Princess Eulogia of the Garifuna (Black Caribs) visits U.K.

Princess Eulogia of Garifuna

Princess Eulogia of the Garifuna (Black Caribs) visits U.K.

We are excited to welcome from the U.S to the U.K Princess Eulogia for her upcoming visit to London.

Princess Eulogia, is a descendant of the Garifuna people and a prominent cultural ambassador, she will be in London from May 24th to 26th, 2024, for the Women Changing the World Summit & Awards hosted by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. Who along with her connections to the British royal family. She is also known for her charitable work, writing children's books, and her occasional appearances in the media.

Black News will be doing an exclusive interview with Princess Eulogia about her cultural heritage, advocacy work, and participation in the summit. Including her Garifuna heritage, and lineage connected to Chief Joseph Chatoyer, the leader of the Garifuna resistance during the Carib Wars.

We will be joined by a family member from Scotland. to discuss the cultural artifacts held at the British Museum made by Princess Eulogia's family as well as  Chief Joseph Chatoyer's  "Punch Ladle, 1773” on display in the “London, Sugar & Slavery” exhibition at Museum of London Docklands (UK). A placard identifies the ladle as once belonging to “Chatoyer, Chief of the Caribs” and as on loan by the West India Committee.

Princess Eulogia represents as her publicist Blair Hayse who is a multi-award-winning bestselling author and CEO of Girl On Fire Magazine and is a finalist for the Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Impact Award. Her commitment to fostering inclusivity and celebrating diverse voices aligns perfectly with the ethos of this summit.

They will also be joined at the summit by Dr. Terari Trent from Zimbabwe who Oprah Winfrey named as her all-time favorite guest who received a $1.5 million donation to rebuild her childhood elementary school, in recognition of her tireless never giving up attitude. With the firm belief that education is the pathway out of poverty, and the desire to give back to her community. Dr Trent founded the Terari Trent International.

Princess Eulogia will also be providing firsthand insights into the *Garifuna International Indigenous Film Festival:**  now in its 13th year, founded and produced by Queen Mother Freda Sideroff, Princess Eulogia's mother. The festival celebrates indigenous cultures through film and has become a vital platform for cultural preservation.

Princess Eulogia will be discussing in depth as mentioned her cultural heritage, contemporary advocacy, and international collaborations.

Garifuna, also known as Garinagu, are the descendants of an Afro-indigenous population from the Caribbean island of St Vincent who were exiled to the Honduran coast in the eighteenth century and subsequently moved to Belize.

Garifuna mainly live on the coast but are also very present in towns and villages. Some Garifuna live alongside the Creole population in the main towns.

Garifuna communities live mainly on agriculture, fishing and foreign remittances sent by relatives abroad. Some are also involved in the technical trades. Garifuna who live in the rural areas mainly pursue a subsistence lifestyle, while those in the urban areas live similarly to their Creole neighbours, pursuing professional occupations.

Historical context

Origins

The Garifuna (a.k.a Black Caribs) are of mixed African and indigenous Kalinago-Taino (Carib-Arawak) origin. (See also Guyana)

They are the descendants of the African survivors of human cargo ships that were wrecked off the island of St Vincent around 1675. These West Africans, along with the steady stream of maroons escaping slavery on other Caribbean islands, found refuge and started families with the indigenous Kalinago (Carib) population. An Afro-indigenous culture developed that existed independently of the region’s colonial forced labour plantation system. They became known as the Black Caribs or Garifuna.

The so-called ‘Black Caribs’ together with the indigenous Kalinago created a formidable fighting force that resisted European colonizing efforts in the region for over a century, forcing both the British and French to recognize St Vincent as one of several ‘Neutral Islands’ (See Dominica and Saint Vincent)

Conflict between the British and the Black or Fighting Caribs, led by defiant Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer (Satuye) continued until 1796, when improved British armaments forced them to accept permanent exile as prisoners of war.

In April 1797, over 5,000 ‘Black Caribs’ (Garifuna) were transported on British ships and abandoned on the deserted Honduran Bay Island of Roatan. Many later moved to the mainland of Honduras and became allied with Spain.

The Garifuna fought with Spain against British pirates and military attacks. They also took the Royalist side in the Central American Independence wars against Spain and as a result became a highly marginalized population in post-independence Honduras. (See Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua).

Re-migration

Support for the defeated Conservative forces brought charges of treason in the 1830s and prompted a further maritime dispersion to coastal areas in neighbouring Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize. The first settlement in Belize was established at Dangriga, which still holds the largest Garifuna population in the country.

Problems later in Honduras with the Tiburcio Carias liberal dictatorship in 1937 led to another exodus. Twenty-two Garifuna men in the community of San Juan were forced to dig their own graves and then executed following false charges of treason. The rest of the community escaped to Belize and established the village of Hopkins.

On the relatively isolated coast Garifuna were able to maintain their language, and other cultural practices. In their communities women did agricultural work, men engaged in fishing and artisan activities and traded their produce along the Central American coast.

In Belize, Garifuna men also worked as loggers in mahogany camps and earned positions of responsibility within the company hierarchies. They also sought income opportunities in US banana enclaves in Guatemala and Honduras and became merchant mariners on fruit company boats or migrated to the US.

Garifuna today

The Garifuna in Belize now have six communities which have taken a leadership role in maintaining global Garifuna culture. There has been some cultural assimilation into the dominant Creole culture. However in their communities Garifuna have continued to maintain their other traditions.

Understanding of Creole culture has enabled the Garifuna to have the government declare November 19th as Settlement Day in Belize to mark the arrival of Garifuna in the country. This celebration includes reenactments of the landing of the first Garifuna boats in Belize. These are performed in various urban areas and include performances by cultural drummers and dancers and the sale of traditional foods.

Coming from a country with a 90 per cent literacy rate and having English as a first language has also meant that Garifuna from Belize who migrate to the US are in much better position than others in Central America to have access to further education and to better paying administrative jobs.

Furthermore the intellectual environment of Anglophone Belize and its cultural connection to the English-speaking Caribbean has meant that Belize Garifuna have been in the forefront of research into Garifuna regional history and in the organization of Afro-descendants in Central America and the over 100,000 Garinagu migrants who live the US.

Current issues

The struggle to maintain their community is largely a cultural one as Garifuna have retained a number of Afro-Caribbean traditions in addition to their language.

Garifuna have traditionally been discriminated against and demonized by some, principally because in a Creole culture with a tradition of enslavement and Euro-centred assimilation, Garifuna have sometimes been negatively stereotyped as being too elemental and rural.

Nevertheless the Garifuna have continued to maintain their distinct customs and kept on regarding themselves as being justifiably different as a result of their steadfast maintenance of ancestral culture and their unique history of successful anti-slavery maroon resistance. (See Jamaica).

Nevertheless in recent years the Garifuna minority have become increasingly more allied to the dominant Creole population in light of a mutually shared African ancestral origin and the tendency of younger generations to interact within a common modernist transnational cultural framework.

As an often stereotyped Afro-indigenous minority, the issue of perception is of continuing importance to the Garifuna of Belize. This is both from an Afro-descendant as well as an indigenous perspective.


The Garinagu people, whose language and culture is called Garifuna, descend from shipwrecked Africans whose ancestry can be traced back to the Yoruba, Ibo, and Ashanti tribes of Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.