Story of Garifunas meeting the Caribs and Carib History in Andrea Leland’s Yurumein Homecoming

Going Out and Coming Home in Andrea Leland’s Garifuna Films

By Wendy Griffin 

 

According to spiritual counselor Eckard Tolle in his book “The New Earth”  he says  that our lives have two basic movements. In our youth and adult working years, there is a movement outward into the world, and in our later years, there is a movement going home. Filmaker Andrea Leland’s two Garifuna related films  Garifuna Journey and  Yurumein Homecoming are two sides of the Garifuna-Black Carib story. Andrea Leland currently splits her year between the Virgin Islands and the San Francisco Bay área where she has a son.

 

Her first Garifuna  film documents  the going out into the World of the Garifuna people from Yurumein or St. Vincent a Caribbean island north of Venezuela to Honduras, Central America and eventually to  the United States where an estimated 100,000 live in US large cities like New York City, Chicago, Miami, Houston, New Orleans, and  Los Angeles, the last of which also has the Garifuna Museum of Los Angeles and the Garifuna Film Festival.

 

Her new film documents two homecomings—a Carib doctor of Los Angeles part of the new Caribbean Diaspora towards the United States, Canada and England, who has not been home for 20 years,. The  other travellers going home to a place they had never been were Honduran Garifuna members of The National Garifuna Folklore Ballet, headed for over 40 years by choreographer Armando Cristanto Melendez. Mr. Melendez  is also the author of  several books about Garifunas that are in US libraries.

The occassion for this Homecoming is National Hero’s Day on St. Vincent. The Chief Hero being Chief Joseph Satuye or Chatoyer who led the resistance of the Garifunas  in the Second Carib War, but who was killed in 1796. That battle is also told as a play within a movie in the 2012 award winning movie “Garifuna in Peril” which a good number of US universities own. Leland’s movie shows other sides of Chief Satuye of welcoming Indians and Blacks from other islands where together they made a stand against the British, but they were defeated.

 The surrender speech of Young Satuye, as eloquent as similar Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce’s more famous surrender speech was recorded in British colonial documents.This speaech   in Spanish was  in Dr. William Davidson’s article on the exiling of the Garifunas to Honduras in “Etnología y etnohistoria de Honduras: Ensayos” and on my blog in English http://www.healthandhonduranindiansblacks.blogspot.com .  

Satuye is still important in  Garífuna culture. One of two dance groups of the Garifunas of New York City is Chief Joseph Chatoyer, the ODECO buidling in La Ceiba honduras is named for Satuye, the Gulisi Garifuna Museum of Dangriga, Belize is named for Satuye’s daughter Gulisi who lived to immigrate to Belize.  etc.  

The movie has several parts. One is the homecoming of  Dr. Cardin Gill,  a Carib  family doctor in Los Angeles and St.Vincent Honorary Counsul there. The last name Gill is spelt Gil among Honduran Garifunas like my colleague from the Garifuna Emergency Committee of Honduras Carolina David Gil. He is from Sandy Bay on St. Vincent. According to oral history Sandy Bay Roatan Honduras used to be a mixed Garifuna Black English speaker community, more recently famous for the murder there of the heiress of Majorie Merriweather Post, foreigners having displaced most of the Black English speakers and Garifunas there. They show the cemetary of the Caribs on St.Vincent and last names like Baptiste which became Batiz in Honduras are prominent. The filmmaker wanted to show that the Garífunas and Caribs do still have elements in common, and unlike the Honduran government which is arguing in the Interamerican Human Rights Court that the Garífunas are not indigenous, she believes these two peoples are still related in many ways from foods, ancestors, last names, and the importance of Yurumain and of music.

 

On St.Vincent the Caribs tell their history since the Garifunas went away, just like a traditional homecoming where you each ask How have things been with you since we were last together? This is the most historically accurate telling of the Carib side of the Garifuna history that I have heard. I did not find one historical flaw, other than translating Carib as Cannibal instead of from Kalina a Carib speaking tribe of Guayana,  which other authors of Garifuna related materials will tell you I have sent them long letters with comments on their books. They show their music and foods also, like cassava bread and a banjo like instrument made from a gourd. 

