We Carry It Within Us: Shared Colonial History and Control of Caribbean Cultural Heritage Collections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

To quote James Baldwin, “History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.” From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, the Caribbean underwent an intensive process of colonization, where islands frequently changed hands between European powers, yet were primarily occupied by indigenous and Afro-Caribbean peoples. This begs the question who should control cultural heritage collections when multiple and sometimes competing communities of relevance can make a viable claim to a shared history. This paper examines the access to collections held off island, concerning shifting ecologies which are a cornerstone of modern Barbudan culture and identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38341.0