The Garifuna Journey Celebrating the Resiliency of the Indigenous People of Belize
A celebratory documentary, with engaging scenes of fishing, cooking, dancing, cassava preparation, thatching a temple, spiritual ritual, music and dance all demonstrating the Garifuna link to the Carib-African past.
Descendants of African and Carib-Indian ancestors, the Garifuna fought to maintain their homeland and resisted slavery. For this love of freedom, they were exiled from St. Vincent in the Caribbean by the British in 1797. Despite exile and subsequent Diaspora, their traditional culture survives today. It is a little known story that deserves its place in the annals of the African Diaspora. In first person Garifuna voices, this documentary presents the history, the language, food, music, dance and spirituality of the Garifuna culture.
Running Time
46 mins
Year
1998
Kanopy ID
1144888
Filmmakers
Subjects
Show More
Related videos
Yurumein (Homeland) - The Caribs / Garifuna of St. Vincent in the Caribbean
An untold history of the indigenous Caribs on St. Vincent: their near extermination and exile by the British 200 years ago; and return of some in the Diaspora to reconnect with those left behind. A postcolonial story of re-identification.
The Black Caribs, on the island of St. Vincent in the…
Play, Jankun Play - The Garifuna Wanaragua Ritual of Belize
The Garifuna are a Central American people of West African and Native American descent. One of their most popular rituals is wanaragua, a three-fold system of masked Christmas processionals commonly called Jankunu. This ritual is a unique blend of African, European, and Native American (Arawak and Carib) art traditions in…
Opre Roma: Gypsies in Canada
This documentary celebrates the vibrant culture and tenacious struggle of the Gypsy. There is a new generation of Roma who claim their Gypsy roots with pride, while fighting the myths that caused their parents to live in fear. They call themselves by their rightful name, the Roma. Since the Roma…
Iindawo Zikathixo (In God's Places)
Iindawo Zikathixo traces the Khoisan (Bushman) cultural legacy in south-eastern Africa. The film features the sublime Bushman rock art as a background against which the story of the Bushmen unfolds.
Bushmen hunter-gatherers were the first people to inhabit the southern African landscape. For thousands of years, they migrated over the…
Seasons of Migration
Seasons of Migration (56 min) is a documentary about Sophilene Cheam Shapiro's four part classical Cambodian dance about the stages of culture shock. It blends the dance with commentary about the music and choreography, and personal stories of emigration and culture shock from Cambodian-American residents of Long Beach, California (the…
Movement (R)evolution Africa
Where are the stories of fiercely creative African individuals and what do they have to tell us about their lives? Meet Movement (R)evolution Africa's choreographic trendsetters. Hailing from Senegal to South Africa, the perspectives and creative processes of these dancers and choreographers present fresh images of Africa, and bring to…
!Kung Short Films Series
Between 1950 and 1958, John Marshall made four expeditions to film the Ju/'hoansi (a group of !Kung Bushmen) of the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia (then South West Africa). Marshall and his family, who together undertook an extensive multi-disciplinary study of Ju/'hoansi, spent the greatest amount of time with the…
The Nuer
"Portrays the Nuer, Nilotic herdsmen of the Nile basin. Shows how their daily lives revolve about their cattle, and depicts the psychological bonds between them. Includes extensive use of Nuer music and poetry."
"A poetic film concentrating on evocative images of life among a group of Nuer living in Ethiopia.…
Fambul Tok
Seven years after the last bullet was fired, a decade of brutal fighting in Sierra Leone finds resolution as people come together to talk around traditional village bonfires. Some had perpetrated terrible crimes against friends or family. Some had faced horrible losses: loved ones murdered, limbs severed. But as they…
Tubabs In Africa
In the Gambia, West Africa, locals have a name for foreigners; they call them "Tubabs" a term derived from "two bob", the standard fee British colonialists used to pay Gambians for odd jobs. In this film we follow a group of students from St. Mary's College in Maryland on a…
The Islanders
Above the tip of Cape York, beyond the northernmost point of the Australian continent, are the Torres Strait Islands. The economy here is based on home gardens and pearlshell fishing. The culture, with its basis in music, dancing and ceremony, provides a striking contrast to that of mainland Australia. This…
African Dance: Sand, Drum, and Shostakovich
This documentary explores African contemporary dance through eight modern dance companies from Africa, Europe and Canada that participated in the Festival International de Nouvelle Danse in Montreal, Canada in 1999. Interviews, including those with dance historians Yacouba Konate and Alponse Tierou, add insight to beautifully-photographed performances. What emerges is a…
Comments (1)
I have been working collaboratively with the Garifuna community in Belize, the United States and on St. Vincent in the Caribbean since 1994. When traveling in the Caribbean in the 1980’s I had heard about the “Black Caribs” who had been exiled from St. Vincent to Central America for ...Read more
I have been working collaboratively with the Garifuna community in Belize, the United States and on St. Vincent in the Caribbean since 1994. When traveling in the Caribbean in the 1980’s I had heard about the “Black Caribs” who had been exiled from St. Vincent to Central America for resisting slavery. The British colonialists wrote about them as savages and cannibals, a sentiment that is still prevalent today in some parts of the Caribbean. After years of investigation in libraries and by word of mouth, I was directed to the Garifuna community in Belize and learned of their connection to St. Vincent. These were descendants of those Caribs who had been exiled and their culture was very much alive and thriving. I met with the National Garifuna Council to ask if I could make a documentary telling their story. After a few days of meetings, they agreed to collaborate and tell REAL story of the Garifuna people and their culture. The result was an “insider / outsider” collaboration, unique in visual anthropology. I have been honored to work with Garifuna tradition bearers in Central America, the United States and the Caribbean ever since.
After making THE GARIFUNA JOURNEY, I was invited to St. Vincent to present the films in villages across the island. Some of those in the audience were descendants of the Caribs who hid in the mountains and were not exiled. These men and women had a very emotional response to the film: they cried, they berated their own lives and lack of culture and longed to meet their long lost brethren. I picked up a camera and began to record their story, not the version given in the history books written by the British. During the filming, some members of the Diaspora travelled to St. Vincent for the first time. They physically and spiritually reconnected with their homeland, their ancestors and the Caribs / Garifuna still living on the island today. The two film, THE GARIFUNA JOURNEY and YURUMEIN (HOMELAND) are a testament to the resiliency of the Garifuna people.
Read less