 

The National Garifuna Folkloric Ballet go to Balliceaux Island to honor the estimated 3,000 Garifunas, half the captured population who died  there of bad flour, exposure, poor sanitation, and lack of nourishing food, over the six months they were held there, similar to the situation of the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Crisanto Melendez sprays guaro to purify and Garifuna drummers play the special three feet across heartbeat (lanigui) drums only used to play ancestor songs.

 

Armando Crisanto Melendez  in his unpublished book of Garifuna songs calls the class of songs they played on these drums “Making Peace with the Ancestors”.  Garifuna Music, Dance and Language were Intangible World Heritage Masterpieces by UNESCO thanks to efforts of Belizean Garifunas like the late Andy Palacio, winner of the World Music Expo together with Stonetree Records producer Ivan Duval in 2007 for his CD “Watiña”.

 

Given the genocide that took place on the island of Balliceaux, the subject of legal actions for reparations between the Prime Minister of St. Vincent who appears in the movie talking about those war criminals and Great Britain currently, and the fact that the island is for sale on privateislands.com there is reason to be concerned about unhappy ancestors. The Honduran Garifunas themselves are in danger in that country as well, and Tela área Garifunas,where Crisanto Melendez is from.  are right now in the Interamerican Human Rights Court  Case against Honduras. The blessings of the ancestors usually flow after peace is made with them and between their living descents. Garifunas count descent from common grandparents on both sides of the family.

 

In Leland’s film the Honduran Garifunas teach the Caribs children of St.Vincent one Garifuna Word “mutu”. According to Crisanto Melendez’s books the Word is of Bantu origin. But it means “people” as in “my people” (mi gente) or “our people”(nuestra gente), and it includes the living people and the deceased people. By teaching them that Word Honduran Garifunas are saying to the Caribs even though we have been separated for a long time, from this place we all left and we buried our dead here and we are a “people”  (mutu) together, in spite of that separation. Long separations are not uncommon in Garifuna culture today, but coming home to honor the ancestors is a moral and economic obligation.

 

 The ceremony of imitating the ancestors landing in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize is called Yurumein. This is a Yurumein ceremony in reverse, with the descendants going home to where the ancestors left from. It is now becoming common in our society to call home someplace where you have never been. Movies have been made of Garífunas going from Los Angeles back to Honduras (El Espiritu de Mi Mama), back to Africa (such as Aurelio Martinez's various music vidoes of his song Africa, and Karen William's movie), and now back to Yurumein, the land of the blessed. This type of ceremony can only be seen on Yurumein. 

 

In Leland’s film Dr. Cardin Gill shows off  his Garifuna language skills saying I am a Carib and I am proud of it in Garifuna. Au (masculine form of I in Garifuna comes from the Carib language, while most of the Garifuna language is actually Island Arawak).  The list of masculine Carib words as opposed to feminine Arawak words in Garifuna is in Salvador Suazo’s book Conversemos en Garifunas available on the Internet on the leahonduras website. The Word Garifuna I believe comes from the French Caribphone, meaning Speaker of Carib, regardless of race, while Salvador Suazo believes it comes from Kalipona, people of the Kalina tribe now in Guyana.  Both maybe true.

 

In Leland’s film The Garifunas of the Garifuna National Folklore Ballet, part of Casa Garinagu, part of the Honduran government, were interviewed—Crisanto Melendez, his daugher Ashanti, and another Garifuna woman. Ashanti said she was saddened to see the state of the Caribs, but the Garifuna woman shown in the waves on the cover of the video said, My womb hurt the pain was so powerful. Bathing in the wáter at the end of the dugu ceremony is shown in the Garifuna film El Espiritu de Mi Mama, to send the ancestors home, but this was the reverse like saying, “I have come across the sea to see where you died and to honor you.”

 

 The Yurumain or  Yurumein song of the Garifunas can be Heard for free on the Garifuna Coalition of New York’s website. It is the  National Anthem of the Garifunas. Yurumein means “Land of the Blessed” according to Leland’s movie. The Yurumein song  tells the story of how the Garifunas were rounded up and left St.Vincent, but the chorus tells we went looking for the other Garinagu (the plural of Garifuna, meaning Black Nagu corrupted from Negro in Spanish, and Carib). And in this movie they have found them on St. Vincent/Yurumein.

 

Hay planes de traducir estas películas al español y hacerles disponibles con subtitulos en español.