Tag Archives: Christopher Columbus

“[…] Mr Rushton Paray opined that if we removed the ships from our coat of arms and removed the monuments honouring Christopher Columbus and other notorious colonial-era characters, we run the risk of being afflicted with ‘historical amnesia’. “This is a very fallacious argument… Not only Christians but many other …

“[…] India, in the 1990s, replaced the colonial names of its cities with their pre-colonial ancestral names. That country knows something about self-respect. “Christopher Columbus’ three ships on our nation’s coat of arms is a veritable symbol of the genocide and brutal barbarism that was ushered into the Americas with the arrival …

“[…] We have refused to remove a statue, erected by one of our former colonial powers at the entrance to our capital city in honour of Christopher Columbus. Yes, the same Columbus who ushered in a reign of terror in our hemisphere that is unparalleled in the history of the …

“[…] No forced-labour camp in Trinidad and Tobago or anywhere in the world should celebrate enslavers while ridiculing their victims. What prevailed at Lopinot was not just inconsistent with basic human decency and the espoused values of our republic but also with the truth that the historical evidence supports …” …

“[…] the way this history is taught and culturally remembered casts a shadow over our collective consciousness, reifying imperialism and white supremacy … the idealisation of Columbus’ so-called discovery means romanticising oppression, corruption, mass murder and rape…” The following is a joint submission from the Warrao Nation, Partners for First …

“[…] We are at the brink of self-immolation; do we want to continue blithely polluting the space that sustains us? We’ve seen how a few months of reduced human activity has given the Earth some breathing space. “[…] Local debates over the fate of existing monuments have exposed the insidious …

We cannot change the objective facts of history but we can re-examine those facts to better guide our perspectives. Decolonisation is the process of revisiting the objective facts and applying revised perspectives to improve policies. Up until the 1980s, it was not uncommon to find in texts words such as …

“[…] In our desire to bring a quick resolution to this issue, the CRFP has already written to the Honourable Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and dispatched a petition to both the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament, signed by a cross section of prominent local individuals including a descendant …

Dr Kumar Mahabir: “[…] Despite the horrendous history of Columbus, his statue represents a tangible historical link to the Europe, Africa and Asia since 1498. It is one of the few statues of Columbus in the Caribbean and is a destination site for local and foreign tourists…” Corey Gilkes: “[…] …

“Q: If we remove all artefacts of our colonial past, who gets to determine what we replace it with? “A: Duh…We do! And we must make it clear that we do not venerate the protagonists of genocide, slavery, indentureship and apartheid in this land and don’t believe that any of …

“[…] Warao Queen Donna Bermudez Bovel and Chairman of Partners for First People’s Development Roger Belix described statements [from Chief Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community] as traitorous. “Tracy Assing the granddaughter of 5th SRFPC Queen Valentina Medina posted, ‘Not my Chief’ adding: ‘The powers that be …

It ends when there is a decolonised education system so that there is no chance of a person being miseducated by a David Subran, that’s when. His 19 June letter to the editor criticising the calls for the removal of Christopher Columbus’ statue was a shameless genuflecting to the west’s …