Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

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The Caribbean is rich with diversity, including our languages. In this episode, Keisha I. Wiel joins us in sharing about the history of Papiamentu/o, the widely spoken language in the Dutch Caribbean islands, and even official language in Aruba and Curaçao, that combines Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Keisha Wiel is a PhD candidate in the anthropology department at Temple University with a concentration in linguistic anthropology.  Her dissertation research examines language socialization, multilingualism, linguistic rights, and education in a postcolonial state.  Her research interests primarily focus on the socialization of language ideas in education how it frames the identity of students.  Specifically, her dissertation research is based on how children are socialized into ideas about Papiamento/u and Dutch in secondary education in Aruba and Curaçao. Follow Keisha on Twitter here. 

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This week we're celebrating Strictly Facts's first birthday! This brief episode is a massive thank you to all our listeners and a note to take the Strictly Facts 2022 Listener Survey. Complete for a chance to win an Amazon gift card and let us know what you'd like to see from us in the new year!  

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Maroon populations across Latin America and the Caribbean have a unique history of self-emancipation  and, for some, sovereignty. In this episode, His Excellency, Chief Richard Currie, Head of State of Cockpit Country, one of Jamaica's maroon communities, joins us for a necessary discussion on the maroons' origins and their significance in Jamaican history. Follow Chief Currie on Instagram and Twitter and support Cockpit Country's fundraiser. 

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It is indeed the most wonderful time of the year with family and traditions bringing us together for the holidays. Our penultimate episode of 2021 discusses just some of the ways we celebrate the holidays in the Caribbean with food, fun, and of course music and culture. 

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Made up of the main islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands has remained under colonial rule since Danish invasion in the latter 1600s.  In this episode, Dr. Hadiya Sewer historicizes local revolutions and reception to the USVI's longstanding occupation, also highlighting the effects of American colonialism over last century.

Hadiya Sewer is a Research Fellow in the African and African American Studies Program at Stanford University and a Visiting Scholar in the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. Dr. Sewer's work uses a non-sovereign territory in the Caribbean, the United States Virgin Islands, as a case study for tracing the conceptions of freedom and the human that exist under contemporary colonialism. Sewer earned their Ph.D. in Africana Studies at Brown University. Their scholarship focuses on environmental justice and Africana decolonial, feminist, queer, and political theories. They are currently working on two monographs titled, “(De)Colonial Desires: Blackness, Aporia, and the Afterlives of the Dead,” and "Black as Nature: Climate Disaster, Covid-19, and the Coloniality of Power." Dr. Sewer's research, teaching, and advocacy provide phenomenological, ethnographic, and historical examinations of anti-blackness, colonialism, imperialism, and the climate crisis. As a community-engaged scholar, Sewer is also the President and Co-Founder of St.JanCo: the St. John Heritage Collective, a land rights and cultural heritage preservation nonprofit in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands and a founding member of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective. Follow Dr. Sewer on Twitter and Instagram. 

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Formerly known as British Honduras, Belize's culture has evolved from a series of Black and indigenous people moving to and from the country. In this episode, Dr. Nicole Ramsey shares how these movements have been critical to Belize's identity formation, as well as the growing diaspora in the U.S west coast.
 
Dr. Nicole Ramsey is an interdisciplinary educator, writer and researcher from Los Angeles, California. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American an African Studies at the University of Virginia. Her research examines formations of blackness, identity and nation and is concerned with conceptions of belonging across the circum-Caribbean and particularly in Belize and the Belizean diaspora in the U.S. Follow Nicole on Twitter and Instagram. 

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The Panama Canal was envisioned as a waterway to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans hundreds of years before its construction. When official building began in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century, thousands of  Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean people migrated as laborers to the canal zone. Dr. Kaysha Corinealdi joins us to talk about how their migration transformed Panamanian society and Panama's growing diaspora.

Dr. Kaysha Corinealdi is an Assistant Professor of History at Emerson College. Her research and teaching interests include twentieth century histories of empire, migration, feminism, and Afro-diasporic activism in the Americas. Her forthcoming book, Panama in Black, centers the activism of Afro-Caribbean migrants and their descendants as they navigated practices and policies of anti-Blackness, xenophobia, denationalization, and white supremacy in Panama and the United States. Her research and reviews can also be found in the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, the International Journal of Africana Studies, the Hispanic American Historical Review, and the Global South. Dr. Corinealdi’s research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Follow Dr. Corinealdi on Twitter. 

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Rastafari reggae musician and activist Peter Tosh (1944-1987) was born Winston Hubert McIntosh in Westmoreland, Jamaica. Tosh quickly went on to found musical group The Wailers alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. After the group disbanded in 1974, Tosh continued to make music as a solo artist, with hits like "Legalize It" and "Equal Rights," as well as being an advocate for Black freedom in Jamaica and across the world.  

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We have many differences in the Caribbean, namely language, but also many similarities. In this week's episode, Dr. Margo Groenewoud shares with us the creative, political, and social histories of the Dutch Caribbean and why she believes islands like Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao are sometimes neglected in discussions about the Caribbean region.

Dr. Margo Groenewoud is a Caribbean lecturer and researcher working at the intersection of humanities and social sciences. She obtained a PhD degree at the University of Leiden (humanities) and the University of Curaçao (social sciences). As social historian she specializes in the twentieth century Dutch Caribbean, with as particular interests postcolonialism, social justice, cultural and intellectual history and digital humanities. She is senior lecturer at the University of Curaçao and board member of the University of Curaçao Research Institute (UCRI). Current research projects include Traveling Caribbean Heritage (NWO, 2018-2021) and the Caribbean Studies and Digital Humanities Institute (NEH, 2019-2020). Dr. Groenewoud teaches social justice and community development at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences and is involved in ZonMw funded Participatory Action Research in Public and Mental Health, studying policies and practices relative to equity and inclusion in small island developing societies.

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Puerto Rico is one of America's remaining colonies after being ceded to the U.S. by Spain in 1898. In this episode, Puerto Rican scholar Nina Vazquez discusses the island's long history of colonization and activism in an attempt to become an independent Caribbean island and what are the current beliefs around independence today. 

Nina Vazquez is an aspiring Caribbeanist Historian. She is originally from Aguada, Puerto Rico and she moved stateside where she has earned her Bachelor degree(s) in Criminal Justice and Political Science with a concentration in Racism. She recently graduated from the University of Connecticut with her Master’s Degree in Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latinx Studies. Nina is an avid advocate for Puerto Rican independence and liberation for all women in the Caribbean and across the globe. She is known for her community activism in the state of Connecticut and in Puerto Rico. Nina Vazquez hopes to educate people on Puerto Rico’s history to better understand the island’s status today. Follow Nina on Twitter and Instagram!

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Produced by Breadfruit Media