Considering the legacy of cultural genocide

This chapter will explore the contemporary commemorative events that assist the African-Caribbean-Indigenous people, known today as the Garifuna (once called ‘Black Caribs’), in dealing with the historic trauma of their expulsion in 1797 from their Caribbean homeland, Yurumein, the island of St Vincent. Following two wars between the British colonisers and the ‘Black Caribs’, the vast majority were rounded up from their homeland and deposited on a small barren nearby Grenadine island called Balliceaux; of the c.5,000 people billeted there, around half died before the rest were exiled to Honduras. Annually on the anniversary of the death of Joseph Chatoyer (d.14 March 1797), the Black Carib leader of the second of these wars for sovereignty, members of the diasporic Garifuna community travel to Yurumein to commemorate him and the survival of the Garifuna people. They also journey to Balliceaux to honour the mass death of the ancestors who died there. For those Garifuna living on St Vincent, the annual commemorations of Chatoyer on National Heroes Day (inaugurated 2002) help them in reviving the cultural legacy of their people in Yurumein and cementing their place within the global Garifuna community.