Gen­er­a­tions of school­child­ren in this coun­try have been fed a white­washed, sani­tised nar­ra­tive about Ital­ian ex­plor­er Christo­pher Colum­bus “dis­cov­er­ing” our is­lands. Part of that his­toric in­ac­cu­ra­cy had to do with his ar­rival on these shores with a fleet of three ships—the San­ta Maria, the Ni­na and the Pin­ta.

That his­toric mis­in­for­ma­tion has been val­i­dat­ed for the past 62 years by the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of those three ves­sels on T&T’s Coat of Arms.

The truth is that Colum­bus took eight ships on that third voy­age when he vis­it­ed Trinidad, Venezuela and start­ed the ex­plo­ration of main­land South Amer­i­ca and none of them were the ves­sels de­pict­ed on this coun­try’s na­tion­al em­blem.

There­fore, re­mov­ing those three ships and re­plac­ing them with the steel­pan, a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in this coun­try, may prove an im­por­tant step. Hope­ful­ly, it is al­so the first in a se­ries of ef­forts to erase long­stand­ing mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of T&T’s ear­ly his­to­ry.

The im­por­tance of the Coat of Arms re­design has to do with much more than the re­moval of three ves­sels that nev­er land­ed in T&T. It is al­so about end­ing the prac­tice of giv­ing promi­nence and ho­n­our to his­tor­i­cal fig­ures and events that brought tyran­ny, ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion, not on­ly to our shores but across the Amer­i­c­as.

The move, an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sun­day, has been wel­comed by many but there have been some dis­sent­ing voic­es who see it as an at­tempt to erase crit­i­cal as­pects of T&T’s his­to­ry.

How­ev­er, the fact that some cit­i­zens choose to hold on to a ro­man­ti­cised, un­true ver­sion of T&T’s “dis­cov­ery” in 1498, is all the more rea­son, not on­ly to ef­fect the nec­es­sary changes, but to en­sure every ex­er­cise of ex­pung­ing in­ac­cu­ra­cies from the sto­ry of our na­tion is sup­port­ed by pro­grammes of sen­si­ti­sa­tion and ed­u­ca­tion.

There are still too many ac­counts that gloss over the op­pres­sion, cor­rup­tion, mass mur­der and rape that the four voy­ages of Colum­bus un­leashed on this re­gion.

His ar­rival more than 500 years ago, por­trayed for years as jour­neys of dis­cov­ery that dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the world, kicked off cen­turies of ex­ploita­tion, start­ing with the en­slave­ment of na­tive pop­u­la­tions and ex­tend­ing in­to the trans-At­lantic slave trade.

What was fed to us over hun­dreds of years as au­then­tic ac­counts, have now been ex­posed as nar­ra­tives in which the crimes of the colonists were redact­ed.

Dr Row­ley de­scribed the change to the Coat of Arms as “our way to re­mov­ing the colo­nial ves­tiges that we have in our Con­sti­tu­tion.” It is nec­es­sary to ac­cu­rate­ly present the el­e­ments that make us who we are and the steel­pan is an es­sen­tial com­po­nent in any de­pic­tion of T&T.

How­ev­er, there is much more to be done. A stat­ue of Colum­bus still stands in Tamarind Square, a square in the heart of Port-of-Spain that bears the name of a tyran­ni­cal for­mer gov­er­nor and too many streets and towns are named for op­pres­sive his­tor­i­cal fig­ures.

Still pend­ing is long-promised ac­tion to en­sure the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and sig­nage that ac­cu­rate­ly rep­re­sent this coun­try’s his­to­ry.

It is time for cen­turies of wrong to be made right. The plan to re­design the Coat of Arms is an im­por­tant first step in that di­rec­tion.