"RESISTANCE IN ST. KITTS" - LECTURE SERIES - UNESCO NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SLAVE ROUTE PROJECT

On Tuesday November 8th 2011 at 7:00pm "UNESCO National Scientific Slave Route Project" Committee invites the General Public to a lecture hosted at the University of the West Indies located at The Gardens Basseterre St. Kitts presented by keynote speaker Victoria Borg O'Flaherty entitled, "RESISTANCE IN ST. KITTS".

"Victoria Borg O'Flaherty is the Director of Archives at the National Archives of St. Kitts-Nevis.  She has a degree in History from the University of Malta and an M. Litt. in Archives and Records Management from the University of Dundee.  She was the secretary of the Caribbean Branch of the International Congress on Archives (CARBICA) from 2003 to 2005 and has served and continues to serve on several Advisory Committees dealing with education and culture.  In 2009 she coordinated the Caribbean's successful proposal for the inclusion of the Slave Registers of the Caribbean  in the UNESCO Memory of the World listing and produced the website www.historicbasseterre.com  Her research interests include Kittitian Labour history and resistance to enslavement.  Her research has been featured in a number of prestigious books on Archival Studies and History".

The UNESCO National Scientific Slave Route Committee plans to have a series of lectures that attempt to stimulate dialogue about coming to terms with our colonial past in order to move into the future with a positive outlook.  "The Lecture Series will be organized around three sub‐themes entitled “The Decolonization of the African Mind – An Imperative for the Future”; “Towards a Pan‐Africanist Manifesto: Caribbean Civilization in the context of African Renaissance” and “Demystifying the Reparations Debate”. It will explore and encourage debate about the deeper ontological and epistemological characteristics of the “African‐condition”, i.e. what it means to be a person of African descent in a world which leaves no 

room for who and what we are as “black” people and where the “universal” seems to naturally mean 

“white” (which includes the values and belief systems, and knowledge bases that underpin the Eurocentric 

political, economic and cultural world order in which we live today).

The Series will seek to explore this notion of “Afrian‐ness” and what it means to be part of a community whose experience appears to be “…unique, with its deportation of populations, its transfer of people 

from one continent to another, its distant memories of old beliefs, its fragments of murdered cultures”

(Cesaire, 2004, 82). It will expose the central violence dealt by the Maafa on the African indigenous 

people and people of African origin – the “deculturalization” of the African mind. “Deculturalization” is 

the term used by the enlightened black intelligentsia to refer to the three‐part process designed and 

perfected by the European ruling elite that 1) denigrates and alienates blacks from their African cultural 

heritage, i.e, African languages, religions, customs etc; 2) teaches them to value only the cultural 

orientations, i.e. languages, religions, customs etc, of Europeans and 3) to assimilate them into a Eurocentric 

political, economic, social and cultural order as their faithful supporters and defenders.

The 

deculturalization of the African mind is the root cause behind the apparent intergenerational 

predisposition among Africans and people of African descent to embrace dysfunction and disunity 

within the family and community, “conceptual incarceration”1 and ‘learned indifference”2. It is only 

through a rejection of its underlying tenets and the embrace of “African‐ness” through the 

“decolonization” of the mind can Africans and persons of African descent counter the Maafa and begin 

to conceptualize and envision an alternative and global project of society and civilization steeped in 

African cultural norms and fuelled by a spirit of collective solidarity". Nery's Chiverton - Committee Member, UNESCO Scientific Slave Route Project

Press Release (07/11/11)

"Resistance in St. Kitts"

UNESCO  National Scientific Slave Route Project

St. Kitts Department of Culture

Research & Documentation Unit

Email: stkittsculture@gmail.com

Tel" (869) 467-1396