EUROPEANS first came to these parts on ships with red crosses on their sails, carrying men with weapons blessed by The Vatican and crosses and rosaries hanging around their necks, while they massacred the Indigenous people who welcomed them.
They came with the Pope’s blessings under the Doctrine of Discovery – decreed in Rome 500 years ago this year – that gave them a holy right to kill in the name of God.

Pope Francis of Argentina – the first non-European Catholic pontiff and from one of South America’s many nations where Indigenous people have survived – earlier this year, denounced the Doctrine of Necessity that saw all that killing in the name of Christ.

But that does not erase the fact that Caribbean people and their counterparts in The Americas still don’t have near-enough knowledge of who their First People really were, how they lived and sustained life, culture, and religion before the European arrival.
One long-lasting untruth has it that Indigenous people are only ‘Amerindians’ (American Indians), but there were also native people of African descent in these parts before the Europeans arrived, as Guyana’s Professor Ivan Van Sertima proved in his epic 1976 book entitled ‘They Came Before Columbus’.

According to the Amazon promo advertising Van Sertima’s book: “This book makes it possible for us to see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of Black Africans in Pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilization they found here.”

The shared (African and Indian) history of the Caribbean’s First People is very much alive in Saint Vincent & The Grenadines, where the Garifunas were rounded up and banished into exile in Central America, where they now populate Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, in numbers several times the size of their original Caribbean motherland.
Today’s descendants of the Callinago (Yellow Caribs) and the Garifuna (Black Caribs) are distinct races within the mixed Vincentian population.

Unfortunately, we know more about ‘Latin America’ than the history and civilizations of First People that were almost made extinct, but which continue to survive today.
As far back as April 2014, following CARICOM’s announcement of its initiative to seek reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide from the UK and European nations that benefitted from the Slave Trade, the Caribbean Organisation of Indigenous Peoples (COIP) welcomed the move as one also being important to Caribbean First People.

In December 2013, the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) noted that “Caribbean societies also experienced the genocide of the native population, which was also declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations.”
It added, “The victims of these crimes and their descendants were left in a state of social, psychological, economic and cultural deprivation and disenfranchisement that has ensured their suffering and debilitation today, and from which only reparatory action can alleviate their suffering.”

The COIP welcomed the initiative because it also seeks Reparations for Native Genocide, as descendants of the original inhabitants still live on the Caribbean islands within CARICOM.
COIP comprises membership from Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Suriname, St. Vincent & The Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago and says it stands ready to play a role in building strong arguments on the Caribbean condition of the descendants of Native Peoples and in favour of reparations for evils inflicted on them.

It plans to ask the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to fund a project to preserve and promote the use of Indigenous languages – and tap into the training expertise of First People in Guyana and Suriname, to retrieve indigenous Caribbean languages where they have been lost, as they still speak their indigenous tongues that have survived centuries without formal schooling, thanks to oral history traditions.

The revival and preservation of the indigenous Caribbean languages was indeed among several ideas discussed at the CDB’s special forum for Indigenous peoples held on the sidelines of its recent 53rd Annual General Meeting in Saint Lucia in June.

The CDB promised to collaborate with Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, to issue statements on August 9, the United Nations-designated International Day for Indigenous Peoples.
Here’s hoping CARICOM will follow the regional bank’s timely lead to help put reparations for Native Genocide in its proper context for equal action.