceremony: a ceremony led by a shaman designed to pay homage to our ancestors, worship the earth, and seek the guidance and blessings of the Great Spirit.
Maintaining the Santa Rosa Festival: though a Catholic feast, the Carib Community have historically been, and continue to be, in charge of some of the main preparations for, and performance of, the Festival. As the Carib President routinely stresses, "this is what brings the Carib Community together". Details of the conduct and organization of the Festival, and how the Church and the Carib Community are to divide up the requisite labour tasks, is contained in a document on this site.
Maintaining our involvement in Parang music, with two Parang bands tied to the Carib Community: Los Niños del Mundo, led by Shaman Cristo Adonis, and Los Niños de Santa Rosa, managed by Carib Secretary Jacqueline Khan until 1999.
Talking to visiting school groups, journalists, and foreign researchers about the Amerindian heritage of Trinidad and the struggle to maintain an Amerindian cultural presence in the social and intellectual life of a modern and multi-ethnic Trinidad and Tobago.

BUILDING OUR REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TIES OF
INDIGENOUS SUPPORT AND SOLIDARITY

The Carib Community has developed cultural interchange activities and working ties with many indigenous groups over the years, including indigenous persons and groups from: Canada, the USA, Australia, Belize, Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Vincent, Guyana, Surinam and Venezuela.
The Carib Community has also hosted visitors from Peru and Chile.
There have been no less than 10 separate visits from at least 37 Caribs from Dominica's Carib Territory in the 1990s, with some individual links going back to the 1960s.
The Santa Rosa Carib Community was an official participant at the November 1991 Conference of the Americas in Ottawa, hosted by the Canadian Assembly of First Nations, along with hundreds of other representatives from across the Western Hemisphere.
The Youth Representative of the Santa Rosa Carib Community received a scholarship to study Amerindian Community Administration and Development at the Federated Indian College in Regina, Saskatchewan, thanks to the support of the Saskatchewan Federation of Indigenous Nations.
The Santa Rosa Carib Community has been host to three major international indigenous gatherings held in Arima during CARIFESTA 1992, again in 1993 and in August 2000, with smaller gatherings during CARIFESTA 1995 and for a Harmony in Diversity conference in 1997.
In November of 1999, the Santa Rosa Carib Community also received a major delegation from the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (Canada).
The Santa Rosa Carib Community is an official member of the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous People, and its leader became its chairman in 2006.

RECOGNITION OF THE CARIB CONTRIBUTION
TO TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Recipients of the 1993 National Award of the Chaconia Silver Medal for Culture and Community Service.
Praised by the Director of Culture in August of 1993 for the support and commitment shown to Indigenous People worldwide.
Recognized by Cabinet on May 8th, 1990, as a representative of Trinidad and Tobago's Indigenous People and as its only retained community.
Recipients of annual subvention of $30,000 TT from the Ministry of Culture from 1990 to 1999, when it was reduced.
Government grant for the construction of the new Carib Centre.
Recipients of an annual subvention of $5,000 TT from the Arima Borough Council from 1993, when the Carib President was elected as a Councillor for Arima North West and appointed to the Culture portfolio for the Borough of Arima.
Offers of support from the Trinidad Regiment, and offers of a small parcel of land and office central in central Arima.

LEFT: Julie Calderon sifting cassava in the manare RIGHT: Carib President Ricardo Bharath with Rod Bushie, Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, during a visit in November of 1999.

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