Yesterday, the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance together with a small group of people from the island, held a ceremony (a ‘libation’) for our African ancestors who are buried at the former Godet plantation.
In June this year, the site was blocked off by the company Statia Roads & Construction that stacked small and big boulders against the cliff. No protection layer was used as any archaeologist would have recommended.
A gentleman of the company said it would be nice if over time the entire site were overgrown with trees and plants. But we won’t let the graves of war victims in the Netherlands grow over with plants, nor the Nazi concentration camps. They are kept in the best possible condition, so that memorial ceremonies can be held, guided tours can be given, awareness can be raised, and together we can say 'no more'.
Slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade were acknowledged by the UN as crimes against humanity. Don’t the African burial grounds on Statia deserve the same amount of respect?
It Matters How We Choose To Remember (tagline of the documentary 'A Story of Bones')
See also our earlier blogposts on the Godet Burial Ground (How not to do archaeological research and 'Monument of Honor’ for enslaved ancestors in St. Eustatius )
Hear, hear! Long, long overdue.
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