Submitted by Guyana Consul to Barbados Norman Faria
Organisers of the Barbados’ Holetown Festival, which every February commemorates the arrival in 1627 of the island’s first English settlers and their African slaves, may get assistance in undertaking further research for their commendable work. This is being offered by the Guyana Consulate in the island which suggests there is a need to acknowledge the “true, first settlers” in an otherwise worthwhile activity.
While he lauded the upcoming Festival, which starts this weekend, for its educational dimension and contributing to the important tourist sector, Guyana’s Honorary Consul Norman Faria urged what he called a “fair, well rounded and accurate picture”.
Faria, in a Consulate release, noted that the first settlers were the region’s indigenous aboriginal people, popularly known as “Amerindians” (Guyana) and “Caribs” (Dominica). He noted that they had their own civilisation with several big villages in Barbados before the Europeans sighted the 166 square mile island. He said that it wasn’t that long, in relative terms in peoples’ migration patterns, that they were reported gone from the island when the ship “Olive Blossom” arrived in 1627 with the 70 English people and ten African slaves. It was probably one or two generations, he observed, and the first settlers may have left an agricultural layout for the settlers to build upon, he said.
Theories are the “Indians” were decimated by disease from Europe or were victims of slave raiding ships. Another view is that they returned to neighbouring St.Lucia or St.Vincent from where they had departed to get to Barbados.But Faria observed, some of them may still have been in the thickly forested island’s interior when the Olive Blossom came.
Faria, who attended the Festival’s opening ceremony ceremony last year and fully supports the aims and objectives of the organisers, said the forbearers of those aboriginal first settlers had come originally from what is today modern day Venezuela and Guyana after island hopping on large ocean going canoes northwards through the islands. They then came over to Barbados from what became St.Vincent or St.Lucia. One of St.Vincent’s national heroes is a former “Carib” chief named Chatoyer.
“We need to provide a fair, well rounded and accurate picture of the region’s settlement and the recognition of the historical contributions and achievements of the Caribbean/Latin America indigenous peoples……(Festival organisers) need to look at and act upon…correcting what may come across presently and through no fault of their own as the skewed misrepresentative message that the people who came in 1627 were the first settlers and therefore they alone are worthy of all commemorative activities,” he said.
“(We also need) especially against the backdrop of the deepening Caribbean/Latin America integration and friendship, to acknowledge the geographical origins of the first true and authentic settlers which is the Venezuela/Guyana area. This also means acknowledging the significant and worthwhile cultural and material achievements which led to their essentially good human exploratory and enterprisingly settler outlook,” he added in part.
In terms of the research help, Consul Faria said the Consulate has written the Planning Committee, a private sector entity, and talked informally with an official offering to obtain research material through the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs in Guyana and other institutions such as the Walter Roth Museum in Georgetown…
The Guyanese Consul said he had also put a conceptual proposal to the relevant government ministries in Guyana and Barbados for the erecting of a suitable monument in Barbados recognising the indigenous peoples’ exploratory and other contributions. This would be made by volunteer Guyanese contract workers (those on work permits) and from Guyanese and Barbadian wood and stone material.The proposal was copied to the local Venezuelan Embassy for any possible co-operation…
This would not detract from or undermine the good work of the Festival committee and the present monument at Holetown which commemorates the 1627 arrivals, he stressed.
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