Page 4 - 10th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival Magazine

June 2018 Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine

Panton critically analyses the idea of Obeah, Altars and food for the Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival.
Blood Sacrifice as malevolent and dangerous as it is repre- This is enlightening when it comes to the sustainability of
sented in the press. What he found is the continuation of the Earth since one of the main issues that we face is the
African traditional practices in Jamaica, unsurprising in destructive impacts of factory farming of animals for meat
itself, and practices that are not different from other religious production. This slow food cooking that provides a fruit and
practices of the world. He leads us through the history and vegetable rich diet is not only good or us but also good for
culture of the Caribbean as it developed out of the human the planet.
trade in an illuminating article.
A huge challenge to the modern world, living as we are
Another site of resistance to colonial power with Australia’s within the spectre of the Anthropocene is the sustainability
Indigenous peoples. Jenny Fraser an Aboriginal Australian of human relationships. Our Gaama Mama G reminds us of
artist, curator and activist shares with us the backstory to the the importance of fostering respect and the capacity to listen,
Aboriginal protest, Camp Freedom, at the recent to respect the authority of elders, in our children. Though
Commonwealth Games held in Queensland, Australia. The seemingly a small thing, the use of the bench in homes is of
Games were held on her ancestral land that made Camp the highest protocol that leads to “peace-keeping, peace-
Freedom especially relevant to her and her people. The making and peace-building”.
protest was to demonstrate the criminal takeover of
Aboriginal lands for the British Crown, the stolen-wealth These principles are becoming perhaps more important than
that has left Aboriginal remnants of the original violent ever with the growing populations of the world, growing
aggression living in poverty and suffering racist segregation wars and local ethnic conflicts, and the necessity for people
and ostracism in their own lands. This article demonstrates to flee their homelands. The Indigenous protocols to which
the continuing surveillance and aggression of the state in its Gaama Mama G is referring are now required more than ever
ongoing criminalising of Aboriginal people. in order to prevent human conflicts. There is a sense in which
it is Indigenous peoples who become “refugees” from the
Sustainability is evident in the traditional Native use of forces of racism and colonialism, whereby the original
tobacco in the article by sUom Uheri Francis whereby orig- Africans who took to the hills and formed alliances with
inally used carefully for the purposes of insights in Taino, were in fact refugees from the violence of slavery.
ceremony, it has become commodified and used unwisely as And Aboriginal Australians have become refugees in their
an addictive substance in the modern world. sUom now own country. Refugees from the Middle East are mostly
advises us of the original Indigenous use of tobacco that can Indigenous - the Hazara from Afghanistan, the Kurds from
be incorporated into modern lifestyles. Similarly, the art of Iraq, for example. This is why we need to understand the real
weaving that is evident in all Indigenous cultures of the reasons for the growing statelessness of peoples in the world
world is being resurrected and explored by Margaret and know that “there but for the grace of God, go I”.
Somerville and friends in Australia. Margaret explores the
gifts that flow from a group of women sitting together to There is a crisis of huge dimensions in the world with more
practise weaving – the deep sharing, connection and than 68 million people now refugees and stateless – the
knowledge building that emerges from a seemingly simple UNHCR numbers have increased by an average of one
event is enlightening. million per year in the last three years. The young Afghani
refugee now resident in Indonesia, Erfan Dana, writes of his
The Maroon diet, cooking and use of foods from the lands huge life dilemma of being stranded in a country where he
is also enlightening us to the Indigenous ways of eating that is not welcome and made to feel that every day. Any
are sparing when it comes to meat products and highly Indigenous protocol for the welcoming of strangers is clearly
reliant on proteins from vegetable sources. We learn this absent in this context. While not being able to go back to a war
from the interview conducted by Flavius Laidley with zone, and desperately wanting to go forward to live a reasonable
Annette the much loved and very skilled cook, providing the life somewhere in the world, he is stuck in detention with no

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