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Sunday, March 30, 2025

Last stand for the First People

by

20110501
Chief Secretary Orville London meets with the delegates of Miss Pretty Little Summer Princess, Mr Handsome and Ms Emancipation pageants. . Photos: Innis Francis

Chief Secretary Orville London meets with the delegates of Miss Pretty Little Summer Princess, Mr Handsome and Ms Emancipation pageants. . Photos: Innis Francis

The loss of Carib Queen Valenti­na Ass­ing Med­i­na which was memo­ri­alised on Fri­day marks a key mile­stone in the con­tin­u­ing ef­forts of the lo­cal Carib com­mu­ni­ty to carve out a dis­tinct space for them­selves in the land­scape of mod­ern Trinidad and To­ba­go.At the fu­ner­al on Sat­ur­day, a sur­pris­ing­ly emo­tion­al Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters, made an im­pas­sioned plea for the com­mu­ni­ty to hang to­geth­er or risk falling apart.

"You are your worst en­e­my," Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters warned the con­gre­ga­tion in a tone that seemed to con­vey a mix of frus­tra­tion and loss.The need to present the Carib com­mu­ni­ty as uni­fied and co­or­di­nat­ed isn't sim­ply a mat­ter of get­ting things to­geth­er for a com­mon cause.As film­mak­er and jour­nal­ist Tra­cy Ass­ing not­ed in an es­say, The Long Walk Home, pub­lished in Caribbean Beat, "I stopped par­tic­i­pat­ing in the [San­ta Rosa] fes­ti­val when I was eight. Even at that age I re­alised that the sto­ry of its ori­gin might have been on­ly as re­al as the tales that cap­tured my imag­i­na­tion in the books of Enid Bly­ton."

Ass­ing cre­at­ed a tan­gi­ble cor­rec­tive to the con­tra­dic­to­ry sto­ries she grew up with in a film, The Amerindi­ans, first screened in 2010.Raised as a Carib de­scen­dant, Ass­ing's strug­gles to rec­on­cile the his­to­ry her fam­i­ly shared with her with the of­fi­cial his­to­ries of Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for the doc­u­men­tary's nar­ra­tive.The young film­mak­er, who grew up call­ing Valenti­na Ass­ing Med­i­na "Aun­ty Mavis," cre­at­ed an im­por­tant doc­u­ment in the nar­ra­tive of the First Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, whose his­to­ry lives on large­ly in the sto­ries passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, un­doc­u­ment­ed by the many con­querors who came to this is­land.

Un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, the Carib com­mu­ni­ty was giv­en five acres of land at Blan­chisseuse Old Road in Ari­ma and Min­is­ter Pe­ters seems keen to am­pli­fy that gift with in­put from his gov­ern­ment's re­sources.At this point in the his­to­ry of the Carib com­mu­ni­ty, with par­tic­i­pa­tion by the youngest de­scen­dants of the orig­i­nal in­hab­i­tants of this coun­try dwin­dling, the most crit­i­cal space that cham­pi­ons of this com­mu­ni­ty can oc­cu­py is in the minds of the larg­er pop­u­la­tion.

Re­build­ing the nar­ra­tive of the First Peo­ple in the con­scious­ness and con­ver­sa­tions of the larg­er pop­u­la­tion and stok­ing pride and in­ter­est among the scat­tered gen­er­a­tions of de­scen­dants will do as much for the Carib com­mu­ni­ty's cause as the con­struc­tion of the pro­posed mu­se­um, craft cen­tres and recre­ations of his­tor­i­cal vil­lage life.

Los­ing Valenti­na Med­i­na was, ul­ti­mate­ly, the loss of a re­mark­able re­source of knowl­edge and mem­o­ry of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the old­est tru­ly na­tive cul­ture that this coun­try can claim as its own.The for­ma­tion of the Carib San­ta Rosa Com­mu­ni­ty in 1974 has been an ef­fort at not just stak­ing a claim on that kind of mem­o­ry, but an at­tempt at knit­ting the sto­ries of the re­gion in­to a larg­er his­to­ry and cul­tur­al archive as that or­gan­i­sa­tion has reached out to sur­viv­ing Amerindi­an tribes in the re­gion.

Gath­er­ing these sto­ries and re­build­ing the rich, nat­ur­al nar­ra­tive of the lifestyles and his­to­ry of the first in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the on­ly way to pro­vide a re­al al­ter­na­tive to the read­i­ly con­sumed temp­ta­tions avail­able in the at­trac­tive­ly pack­aged fic­tions of for­eign en­ter­tain­ment.These are not sim­ple mat­ters, and time is against the el­ders of the Carib com­mu­ni­ty. En­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing ef­forts of lo­cal doc­u­men­tar­i­ans to pre­serve the his­to­ry and tra­di­tions of the old­est el­e­ments of our his­to­ry in mod­ern me­dia should be the first point of in­ter­ven­tion by the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in ad­vanc­ing the fu­ture of the lo­cal Carib com­mu­ni­ty.


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