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"If I dont accept responsibility to take action, how would I expect change?"

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"If I dont accept responsibility to take action, how would I expect change?"

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Alissandra

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Gege: in Brazil, there are few positive representations of black people. When I see everything the Barbados museum is involved in terms of representation, I would love to hear more about how the community responded to the artworks presented in the museum

Alissandra: A lot of the images I showed required interpretation. In the case of Angela, we did not have a real image of her, but we wanted to represent her positive presence and we developed it. We need to create new materials and narratives. We are not going to use the images created by the slave master, we are going to create new positive reinforcement images.  Community cultural activism.

Dani Manyasi: Former plantation workers in White settlements ended up being squatters. Most are still not considered for land allocation, where the Whites left. How is the situation in the Caribbean former cotton and or sugar-cane plantations?

Alissandra: it is still an ultimate ambition for Barbados to "own a piece of the rock". At the end of slavery,  people had to choose between remaining on the plantation and earn pennies for their hard labour, or they were free to move to other locations taking their homes with them. There has to be recognition that this situation existed as a result of colonialism and capitalism. It requires community activism but also a political choice.  Decent living conditions is the primary responsibility of the state.

How did you navigate working with governments and unesco?

Alissandra: I had the privilege of knowing myself, my roots. Within the family, my parents knew that my choices were mine, and if I made the wrong decision it would be my responsibility, but they were prepared to support that. I also benefited from the Barbados government in continuous education, education is the key that allows many individuals to develop.

If I don't take responsibility to take action, how can I expect change?

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Healing the Wounds of Slavery aims at healing and addressing the wounds and psycho-social, economic and political consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slave history. The hope is to create pathways towards personal, cultural, relational and institutional transformation.

The transatlantic slave trade involved a systematic deportation, and dehumanisation, of tens of millions of Africans. Its objective was to exploit their bodies and minds for economic profit.

UNESCO Slave Route Project and the GHFP collaborate with an aim to develop conceptions, methodologies, approaches and practices of healing that can also help address the roots of racism.

Read More "Activities"

The "Healing the Wounds of Slavery" programme is the fruit of a collaboration amongst several significant partners, including the UNESCO Slave Route Project, the GHFP Research Institute, and the Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University.

In view of the ignorance or concealment of major historical events that constitutes an obstacle to mutual understanding, reconciliation and cooperation amongst peoples, UNESCO embarked on a project that aims at breaking the silence surrounding the slave trade and slavery.

The development of the Healing the Wounds of Slavery programme requires a wide range of involvement and support from governments, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, businesses, educational institutions, communities and individuals.

Read More "Get Involved"

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Healing the Wounds of Slavery aims at healing and addressing the wounds and psycho-social, economic and political consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slave history. The hope is to create pathways towards personal, cultural, relational and institutional transformation. The transatlantic slave trade involved a systematic deportation, and dehumanisation, of tens of millions of Africans.

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reinforcing ancestral foundations - ancestral ceremony at newton plantation

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"History must go beyond the perspective of the coloniser to share the experience of the oppressed. "

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"History must go beyond the perspective of the coloniser to share the experience of the oppressed. "

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Alissandra

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1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

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Most colonised history has been seen from the perspective of the colonisers. 

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Most colonised history has been seen from the perspective of the colonisers. 

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Alissandra

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from Alissandra: It is very important that we hear the words and sounds of enslaved people because we have very few opportunities to get to this knowledge in recorded history. These manifestations show the continuing presence of our oral traditions.

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from Alissandra: The power of narrative, did black lives matter?

"History will be kind to me for I try to write if myself".

In these diaries shown on screen, we observe diaries about the plantations in Barbados. These diaries were written by the plantation owners, which shows that the prevailing perspective was always that of the writer, the power holder, not the subject. We need to recognise that history is also the fruit of power.  We must be willing to take up this challenge, to expose the root of history if black lives really matter. In the past, black lives mattered because they were the labour force and therefore bound to the force of production. If we are not able to study the intersection between capitalism and racism we will not be able to deconstruct these processes.

