Dara E Healy

Every year the open­ing of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage is marked by a cer­e­mo­ny found­ed in African tra­di­tions. This cer­e­mo­ny is called the Bless­ing of the Ground. Vir­tu­al­ly all African tra­di­tions, in­clud­ing their be­lief sys­tems, were for­bid­den for cen­turies. nsti­tu­tion­alised en­slave­ment here in the Caribbean, the Unit­ed States and oth­er parts of the world forced the be­lief sys­tems un­der­ground, but as we will see, the strength of the faith re­mained. The process of men­tal en­slave­ment–re­li­gion is a spir­i­tu­al weapon, witch­craft, su­per­sti­tion, hea­thenism, loath­some pa­gan idol­a­try. These are just a few of the de­grad­ing de­scrip­tions of tra­di­tion­al African re­li­gion used dur­ing the cen­turies of en­slave­ment.

Re­search in­di­cates that re­li­gion was used as a weapon in the fight to jus­ti­fy the in­sti­tu­tion of slav­ery. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, while Chris­tian­i­ty was in­tro­duced both on the African con­ti­nent and in the di­as­po­ra to show the hea­thens the er­ror of their ways, there were just as many vig­or­ous at­tempts to pre­vent them from be­ing able to read the Bible.

Why? Learn­ing about a bet­ter, whiter God was one thing, but there was re­al fear that if the en­slaved ac­tu­al­ly be­gan to read the Bible and learnt of the teach­ings of Je­sus, that they would have be­gun to en­ter­tain no­tions of equal­i­ty.

Over time, there evolved an in­sid­i­ous prac­tice of as­sign­ing qual­i­ties to skin colour. For in­stance, Africa came to be called The Dark Con­ti­nent, and the skin of black peo­ple was equat­ed with "dark­ness, evil, sin, and the dev­il," while white skin with "pu­ri­ty, in­no­cence and light." This was tak­en to mean that the Eu­ro­pean Chris­t­ian God was pur­er, bet­ter, and there­fore was the on­ly form in which god should be wor­shipped.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ones who prayed to this bet­ter god were in charge of the glob­al so­cial and eco­nom­ic sys­tem, while the ones who were en­slaved were not. In oth­er words, even if one did not be­lieve that dif­fer­ences in skin colour meant that one was in­fe­ri­or and the oth­er su­pe­ri­or, sure­ly the bal­ance of pow­er in the world at the time meant that this was how it was sup­posed to be.

Bat­tle for spir­i­tu­al free­dom

Through­out the Caribbean, there were lead­ers who turned this idea of re­li­gion as op­pres­sive tool on its head, and used it against the en­slavers. Fran­cois Makan­dal from Haiti is one of these. Orig­i­nal­ly said to be from Guinea in Africa, re­search de­scribed him as a prophet who was able to pre­dict the fu­ture and had rev­e­la­tions. It would ap­pear that he al­ready knew how to read and write in Ara­bic. His mys­ti­cal rep­u­ta­tion grew af­ter he lost a hand in an ac­ci­dent and fled to the hills, where he still in­flu­enced the en­slaved to re­sist.

Sam Sharpe of Ja­maica was en­slaved all his life, but some­how he was al­lowed to be ed­u­cat­ed. Records in­di­cate that he be­came a Bap­tist dea­con and was well re­spect­ed by his fel­low en­slaved. In 1831 it was felt that free­dom had been grant­ed by the Crown, and Sharpe lead a peace­ful strike across the plan­ta­tions at a crit­i­cal time–the har­vest­ing of cane. Some of the en­slaved burned the crops and the cam­paign of pas­sive re­sis­tance es­ca­lat­ed in­to a full re­bel­lion known as the Christ­mas Re­bel­lion. Sam Sharpe was hanged in 1832.

Keep seek­ing knowl­edge and keep read­ing this space for more Vibes from the Vil­lage!

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Dara E Healy is the founder of the Idake­da Group and a con­sul­tant in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, spe­cial­is­ing in cul­tur­al and her­itage event man­age­ment.

www.idakeda­group.com

darae@obeliskcom­mu­ni­ca­tions.com