Turns out she’s been in Jamaica working on a BBC documentary about the Maroons, which aired last Sunday on BBC 2. I’d love to see this documentary.
I’ve always been fascinated by the history of the Jamaican Maroons, a group of rebel slaves who, rather than be subjugated into slavery by the British, fled to the Blue Mountains and joined forces with other slaves who had escaped the Spanish and lived with the remaining Taino Indians.
The Maroons would raid the plantations at dawn, taking food and sometimes their fellow slaves back with them. Their ferocity and knowledge of the back country made them formidable opponents to the British plantocracy, and in 1739 the British ended their ongoing and impossible war with the Maroons, and signed a treaty with them, recognizing them as a free people.
Forgive my Wikipediaesque truncation of history, here. I was a creative writing, not a history major.
Of course, Ms. Dynamite’s documentary explores the importance of Queen Nanny of the Maroons, a strong woman celebrated today as one of Jamaica’s national heroes, who was known as a fearless warrior who planned guerilla warfare against the occupiers.
In this BBC News interview, Ms. Dynamite discusses the impact Queen Nanny made on her:
“A lot of the people I’ve learnt about in black history are African-Americans, like Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, whereas with Nanny, she was straight from Africa to the West Indies. What I learnt in Jamaica made me feel really empowered as a woman. You can put the blackness aside – I think it is important for any woman to read or learn the story of this woman and leader.
If you go just a few years back, a woman’s role in the war was to be a nurse or something nurturing as opposed to being on the front line and firing at people. That’s something that Nanny took on herself and actually led men. I find that really, really overwhelming and empowering as a woman.”
Big respect to Ms. Dynamite for shining a light on a forgotten corner of history, and for taking the time to actually go and explore and discover the truth about these brave people.
Her documentary was aired as part of a series of tributes and memoriams worldwide, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the UK slave trade on March 25.
Symbolic events were held worldwide, to remember and confront the history of our people. I think the gesture of apology and the outpouring of grief is important. It’s certainly better than whitewashing the past and pretending that slavery didn’t forever shape the course of the world. Which quite a few other people are doing.
I found myself annoyed, but not surprised by this opinion piece in the Guardian Unlimited, where the writer facetiously compares slavery to the Irish potato famine.
“The notion that I might be shaped and directed by a famine from the 1800s is stark raving mad. And yet today, serious commentators claim that black people in modern Britain are disadvantaged, dejected and “scarred” as a result of the slave trade, which was abolished 200 years ago. Of course, there is no real comparison between the Irish famine (a four-year-long hunger) and the slave trade (a gross historic injustice), yet the idea that any of us is directly made and moulded by an historical event is absurd.
It is narrow-minded and fatalistic, even borderline racist. In the past, some people said blacks were driven by their biology; today, so-called progressives claim blacks are driven by history. Is there really a great difference between biological determinism and historical determinism? Both view black people as wide-eyed children, moved and motivated by forces beyond their control.”
After reading that article, I was left with a feeling of utter frustration. I don’t even know where to begin disseminating his argument. This is why people wind up using dismissive cliches like “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand.” The African slave trade can’t really be compared to any historic tragedy. All anyone needs to do is look at Africa to see the undeniable effects of that horrific era. I agree that amazing strides have been made worldwide — we have so much to celebrate today about where we are, but there is still so much further for us to go. The shadows of slavery are still here, standing over all of us. And to not take the time to look back, to show solidarity and respect to the people who brought us here, whose blood and sweat built nations — to deny the weight of the day — would be so wrong on so many levels.
Trinidadian activist (and my high school friend) Attilah Springer wrote a beautiful post about the Trinidadian celebration in Woodford Square. Even in Trinidad, there were the anti-apologists who didn’t see the big fuss about remembering the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, who downcried it as being “too Afrocentric.” As if such a thing exists.
Attilah responded by looking back to her own family history:
“The story of my family up to one generation ago is full of boats. One generation. I guess that’s why immigration laws don’t make sense to me.”
And her conclusion says it better than I could:
“Rather than forget, we should try to remember, to wring every ancestral memory from our consciousness. To recognize the elephant in the room. To begin to engage in conversations where we can say, hey listen I feel like I need to say this to you about something that happened a century ago. Thatâ€™s where the revolution needs to happen.”
I’m with her, and with Ms. Dynamite. Luciano’s song, “I Remember When,” adds musical perspective to that view. This recent anniversary made me want to learn more about my ancestors, and to explore the dark chapters of history that I’ve chosen to look away from. Perhaps now that I’m older, I can face the relics I remember seeing in the museum as a teenager, the rusting thumb and tongue screws I didn’t want to see or understand back then.
I think we all need to look back, learn, and talk about the painful past. By doing that, we can face our future with renewed strength and resolve.