The St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance reveals the name, age, profession, and religious belief of 96 ancestors who were once connected to the Golden Rock plantation on St. Eustatius. This is part of the project "Remember Statia: Tracing Our Origins" that encourages the St. Eustatius community to make the Afrikan history of the island more visible and more personal. The names are available in this online document: https://bit.ly/ancestors-goldenrock
Colonial archives: emancipation registers
The names in the document are taken from the emancipation registers of St. Eustatius. They provide the name, surname, age, gender, profession, and religion of the people of the Golden Rock plantation who were ‘freed’ in 1863. For St. Eustatius, it was a total of 1,075 people who became ‘free’. (It is important to note that these are not the names of the 69 ancestors whose remains were excavated in 2021).
Kenneth Cuvalay, project leader for St. Eustatius: “Getting the names of our ancestors from archival sources and making them known is important to change the narrative. Our ancestors were not just enslaved, they were people with a name, a face, a profession, a story. They came from different countries of the continent of Afrika, they had knowledge, values, and traditions. They survived the crimes and horrors of the Middle Passage; our ancestors virtually live in us."
Changing the narrative: researching and reinterpreting our marginalized history
“Black communities have long been marginalized and isolated with no means to adequately protect or
commemorate our ancestors with the respect they deserve. It's time to change that. We need to tell their story; the past is never really past. Our ancestors were "emancipated" in 1863, but they were given no land to live on and were in no way compensated for hundreds of years of abuse, violence, and exploitation. That is important to realize to understand our current situation. In fact, St. Eustatius is still being colonized by the Netherlands and the African community is still being enslaved in other ways, such as socioeconomically and by the destruction of our historical cultural heritage,'' Cuvalay said. “Preservation is power and in St. Eustatius it is clear whose heritage is being preserved. It is not our heritage; it is that of the colonial powers.”
Participation is still possible
The goal of the project “Remember Statia: Tracing Our Origins.” is not only to support the community to explore its rich African-Caribbean cultural history, but also and especially to narrate the stories of the heroes and heroines, many of whom are buried on plantation The Golden Rock, from oblivion and give them a distinct place in today's St. Eustatius.
It is still possible to participate in the project. If you have roots in St. Eustatius and interested to explore that further, then you are welcome to write a motivation or inspiration of up to 100 words and send it to the project team via website https://bit.ly/statia-ancestors All stories collected will be published.
