Projects and Aims of Revival: Notes and Commentary

Maximilian Forte, 1998, 2001, 2006

The leadership of the Santa Rosa Carib Community states its projects and aims, as an organization, in very brief and basic ways. As a group, the three stated goals of their efforts are:

1. The maintenance of retained traditions such as the Santa Rosa Festival

2. The preservation of more marginalized traditions such as the making of cassava bread and weaving techniques

3. The "retrieval" of Indigenous traditions, rituals, and other cultural elements, such as: Indigenous forms of worship and dress, revival of the Carib language, etc.

These goals of maintenance, preservation and revival, they see as being achieved by four basic means:

1. Greater recognition by state and society in Trinidad

2. Institutional support in terms of funding by state authorities and in the grant of land to the Carib Community for the construction of an Amerindian Model Village where members will live communally and cultivate cassava and maintain other Indigenous practices and life ways

3. Research support, to identify former cultural practices that can be revived in the present and to outline the extent of their contribution to the construction of Trinidadian culture and society

4. Assistance in financing what they call cultural "interchange" activities: meeting and exchanging with Amerindian communities elsewhere in the Caribbean in order to learn and adopt Carib traditions that have survived elsewhere.

In May of 1990, under the government of Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson (of the National Alliance for Reconstruction party), Cabinet formally recognized the Santa Rosa Carib Community as the sole representative of the only retained community of Indigenous people in Trinidad and Tobago, and awarded an annual subvention of $30,000 TT for the upkeep of the Santa Rosa Festival. In 1992 and 1993, for the two CARIFESTA gatherings held in Trinidad, the People's National Movement government of Prime Minister Manning provided in excess of $250,000 TT (for both occasions combined) in support of Arima's Carib Community being featured as the centrepiece for all Amerindian cultural events and to act as host to visiting Amerindian delegations from across the Caribbean. In August of 1993 the President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Noor Hassanalli, awarded the Carib Community the National Award of the Chaconia Medal Silver for its efforts in Culture and Community Service. In the same month, which was the occasion of the Second gathering mentioned above, the Director of Culture (in the Ministry of Culture and Community Development), Mr. Lester Efebo Wilkinson, awarded the Carib Community a plaque officially recognizing its "efforts and commitment in supporting the struggles of Indigenous People world-wide." Other state agents also provided furniture for the Carib Community Centre. The Arima Borough Council, for its part, increased its annual subvention to the Carib Community for the upkeep of the Santa Rosa Festival from $500 TT annually to $5000 TT annually. The President of the Santa Rosa Carib Community has himself been elected to fourconsecutive terms as a Councillor for Arima Northwest on the Arima Borough Council, running for the People's National Movement. He has been responsible for all cultural activities in the Borough of Arima, and has twice served as Deputy Mayor.

There has also been support from private foundations, such as Harmony in Diversity, which sponsored a gathering of Indigenous representatives from the region and from as far away as Australia, in November of 1997. All of this, in addition to the offers and/or provision of land and an edifice, would seem to suggest that this small group has been remarkably successful in achieving many of the aims stated above, to the extent that one may have to be careful in describing this group as marginalized or ignored on all levels.

The leadership will stress, however, that there is a need for much greater recognition and more support, necessary to some of its broader and larger goals. The moneys it receives are in fact inadequate, quickly spent and leaving little or nothing for the Carib Community to possess afterwards; moreover, the progress of providing sufficient or adequate lands to the Carib Community has also left much to be desired. The Carib Community still remains largely poor and this continues to take a toll on the nature of internal relationships between members of the Carib Community.