by Curlan Campbell
- Grenadian filmmaker worked with German production company to create film
- Film documents Kalinago’s first representative in Dominica Government
- 4 screenings in Grenada
As The Commonwealth of Dominica is on track to becoming the world’s first “hurricane-proof” country, the island’s Indigenous Kalinago people are at the forefront of this transformation.
Through immersive cinematography, a new film titled “New Land: The Kalinago Dream” brings to life their experiences of resilience. Grenadian filmmaker and Creative Director of the Grenada Film Company Teddy Dwight Frederick worked with German production company Time of Motion over the last year and a half.
The film documents the life of the Kalinago’s first representative in Government Cozier Frederick, Minister for the Environment, Rural Modernisation and Kalinago Upliftment, who is on a mission to improve the socio-economic condition of the island’s 3,000 indigenous people.
Through their voices, the film provided an on-the-ground look at the tireless fight of the Indigenous Kalinago to preserve their history and culture during disaster recovery, rapid modernisation and the proliferation of invasive cultures that threaten their survival. The documentary, screened in Grenada, received rave reviews from audiences at the Grenada National Museum for secondary school students within St George, a private screening for government ministers and corporate sponsors at the Bay House, and Movie Palace in Grand Anse for the public. On Friday, 17 March 2023, the final screening for secondary school students in St Andrew will be at the Deluxe Cinema.
The island’s recovery after Hurricane Maria, a testament to the Kalinago people’s resilience after losing over 90% of the island’s infrastructure, was among the film’s many sub-topics. Minister Frederick believes the Kalinago people may have the answers to the island’s hurricane-proof future, which stems from their long history of communal living and settlements which took into account climate-resistant housing, environmentally sustainable infrastructure, and communal gardens for food production that enable the repair of local rainforests. “Aspects of our heritage that have helped us to survive for more than 4,000 years in the Caribbean space is what governments and agencies should look towards. So the Kalinago people have a response to climate change [through] their very existence. It speaks to the resiliency, and so when we speak about resilience and climate change, all the practices of my people is what will help the region survive — from how we plant our crops to our architecture and land use management,” Minister Frederick said.
Modernisation and the advent of social media threaten to erode the indigenous cultural norms of the new generations of Kalinago descendants. Dominica’s Environment Minister believes that social media can be used as a resource tool in keeping their ancestral traditions alive.
Minister Frederick said, “Where we find the influx of western society into the livelihoods and homes of young people, we can now provide materials on that very platform that will inform and retell the story. So what has been for a long time a negative issue for us, now we can take it over, and it can now become a tool to re-educate our changing global society.”
Filmmaker Frederick indicated that this was a self-funded project done through the non-profit organisation Yellow Mountain Spaces, a network of creatives with a passion for storytelling through cinematography. He said the experience filming in Dominica was life-changing. “It was an emotional experience simply because our history and heritage were lost in that regard. There are not many physical places or [people] living right now within the space where we can identify as Kalinago. Looking at how vibrant the community in Dominica was, made me feel a little emotional, and I felt like I was robbed of something.”
“We hope that we can keep the conversation of Kalinago; we hope that this will be a pilot into making something more. Grenada also has a lot of beautiful stories, and we also have Kalinago ancestry and history, and it will be nice to tell our side of the story. So we hope to have a follow-up. This is the story of the Lesser Antilles, and Grenada is also part of the Lesser Antilles, so it will be nice to tell the stories of the Lesser Antilles and include Grenada in there as well,” Frederick continued.
Filmmaker Tom Heinemann and photographer Josef Sindelka, integral to the project, brought their knowledge of storytelling. Heinemann, based in Hamburg, Germany, admitted that before being a part of this film, he had no prior knowledge of the Kalinago people. “All we have heard is of Christopher Columbus in our history books and to be honest, at the beginning I was a little bit nervous to go there as a European regarding this sensitive topic and the past that we lived through, but once we arrived there, it was absolutely positive experience. Everyone was extremely open and welcomed us in open arms and trusted us to completely tell their story.”
History books have recorded the atrocities meted out to the Kalinago people upon the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the subsequent arrival of European settlers, who they fought fiercely, eventually leading to the Kalinago people fleeing to the isolated eastern side of Dominica. In 1763, when the British gained complete control of Dominica, the Kalinago were officially given 232 acres of land called the Carib Reserve which expanded to 3,700 acres in 1903. Derogatively called “Carib Indians,” referring to the indigenous people as cannibals, an act of parliament granted the request to be known as “Kalinago” in Dominica in 2015.
