Stand­ing guard on the per­ilous edge of a breath­tak­ing cliff on the north­east­ern coast of Do­mini­ca is the eeri­ly sculpt­ed faces of the Kali­na­go an­ces­tors.

Meant to spir­i­tu­al­ly guard the in­dige­nous peo­ple, the sculp­tures are a re­minder of the strength of the Kali­na­go peo­ple in Do­mini­ca who sur­vived Eu­ro­pean coloni­sa­tion, re­tain­ing ves­tiges of their great life­ways, un­like many oth­er Caribbean neigh­bours.

To­day with a resur­gence of Kali­na­go pride, the in­dige­nous na­tion is now seek­ing to forge re­la­tion­ships with oth­er Amerindi­an groups, like the ones in T&T, with the hope of shar­ing knowl­edge.

With a pop­u­la­tion of 3,500, the Kali­na­go tribe of Do­mini­ca lives in a 5.7 mile com­mu­nal­ly-owned ter­ri­to­ry where they con­tin­ue to prac­tice tra­di­tion­al crafts such as bas­ketry, fish­ing, and weav­ing.

They en­gage in agri­cul­ture, plant­i­ng ba­nanas, co­conut, pas­sion fruit, and cas­sa­va but since the dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Maria, the is­land peo­ple have been slow­ly re­build­ing.

Hur­ri­cane Maria, a cat­e­go­ry five storm, struck in Sep­tem­ber 2017 and the Kali­na­go ter­ri­to­ry suf­fered a di­rect hit. Yet, two years lat­er, they seem al­most un­touched ex­cept for some of the sprawl­ing trees whose tops are still bare of bark and leaves.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Do­mini­ca for a tour of the Na­ture Is­land last week and was amazed at the tenac­i­ty of the Kali­na­go peo­ple who con­tin­ue to flour­ish in the is­land they call Wai'tukubu­li, which means "Tall is her body."

Tour guide Ken­rick Augiste took us to Kali­na­go Barana Aute, a re­cent­ly es­tab­lished vil­lage in the ham­let of Cray­fish Riv­er, where tra­di­tion­al cus­toms are pro­mot­ed. Af­ter a short trek through wind­ing roads made of con­crete, we came up­on the breath­tak­ing vil­lage which over­looks the Iwasie Bay. It is here the force of the mighty At­lantic Ocean bat­ters the jagged foot of the moun­tains cre­at­ing an ex­panse of pol­ished rocks.

It is this rugged moun­tain­ous range which pro­tect­ed the Kali­na­gos whose an­ces­tors—the Or­toiroid peo­ple—set­tled in Do­mini­ca from about 3000 BC to 400 BC.

To­day, the Kali­na­go ter­ri­to­ry is made up of eight vil­lages—Sineku, Ma­haut Riv­er, Gaulette Riv­er, Saly­bia, Cray­fish Riv­er, Bata­ka, Atkin­son and part of Con­cord.

Kali­na­go Barana Aute, the mod­el Kali­na­go vil­lage, has the po­ten­tial to take you back in time.

The kar­bays (large hous­es) are built with wood and leaves, a re­minder of what was lost. Sam­ples of cal­abash en­graved with the faces of zemis were on dis­play along with an ar­ray of jew­el­ry made with tra­di­tion­al beads.

Augiste said the art of ca­noe mak­ing has sur­vived. Ca­noes are dug out from the gom­mi­er trees, one of the tallest trees in the lush Do­mini­can rain for­est.

Kat­na John al­so pre­pared cas­sa­va bread, baked on a leaf on a wood stove. John pat­ted the cas­sa­va to­geth­er to make a sticky dough which was de­li­cious when cooked.

Through re­search, ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ex­pe­di­tions and oral his­to­ry, Augiste said they man­aged to piece to­geth­er their bro­ken his­to­ry.

"We make a con­scious ef­fort to pro­tect our tra­di­tion," Augiste said. Med­i­c­i­nal knowl­edge is shared freely.

"There is an abun­dance of med­i­c­i­nal herbs in Do­mini­ca that treats many ail­ments. Mar­i­jua­na is al­so used by some even though it is still an il­le­gal sub­stance in Do­mini­ca. The coun­try's rich vol­canic dirt makes agri­cul­ture very lu­cra­tive," Augiste said.

Point­ing to a bay tree, Augiste said bay rum was man­u­fac­tured us­ing the bay leaves.

Gua­va leaf tea is used to treat di­ar­rhoea and or­ange leaf is used to treat vom­it­ing.

He said Do­mini­can cus­toms are sa­cred al­though some cus­toms are no longer ac­cept­ed be­cause of west­er­n­isation.

"Re­cent­ly the chief want­ed to bring back an an­cient law which man­dat­ed the Kali­na­gos to mar­ry with­in the tribe but this has not been ac­cept­ed by many, " Augiste said.

Do­mini­ca's mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive Saman­tha Letang said if a Kali­na­go woman fell in love with a man out­side of her race she was no longer per­mit­ted to live in the vil­lage. How­ev­er, a Kali­na­go man was free to bring a wife who was not from the tribe or the vil­lage.

