Submitted by Austin Gray on the 2020 winter session program in Dominica sponsored by the Department of Geography…
Mabrika is the Kalinago word for “welcome,” which is certainly how we felt upon arriving at the Kalinago people’s territory this past Saturday!
We’ve been in Dominica for almost two weeks now. Saturday morning’s adventures consisted of driving the width of the country and exploring the land of those who were the first to arrive. They are known as the Kalinago people, but also by a variety of other names – one of which being the Caribs, from which the word Caribbean is derived. While on our tour to see some of their structures, it was quite interesting to see how they live. It is an indigenous settlement, so it didn’t deviate much from what I was expecting, with traditional forms of housing and traditional uses of tools for everyday activities such as hunting, gathering food, cooking, and others. However, after Hurricane Maria devastated the island about two and a half years ago, many buildings had to be rebuilt and modernized so as to withstand future storms. Fortunately, the traditions and culture still remain and will continue to be passed on to the next generations.
I never really realized how much of an influence European settlers had on creating the Americas. The Middle Passage brought Africans to the New World to be sold as slaves, and while I knew the Caribbean region was also involved in the slave trade, I seldom noticed the extent to which the actions of these European settlers affected the lives of those that first lived on the islands. When we think of the colonization of the Americas, we only really think about the exploitation of North America, i.e. the white Europeans displacing the indigenous people of the continent. However, their actions also relate to the slave trade, as it was the Europeans who forcibly brought Africans to North America and the Caribbean, thus displacing those such as the Kalinago. Thankfully, the terrain of Dominica made it difficult to entirely wipe out the indigenous population, which is the reason for their continued existence on the island to this day.
