The loss of Carib Queen Valenti­na Ass­ing Med­i­na which was memo­ri­alised on Fri­day marks a key mile­stone in the con­tin­u­ing ef­forts of the lo­cal Carib com­mu­ni­ty to carve out a dis­tinct space for them­selves in the land­scape of mod­ern Trinidad and To­ba­go.At the fu­ner­al on Sat­ur­day, a sur­pris­ing­ly emo­tion­al Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters, made an im­pas­sioned plea for the com­mu­ni­ty to hang to­geth­er or risk falling apart.

"You are your worst en­e­my," Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters warned the con­gre­ga­tion in a tone that seemed to con­vey a mix of frus­tra­tion and loss.The need to present the Carib com­mu­ni­ty as uni­fied and co­or­di­nat­ed isn't sim­ply a mat­ter of get­ting things to­geth­er for a com­mon cause.As film­mak­er and jour­nal­ist Tra­cy Ass­ing not­ed in an es­say, The Long Walk Home, pub­lished in Caribbean Beat, "I stopped par­tic­i­pat­ing in the [San­ta Rosa] fes­ti­val when I was eight. Even at that age I re­alised that the sto­ry of its ori­gin might have been on­ly as re­al as the tales that cap­tured my imag­i­na­tion in the books of Enid Bly­ton."

Ass­ing cre­at­ed a tan­gi­ble cor­rec­tive to the con­tra­dic­to­ry sto­ries she grew up with in a film, The Amerindi­ans, first screened in 2010.Raised as a Carib de­scen­dant, Ass­ing's strug­gles to rec­on­cile the his­to­ry her fam­i­ly shared with her with the of­fi­cial his­to­ries of Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for the doc­u­men­tary's nar­ra­tive.The young film­mak­er, who grew up call­ing Valenti­na Ass­ing Med­i­na "Aun­ty Mavis," cre­at­ed an im­por­tant doc­u­ment in the nar­ra­tive of the First Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, whose his­to­ry lives on large­ly in the sto­ries passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, un­doc­u­ment­ed by the many con­querors who came to this is­land.

Un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, the Carib com­mu­ni­ty was giv­en five acres of land at Blan­chisseuse Old Road in Ari­ma and Min­is­ter Pe­ters seems keen to am­pli­fy that gift with in­put from his gov­ern­ment's re­sources.At this point in the his­to­ry of the Carib com­mu­ni­ty, with par­tic­i­pa­tion by the youngest de­scen­dants of the orig­i­nal in­hab­i­tants of this coun­try dwin­dling, the most crit­i­cal space that cham­pi­ons of this com­mu­ni­ty can oc­cu­py is in the minds of the larg­er pop­u­la­tion.

Re­build­ing the nar­ra­tive of the First Peo­ple in the con­scious­ness and con­ver­sa­tions of the larg­er pop­u­la­tion and stok­ing pride and in­ter­est among the scat­tered gen­er­a­tions of de­scen­dants will do as much for the Carib com­mu­ni­ty's cause as the con­struc­tion of the pro­posed mu­se­um, craft cen­tres and recre­ations of his­tor­i­cal vil­lage life.

Los­ing Valenti­na Med­i­na was, ul­ti­mate­ly, the loss of a re­mark­able re­source of knowl­edge and mem­o­ry of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the old­est tru­ly na­tive cul­ture that this coun­try can claim as its own.The for­ma­tion of the Carib San­ta Rosa Com­mu­ni­ty in 1974 has been an ef­fort at not just stak­ing a claim on that kind of mem­o­ry, but an at­tempt at knit­ting the sto­ries of the re­gion in­to a larg­er his­to­ry and cul­tur­al archive as that or­gan­i­sa­tion has reached out to sur­viv­ing Amerindi­an tribes in the re­gion.

Gath­er­ing these sto­ries and re­build­ing the rich, nat­ur­al nar­ra­tive of the lifestyles and his­to­ry of the first in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the on­ly way to pro­vide a re­al al­ter­na­tive to the read­i­ly con­sumed temp­ta­tions avail­able in the at­trac­tive­ly pack­aged fic­tions of for­eign en­ter­tain­ment.These are not sim­ple mat­ters, and time is against the el­ders of the Carib com­mu­ni­ty. En­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing ef­forts of lo­cal doc­u­men­tar­i­ans to pre­serve the his­to­ry and tra­di­tions of the old­est el­e­ments of our his­to­ry in mod­ern me­dia should be the first point of in­ter­ven­tion by the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in ad­vanc­ing the fu­ture of the lo­cal Carib com­mu­ni­ty.