Tra­di­tion­al cus­toms chang­ing

With in­ter­ra­cial mar­riages and ed­u­ca­tion, Letang said some of these tra­di­tion­al cus­toms have changed.

Un­der the Min­istry of Kali­na­go Af­fairs, Letang said Kali­na­go his­to­ry was in­clud­ed in the So­cial Stud­ies cur­ricu­lum and some of the tra­di­tion­al ways of cook­ing have re­mained.

"Kali­na­gos were now try­ing to re­name them­selves with tra­di­tion­al Kali­na­go names," she added.

The Do­mini­ca State Col­lege of­fers free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and Letang be­lieves this has as­sist­ed in the ad­vance­ment of Kali­na­go peo­ple.

An­oth­er cus­tom that has changed in the Kali­na­go com­mu­ni­ty is the tra­di­tion­al di­vi­sions of labour.

Gweneth Fred­er­ick, man­ag­er of Kali­na­go Brand in Do­mini­ca said tra­di­tion­al­ly women were in charge of plant­i­ng, weav­ing, food gath­er­ing, cook­ing, and pot­tery mak­ing, while the men did hunt­ing and fish­ing. They were con­sid­ered the heads of au­thor­i­ty in the vil­lage but over time, Fred­er­ick said the roles of women have changed.

"We now have a woman, An­nette Thomas San­ford who is run­ning for the po­si­tion of chief," she added.

She not­ed that the Wait­ukubu­li Kar­i­fu­na De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee al­so worked to build sev­er­al tra­di­tion­al build­ings in Saly­bia which in­clude the church of St Marie which is dec­o­rat­ed with mu­rals de­pict­ing Kali­na­go his­to­ry.

"We have home­s­tay pro­grammes ap­proved by the Do­mini­can au­thor­i­ties. We al­so have the ed­u­ca­tion of our herb gar­dens and our arts," Fred­er­ick said.

While they were pleased that so much more fo­cus was be­ing placed on Kali­na­go con­scious­ness, Fred­er­ick con­tend­ed that they need­ed more re­sources to fur­ther pro­mote the Kali­na­go life­ways.

"We have ex­celled as Kali­na­go peo­ple. The Kali­na­go lan­guage, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has been lost and we do not speak it but we en­cour­age our peo­ple to adopt Kali­na­go names," she said.

The Kar­i­fu­na Cul­tur­al group has al­so trav­elled to sev­er­al parts of the Caribbean pro­mot­ing Kali­na­go con­scious­ness through cul­ture.

Dur­ing Guardian Me­dia's vis­it, the Kali­na­go Dancers per­formed sev­er­al tra­di­tion­al dances in­clud­ing a bas­ket dance and a fish­ing dance. The Kali­na­go ex­pe­ri­ence end­ed with a moon dance led by lead dancer Justin Nichols and his team which in­clud­ed Al­ice Dar­raux, Ker­ah Du­ran, Vi­da Fred­er­ick, Kat­na John, Juel Prince, and Kervin Nichols.

Trinidad wel­comes Kali­na­go ex­changes

Mean­while, the in­vi­ta­tion to build Amerindi­an link­ages has al­ready been ac­cept­ed by T&T's cus­to­di­ans of lo­cal in­dige­nous his­to­ry.

Er­ic Lewis, who has mo­bilised Amerindi­an aware­ness among the in­dige­nous peo­ple of Moru­ga wel­comed the call for part­ner­ship with the Kali­na­gos of Do­mini­ca.

"We are the first na­tive peo­ples of many Tribes. Hav­ing come from many cul­tures from around the re­gion, it is im­por­tant to know and ac­cept that we are all one peo­ple—the First Peo­ples of the Amer­i­c­as," he added.

Say­ing Amerindi­an an­ces­tors sur­vived sup­pres­sion, Lewis said it was time for all Caribbean First Peo­ple to unite.

"We must work even hard­er to pre­serve the few re­minders of our her­itage and cul­ture that has been passed on to us in this mod­ern world that we live in to­day as na­tive peo­ples of the this Caribbean re­gion joined to­geth­er by cul­ture and the deep blue seas. Let us move for­ward in­to the new hori­zon us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to unite us, to share our cul­tur­al her­itage, to prac­tice mean­ing­ful tra­di­tions and to con­tin­ue pro­tec­tion of our for­est," he added.

Lewis said if Caribbean First Peo­ple did not pre­serve the lega­cy of their an­ces­tors then they would have failed in their du­ties.

More on Kali­na­go his­to­ry in Do­mini­ca

Do­mini­ca was the last is­land to be colonised by the Eu­ro­peans. The Kali­na­gos man­aged to keep the set­tlers out for more than two cen­turies. The Kali­na­go com­mu­ni­ty had been iso­lat­ed from the rest of Do­mini­ca for many years but in 1903, a ter­ri­to­ry com­pris­ing 3,700 acres was cre­at­ed for them.