June Soomer | First people, last citizens: regaining visibility through reparatory justice

In this week’s Reparation Conversations, a collaboration between The Gleaner and The UWI’s Centre for Reparation Research, Dr June Soomer turns the spotlight on the indigenous peoples and their right to reparatory justice.

The establishment of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) in 2013 at the initiative of the heads of governments led to the CRC’s mandate to establish and prepare the case for reparatory justice for the region’s victimised peoples, in particular indigenous peoples and African descendant communities, who were the victims of genocide, slavery, slave trading, and racial apartheid. This has given prominence to the approximately 40 million indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. Their prolonged marginalisation is being addressed by the movement, e.g., in its engagement with the Garifuna and Kalinago, especially in Dominica, in dialogues about their concerns and aspirations. Despite active and stepped- up engagement, this article argues that indigenous peoples still claim relative invisibility of their cause expressed as their “invisibility in plain sight”. The article also uses this space to unveil the resistance and survivability of the First Peoples, not only in order to make them more conspicuous but also to restore their dignity and humanity.

The CRC has, of course, recognised that it is part of the decolonisation of the region to initiate more fundamental engagements with the descendants of the Indigenous or First Peoples who still lack access and who continue to be marginalised and alienated from their lands. At the same time, the CRC recognises that it must work with the communities to understand how they view their own development, for they have developed their own strategies, and working with them grows the entire movement.

CRC’s engagement has reinforced the fact that colonialism has left structural barriers that limit the full social and economic inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and, therefore, that reparations for them is the greatest call for human rights. There is no doubt that racism accompanied Columbus on the first voyage and that it was structurally entrenched through social, cultural, class, political, visual, legal, and religious systems that remain to the present. Moreover, it was responsible for the extinction project and the need by European subjugators to justify their dominance through continued oppression. Reparations will continue to advocate for the removal of colonial barriers to their development and progress.

The discussion has also focused on the impact of racism and colonisation on their identity, for it was the depiction of a warlike and cannibalistic persona that was used as justification for all the institutions of racism that have fully participated in the attempted extinction of the Kalinago. It should be recalled that after the decimation of the Tainos by the Europeans, the mythology of cannibalism, according to Peter Hulme’s Columbus and The Cannibals, would become the basis of Queen Isabella’s order of October 30, 1503 “… allowing cannibals, but only cannibals, to be captured and enslaved”. John Angus Martin, in his 2013 Island Caribs and French Settlers in Grenada, 1498 – 1763, argues that “it was a deliberate branding as a basis for exploitation”. The demonisation of the Kalinago firstly as annihilators of the Tainos and secondly as cannibals or savages has served as justification for their continued marginalisation. Reparations is, therefore, about addressing their misrepresentation, and by extension, their resistance against domination. Centuries of nurturing this demonic image means that work still needs to be done to debunk the myth of the cannibal while addressing the subjugation and demeaning of persons because of their physical and cultural differences.

REMOVE FABRICATION

It is equally important to remove the fabrication that the rape of indigenous women was surrender. This same model ,which dishonoured and relegated them to second-class citizens, was used in the subjugation of enslaved African women and remains the root of continued gender-based violence. It should be recalled that the Spaniards, who first arrived in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola in 1492, and later in Puerto Rico, did not transport European women in the first expeditions, resulting in sexual violence against the Taíno women in Hispaniola and the emergence of mestizo children. Scholars suggest that there was substantial racial and cultural mixing in Cuba, as well, and several communities survived into the 19th century. Ultimately, reparations involve removing the myth that these were consensual relationships ensuring that the violation of indigenous women and later, African women, is documented as rape. The actions of rapists have been validated while the victims remain oppressed. They violated not only the inhabitants, the land, the environment, but also their progress and their future. The justice sought must give dignity back to the wounded and give a voice to those nameless invisible women.

The colonisation of the Eastern Caribbean was a lengthy process that spanned over 300 years, and during that time, the Kalinago were able to survive European conquest, warfare, diseases, and marginalisation. It is clear that the attempted genocide of the First Peoples was not successful, and they continued to live on the periphery of the plantation society. The struggle and oppression did not make them retreat from confrontation. With the limitation of their movement, as well as the theft of their land throughout the Lesser Antilles, they sought alliances with each other, with the runaway enslaved and those who plotted revolution across European colonial acquisitions to destabilise or even take over the islands. These are the reasons why the Reparations Commissions both national and regional fight for the decolonisation of language, culture, image, and heritage. Rendering indigenous peoples invisible and past will simply dismiss their struggles. They must be fitted into the great resistance and survival movements through the centuries. They are not snapshots in time.

REMOVAL OF STATUES

Finally, as part of seeking justice for the Indigenous Peoples, the CRC is resolute in its advocacy for the removal of the estimated 35 statues and crosses honouring Columbus around the Caribbean. These constant reminders of the atrocities committed are allowed to survive in prominent places even after self-determination and independence in most of our region. It is time to honour the vibrancy and resilience of indigenous bodies and cultures so integral to reparatory justice in the region. The globalisation of the United States’ “Black Lives Matter” Movement intensified the conversation about the removal of colonial symbols in the Caribbean and in the diaspora. Throughout the region and in Latin America, indigenous groups have been removing and tearing them down, but these actions have been called vandalism and have been met with force from governments. Though petitions have been signed by citizens from The Bahamas down to Trinidad and Tobago asking for the removal of these colonial monuments, not everyone agrees with the words of Burning Spear “We have fi straighten out, Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar”. The indigenous people would no doubt add “murderer”. The Caribbean Reparations Movement will resound with the calls for truth and justice alongside the First Citizens of our region in an effort to remove their invisibility.

Dr June Soomer is member of the Saint Lucia Reparations Committee and chair of the Open Campus’ Council of the University of the West Indies. Send feedback to june.soomer@gmail.com or to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm.