• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/73692 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Con Aguilar E.O. Title: Heritage education — Memories of the past in the present Caribbean social studies curriculum: a view from teacher practice Issue Date: 2019-05-28 Chapter 4 Finding Liamuiga: Teaching indigenous heritage education in Saint Kitts 4.1 Introduction Figure 4.1: View of Nevis from Basseterre, Saint Kitts (photo by author). When touching down in Saint Kitts, from the windows of the plane one can see an island covered with mountains and lots of vegetation. Once on the ground and in the capital, Basseterre, it is possible to see Nevis, the sister island; in the distance, the impressive “Nevis Peak,” one of the island’s prominent natural features, majestically appears. It was later on in my stay in Saint Kitts, while accompanying my archaeologist colleagues on their surveys near the Black Rock site on the windward side of the island, that I had the opportunity to get a closer look at Mount Liamuiga, previously known as Mount Misery. I had learned about it earlier during an interview with a teacher. When I had asked her how her students learn about the Amerindians, she started singing a song about Liamuiga. She recalled an episode with her students where one of them sang her the very song she was singing to me. She sang it only very briefly, but to me it represented the story of the Amerindians who called the island “Liamuiga,” the “fertile land.” (Eldris Con Aguilar) This case study took place on the island of Saint Kitts, or “Liamuiga” (“fertile land”), as it was called by its first inhabitants, the Amerindians. The main objective of this study was to investigate the current status of the teaching of indigenous heritage through the perspectives of teachers. To this end, teachers from two secondary schools in the villages of Old Road and Sandy Point were interviewed. In order to understand how education policies and practices influence the teaching of the indigenous past and its significance for today’s Kittian society, I reviewed 68 the so-called intended curriculum and school textbooks, then compared this with the teachers’ perspectives on how these teaching guidelines were applied in practice in the enacted curriculum. This allow me to understand how subject matter related to indigenous heritage is represented in the official curriculum guidelines and educational resources, as well as to examine how these recommendations were reflected in the teachers' pedagogical practices. In my analysis of the data collected over two field visits in 2014, I sought to identify those factors that play a decisive role in how indigenous heritage is taught in the classroom; I also intended to explore to what extent the schools were connected with their immediate context and aware of the existence of museums, historical sites, national archives and other cultural or heritage institutions in their communities. The results obtained from the investigation allow for a better understanding of how the Amerindian legacy is represented in the school curriculum, and how it is taught in the two secondary schools I observed in Saint Kitts. At first impression, it appeared that the colonial history and the history of the enslaved Africans of Saint Kitts predominated over indigenous heritage. At secondary schools in Saint Kitts, the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) curriculum is used. This is a curriculum common to the Commonwealth Caribbean countries: independent island nations in the Caribbean region that were once British colonies, and which now belong to the British Commonwealth of Nations. The CXC syllabi for the subjects of social studies and Caribbean history do include a section on the “first inhabitants”; however, the teachers and other stakeholders agreed that indigenous heritage is not sufficiently emphasized. They did express an interest in providing their students with a more balanced view of their history and heritage, including as much information as is available on the Amerindians. In their opinion, the chapter of history on the first inhabitants constitutes a significant part of Kittian heritage, and is important in answering questions like “where did we come from?” and “who are we today?” 4.2 Historical and archaeological background of Saint Kitts Columbus and his fleet encountered the islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, located in the Lesser Antilles in the Eastern Caribbean Sea, on 11 November 1493, during Columbus’s second voyage, after entering the Eastern Caribbean from the north coast of Dominica on 3 November 1493 (Dyde 2005). For many years, these islands were under Spanish control; however, the Spanish were not able to protect them from the incursions of other European countries. Its colonial history is a reminder of the clashes and disputes between contemporary European powers in their race to rule the New World. Although the Spanish Empire was able to maintain control throughout the sixteenth century, in the seventeenth century the French, British and Dutch started gaining