While history is physical, consensual, memory belongs to imagination and construction. When we are faced with the challenge of developing narratives from the oral, this is an epistemic problem we face. The dominance of written narrative perpetuates the oppression of people who use oral history.

Some ways of conceptualising and reconstructing the past in the present :

How to reclaim identity through the memorialisation of slavery in public and private spaces.

Memory or absence are presented as part of the same process. It is everyone's duty to curate the narratives we wish to see for our communities.

Memory and history must be presented and realised as a conscious decision.

Colonised Caribbean people are not used to seeing themselves represented in positions of authority and empathy in museums, let alone women. Typically these people are used to seeing themselves in the background of the historical construct of racism. Thus, the performance of identity is an increasingly constant practice at the Barbados Museum.

"An African Song or Chant from Barbados". the panellist shows a song sung by slaves in Barbados that became a tool for change in the anti-slavery campaign.

We must learn to transcribe, negotiate and reinterpret what we hear from people who are in prison, under pressure and enslaved.

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"An African Song or Chant from Barbados"

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"An African Song or Chant from Barbados"

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from Ereshnee:
A year ago, the murder of George Floyd sparked protests around the world. Similarly, protests erupted against white supremacist culture, colonialism and racism. We need to start thinking about how to deal with these injustices, which are inherent in all institutions, such as the health care system, which in the Covid era has clearly reflected its inequities.

Today we ask, how do we confront systems that continue to perpetuate racism, inequity, injustice and disadvantage?

In the last few days we reviewed the roots of racism, ethnicity and systems of power and all their intersections (class, race, gender...). One of the needs most expressed by Conscience sites has been to decentralise historical narratives and uproot them from prevailing white discourses. We need stories that tell the truth and show the multiple differences and identities of black, indigenous and people of colour.

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Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman, Senior Program Director Global Transitional Justice Initiative, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience
Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman is the Senior Director for the Global Transitional Justice Initiative, the Coalition’s flagship program on transitional justice. Ereshnee holds over twenty years’ experience designing and implementing community outreach strategies and programs in critical post-conflict settings that include South Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Colombia, among many others. She is a seasoned educator with extensive curriculum and workshop design experience, and has broad content development, training and facilitation skills. A thought leader and global transitional justice practitioner, Ereshnee pioneered the Coalition’s work in transitional justice in 2014, and now leads the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation  which under her stewardship manages 58 projects in 17 countries engaging 256 local civil society organizations in Colombia, Guinea, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East and North Africa region, among other locales. Ereshnee earned her Bachelor of Arts and two Masters of Arts degrees from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, the first in Dramatic Arts (1998) and the second in Forced Migration Studies (2004). She subsequently earned her PhD in Sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

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Alissandra Cummins,
Director of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Board Chair

Director of the Museum and Historical Society of Barbados, Alissandra Cummins is internationally recognized in matters concerning heritage, museum development and art. From 2004-2010, she served as President of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) – the first woman and the first person from the Caribbean to do so – and represented Barbados as a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO from 2011-2013, which she chaired from 2012-13. She teaches Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the West Indies and currently is part of the editorial board of the International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, as well as the advisory board of the International Network of the Slave Route Project.

She was instrumental in the creation of the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC), becoming President Founder, in 1989. She was also active first as a Board Member and then as President of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology (IACA). She also served as UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee Chair for the Promotion of Return of Cultural Property to Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP), from 2003 to 2005. In 2007, she was appointed President of UNESCO’s International Advisory Board Memory of the World Programme.

Acting as Special Envoy of Cultural Heritage by the Government of Barbados, she has been responsible for advising technical issues and development policies, and represents the nation at regional and international levels.

She currently serves as the Chairperson of the Board of the Barbados National Art Gallery, and similarly chairs the Barbados National Commission for UNESCO.

Alissandra Cummins is a Fellow of the Museums Association (UK), An Honorary member of ICOM and a member of the Commonwealth Association of Museums’ Cowrie Circle. She was awarded Barbados’s Gold Crown of Merit in 2006 in recognition of her services to the development of heritage and museums.