Recognizing the African Diaspora as Indigenous People

Indigenous Africans in the Americas and Caribbean

By Delroi Williams

One consequence of the European — and the prior Arab[1] — kidnapping of people from Africa is the obscuring[2] of their Indigenous identities. The term “slave” denies both the humanity and the unique sociocultural groups that stolen Africans belonged to.

My ancestors were transported to Jamaica. In Jamaica there are people from the Asante and Fante sub-groups of the Akan people of Ghana, from Yoruba and Igbo peoples of Nigeria, and from the Bantu people in what is now called Congo and Angola. Each group, as well as other smaller groups, have managed, despite inhumane oppression, to retain and adapt aspects of their Indigenous ways of life.

These retentions and adaptations are visible in spiritual communities and vehicles such as (i) “Kumina”[3], a tradition which developed out of the Ki-Kongo speaking cultures of the Kongo and Kimbundu people from what are now Angola, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Republic of Congo; (ii) the Anansi “Spider-Man” trickster stories and ‘folk’ proverbs — derived from the Akan culture; and (iii) in specific places and communities that that are named after important spiritual sites, e.g., Abeokuta in Westmoreland, Jamaica, which is named after its original spiritual home of Abeokuta[4], Ogun State, Nigeria. Alongside this, and infusing Jamaica’s culture, is its unique “patois.” Whilst primarily using English words as a base and content, it uses many African terms, syntax, and speech patterns.

Across the Caribbean and Americas, this process is replicated, whether in the Santeria (or Lucumi) traditions of Cuba, Candomble and Capoeira of Brazil, or “Vodun”[5] in Haiti. Each one of these is an amalgamation, or development of what the Indigenous Africans brought with them in their journey.

Sometimes these retentions were disguised within European forms (e.g., Santeria) or mixed with other Indigenous traditions that were imported along with different populations, i.e., Trinidad’s Shango tradition’s incorporation of influences from the Indian Subcontinent.

I believe that a similar pattern applies to the U.S. Where exists distinct peoples, i.e., the Gullah people, a distinct way of speaking, i.e., “Ebonics,” mythologies from Africa which have entered the “mainstream,” e.g. Brer Rabbit.

	A painting that expresses the notion of African Jamaican roots as well as developments that have occurred

Apects of the Black Baptist traditions are adaptations of the dynamics of West African culture and spirituality, e.g. “call and response” and “being entered by the spirit,” i.e., a form of possession, etc.

Albeit assimilated or compelled to take on and to forge new identities; i.e., Negro, Colo (u) red, Black, African-Americans/Caribbean, the Indigenous peoples of Africa have — in key ways — kept their distinctions and adhered to essential elements of their Indigenous roots.
 

These include:

• A form of spirituality which recognises a Supreme Creator or Principal, with the understanding that “Its” (His/Her) powers are dispensed and dispersed via supernatural forces and elements, or cosmic archetypal characters (The Loa of Haiti or Orissa of Santeria, for example).
• A practice of these elements, forces, or entities being accessed and interacted with for healing, social harmony, and creative purposes.
• Related to the above; inter-dimensional (cosmic) relationships
• A sense of the value, and aliveness of all beings and energies, and of the interconnectedness of life itself
• Reverence for those who have come before us, our “Ancestors,” as well as the interdependent elements of our life-support systems (nature).
• Communal identity, and survival, above individualism and the individual
• Adapting their cultures in line with the demands made/information given by the environment (literal and spiritually) in which they live.

Like the Native American/Indians and Aboriginal cultures, what is present is not as it was (nor should the dynamics of Indigenous peoples be idealized — all societies have conflict and challenges). This does not mean that our Indigenous roots and heritage should not be recognized as being displaced[6] or, for the many whom embrace being “American,” “Jamaican,” etc., relocated Indigenous peoples.

In Jamaica, there is a growing emergence of practitioners who are overtly revivifying their African ancestral/Indigenous spiritual and culture practices alongside their Indigenous Taino culture and spirituality.

My hope is that — rather than attempt to displace — other Indigenous groups, e.g., the Native Americans/Indians, the Taino, and other Indigenous peoples across the Americas/Caribbean, the descendants of the kidnapped Indigenous Africans will be supported in reclaiming our heritage through other conscious movements and people realigning to our own recognition and reclamation of our spiritual and cultural heritage.

That this is overtly recognised and repaired by the restoration of our Indigenous rights, including the right to worship and honor the Creator and its expression of its Creation in our own forms and image, and that all legal and cultural restrictions, such as the leftover laws in Jamaica that expressly prohibit the practice of Indigenous-based African Spirituality (Jamaica’s laws refer to “Obeah”), or that fail to give parity to how Indigenous Africans practice spirituality in the Americas and Caribbean are repealed.

And lastly, that future celebrations and commentary on Indigenous people in the North and South Americas, and across the Caribbean will include African Indigenous descendants, beyond the commonly recognized “Maroon”[7] enclaves[8] and cultures.

Notes:

1. Evidence of the retention of African Indigenous cultures in American is documented in books such as ‘The Akan Diaspora in the Americas[9] .
2. “Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora’”(Joseph M. Murphy) details the common Indigenous African traits of disparate spiritual practices across the Black Caribbean and Americas.
3. 2015 -2025 has been adopted by the UN as the International Decade for People of African Descent
4. African people are accepted as the original Homo Sapiens, which effectively make them the first Indigenous peoples

[1] Read Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons for a fictionalized historic account of these events, and Dr. Chancellor Williams for actual historical details of the displacement and enslavement of Africans by Arabs. Of note also, is the fact that this is currently in the news vis-à-vis Libya, but in fact it has never ended.

[2] Rather than any actual “forgetting,” there has been a deliberate misrepresentation (denigration) of the origins of Africans kidnapped and transported into the ‘Arab’ world, and into the Americas/Caribbean.

[3] Kumina. The “Ba Kongo” people who brought the antecedents of Kumina over were actually free Africans, who voluntarily travelled to Jamaica.

[4]Olumo Rock, in Abeokuta Nigeria – is a Sacred site and centre.

[5] “Vodun,” “Vodoo,” has many variant spellings depending on the specific school of practice

[6] “Dis” the Subterranean God of the Romans, AKA Pluto, which can be equated with our sub-(merged) conscious

[7] Jamaica’s Maroon people, Africans who fought and escaped from the British into the hillsides of Jamaica to join with their Taino predecessors and compatriots.

[8] E.g. the Gullah people of North Carolina

[9] Kwasi Konadu