a foothold and taking over colonies from the Spanish. Saint Kitts and Nevis, however, remained Spanish 69 colonies for over a century, although they were never really settled by the Spanish colonizers, who were more interested in the Greater Antilles and Central America. Saint Kitts was the first long-lasting non-Spanish colony, colonized by the English in 1624 (Higman 2010; Heuman 2014). Contemporary historians date the arrival of Thomas Warner to January 28, 1624 (Inniss 1985), when there were still Amerindians in Saint Kitts, though there is no certainty about the number of Amerindians on the island (Dyde 2005; Dyde et al. 2008). In this vein, Hubbard (2002) argued that a reasonable estimate would be less than a thousand. It has been pointed out by other authors that by the time of the first British arrivals in Saint Kitts, the only sizable permanent indigenous settlement was located on the leeward side of the island (Goodwin 1976, Wilson 1999, Dyde 2005,). Certainly, our existing knowledge about the pre-Columbian period of the history of Saint Kitts is due primarily to European chroniclers from the period of the British arrival, before the end of the fifteenth century. Nevertheless there is more to learn about the island and its inhabitants before the Europeans; since the early 1970s, archaeological studies have been carried out in Saint Kitts (for example, Hoffman 1973; Armstrong 1978; Goodwin 1978), and the findings of these studies have helped to shed more light on the first settlers. More recently, archaeological researchers Keegan and Hofman have adopted a chronological perspective to explain the cultural developments in the Lesser Antilles, focusing on the transformations “that began in the Archaic Age, continued through the Ceramic Age, and ended with the imposition of European influences” (2017: 200). Along these lines, Keegan and Hofman (2017) point to previous archaeological studies that have uncovered material remains from the Archaic Age, indicating that there were early settlements on Saint Kitts and Nevis. These Archaic Age sites contained mainly shell and stone tools. Although there is yet no fixed period for when the first islanders occupied the northern Lesser Antilles, material remains show evidence that there were Archaic Age sites on these islands. This suggests that the first occupations could have started from around cal 4000 BP. It is believed that Saint Kitts was first inhabited by Amerindians of three different ethnicities and then — from the sixteenth century — also by people of European and African descent (Farag et al. 2005: 1). References to the relevant archaeological findings can be found in recent books on the history of Saint Kitts (Hubbard 2002; Dyde 2005; Higman 2010). According to historical accounts, the first Amerindian people were the Ciboney; they were followed by the Arawak, and then finally came the Carib or Kalinago, who were there upon the arrival of the Europeans (Dyde 2005, 2008). However, from an archaeological point of view, there is reason to doubt that the people whom the British encountered upon their arrival were in fact Carib or “Kalinago,” as Goodwin deduces from the archaeological assemblages he has studied: “In short, the precolonial Kittitians 70 heretofore described in the historical literature as Carib were Arawak” (1979: 336). This thesis is also supported by Wilson’s archaeological studies on the island of Nevis (1989). Nevertheless, in the curricula of primary and secondary schools and their textbooks, the Carib (“Kalinago”) are described as the indigenous people who were in Saint Kitts at the time of the Europeans’ arrival, in agreement with the historical records (Inniss 1985, Mans, in press).11 According to historical tradition, in 1624, a group of English colonists landed on the island (Inniss 1985; Wilson 1989; Dyde 2005). On January 28, 1624, Sir Thomas Warner returned to Saint Kitts to settle on the leeward shore of the island;12 the English then negotiated with the Amerindians as to which land they would occupy: “[T]he English settlers were met by a group of Carib Indians led by their Cacique Tegreman; after short and peaceful negotiations, the English were allowed to settle ‘the land between two rivers’ presumably those now called Wingfield and East Rivers” (Goodwin 1979: 53–54). The waves of European arrivals (English and French) culminated in the massacre of the island’s native inhabitants, known to history as the Kalinago Genocide of 1626, at Bloody Point. That was the name given to the place where the massacre occurred, in the area of the Stone Fort River, and where Amerindian petroglyphs dating from pre- Columbian times can still be found today (Inniss 1985). After the massacre at Bloody Point, and according to Dyde (2006: 23), no Amerindians were left on the island: “It is doubtful if those who were not killed left the island, as a second attack soon took place at the end of December.” Other ethnohistorical records, however, pointed out that the remaining Amerindians fled to the neighboring islands in their canoes (Wilson 1989).

Load more

  32

Copy Link