Called Xaymaca (Land of Wood and Water) by the Taino, colonized by the Spanish in 1494 and captured by the English in 1655, Jamaica has been through a lot.  Located South of Cuba, Jamaica is a Caribbean island with an eclectic heritage. The Jamaican identity is formed from an amalgamation of peoples with varying backgrounds and cultures. It is often called a true melting pot, with attributes that cannot be replicated anywhere.

Unfortunately, the Jamaican tourism product is marketed as mostly white sand and blue sea. This deprives potential tourists and even Jamaicans of the unique experience Jamaica has to offer.  Jamaica has Fort Charles and the remnants of the Port Royal Earthquake of 1692. Magnificent structures such as the Seville site which has existed since 1509. Every corner in Jamaica has a story and the people are ready to tell it but who knows about this and who stores our history?

What’s this about being cultured?

This brings me to my main point, museums, close your mouth, don’t act surprised, hmph, yes Jamaica has museums and I have worked with one for two years. Museums are institutions that act as repositories of information of heritage and culture. Whether we accept it or not, museums play an important role in identity building. Museums in Jamaica are however undervalued, underexposed and ultimately underutilized. We cannot negate that history and heritage provide frameworks for identity building; they help to form our opinions, make changes and prevent us from making similar mistakes. It is not about being archaic and living in the past, it’s about embracing and “honouring the past and repositioning for the future” (motto of the National Library of Jamaica). The Institute of Jamaica is Jamaica’s premier museum and has been in existence since 1879, yikes right… who wudda thunk it.

Then there is the world famous Bob Marley Museum but lets not jump ahead of ourselves….

With what I believe is the lack of readily available information on museums in Jamaica, I will dedicate my next few blog posts to exploring museums in Jamaica . I hope this will help to start the revolution for a “museum visiting culture” as they provide excellent entertainment… culturally speaking of course.

So to get  things started, I decided to interview Mr. David Stimpson, museum professional from Jamaica  here are the questions I asked:

Me: What do you think is the general culture towards museums in Jamaica?

David: Virtually non-existent. An idea develops among those travelled and what is seen on media, but there is no local museum culture or really even purposive thought on museum work or culture as an organic process.

Me: What’s your view on the idea that museum visiting in Jamaica is for a certain “kind”?

David: What kind I don’t know. Museums tend to be elitist in vision, but this is exaggerated in 3rd world countries where there are such disparities in education/awareness levels and certain values.

Me: What role does the museum play in the retention of culture in Jamaica?

David: Actually, probably very little generally speaking, given that the conventional value-system our museums still reflects (not current representation of cultures) have so little relationship with the real world goals.

Me: With Jamaica having so many historical sites, why do you think we are still marketed in tourism as blue sea and white sand?

David: We don’t have so many, but with those we do, I’d say because we – our private/public leadership don’t respect or believe enough in local heritage values, they always return to the image/stereotype the media feeds to the foreign market.

Me: Would marketing Jamaica’s culture as an essential part of our tourism package put the culture at risk to “dilution?

David: Once a dollar value commodities and quantifies anything, it becomes subject to the vagaries of the market, controlled and eventually undermined by the need for  money as the prime cause.

Me: Museums have a reputation for being institutions of the past, how then do you market these institutions as institutions of or with relevance?

David: It seems to me that their relevance must come by tying present circumstances and trends to their historic origins, not the inverse as is typical. How to achieve this is what we (museum professionals) are entrusted to figure out. The people’s museum (referring to the People’s Museum of Craft and Technology in Spanish Town) idea of using excelsior crackers as a gimmick exemplifying a custom now with an industrial spin is sort of what might help.

The next blog post will  look at an exhibition from the Institute of Jamaica…. See you soon.

It is so hard, so difficult to find men who will stick to a purpose, who will maintain a principle for the worth of that principle, for the good of that purpose needs and if there is a race that needs such men in the world today; God Almighty knows it is the race of which I am a member. …… Marcus Garvey

In the late 1900s (around 1969-71), Professor the Honourable Rex Nettleford published an essay on race and identity in Jamaica. The essay titled “Mirror Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica, was an interrogative essay on racial issues and racial sensitivity in Jamaica. The essay was written at a time when racial issues were intrinsically linked to a person’s achievements and status. The Jamaican situation at the time was possibly a reflection of what was happening in the rest of the world, in particular America, where the colour of a person’s skin was a deciding factor for status.

Fast-forward to 2010 and it appears that Jamaica is still struggling from this identity “crisis” but the reverse has happened. Racial hatred is being perpetuated by the once oppressed majority, in particular those who constantly recite the mantra “black first”.

Hatred is still being perpetuated by those who often pervert history to confirm their belief that they have more rights to Jamaican than anyone else. While it is obvious that Jamaica has a predominantly black population, what gives us the right to decide that those Jamaicans who are not obviously black, are “illegitimate Jamaicans”, “bastard children” even, isn’t this reinventing the wheels of discrimination?

Sociologist Carl Stone posits that what Jamaica should be “seeking to build is a country with maximum opportunities for all to develop their talents and gifts (regardless of race, colour and class background) allowing the brightest and the best to rise to the top and breaking through barriers of class, gender and racial discrimination while providing handsome rewards for the achievers”. This is the direction that Jamaica needs to head in, where we create environments with easily accessible opportunities, environments where all humans are created equal and treated as such, a concept called “unconditional human regard”.

We need to learn to appreciate every aspect of our culture and accept the notion (as mystified as it might seem to some) that a true Jamaican identity is perhaps one that accepts that our culture is an amalgamation of things Chinese, European, African, and Indian among others.

On August 17, 2010, Jamaica celebrated the life of the first National Hero, the Rt Hon. Marcus Garvey. After attending events that were geared to celebrate his life, I left with the conclusion that Garvey must be rolling in his grave as we still perpetuating racial inequality , something he fought to dismantle.

From reading the Philosophies and Opinions of Marcus Garvey’s, I am convinced that his movement, often labeled, “race first” was an attempt to spread a thought that “given time, opportunity and self-confidence, the negro could equal the whites in all the latter’s intellectual, cultural and technological attainments” (Rex Nettleford “Mirror Mirror”). This simply means that given the access to the right opportunities we can achieve anything.

I was involved in a conversation with someone where I was informed that the whites are the “devil” and still have a conspiracy to hold the black man down and Jamaica is a black nation and the other races have no place in Jamaica or right to Jamaica.

It begs the questions, who has more rights to Jamaica and how do we determine this right? While the majority of Jamaica’s population is indubitably of African descent, history shows that the Jews, Spanish, Tainos were here before us. My resolve is as Rex Nettleford said in Mirror Mirror, that one thing remains constant among all of us and that is “we are all immigrants some more longstanding than others but still immigrants”. Thus I have concluded that none of us has more rights to Jamaica than the other.

Marcus Garvey existed in a period where it was extremely difficult; more so than now, to be a black man. I can accept his view that there was a conspiracy to keep the black man down, but is this really the case in the 21st century? Even if there is an unknown conspiracy among the whites, there are many legal acts that have been declared to protect the rights of man, whether he is Negroid, Mongoloid, or Caucasian. Why don’t we honour Garvey by making our mark in the world? Marcus Garvey did say that in order for there to be world peace, it would require all races coming together and ending exploitation.

The persistent use of racial slurs among ethnocentric groups is an attempt to live in the past. A past that our ancestors, including Mr. Garvey, fought to change, a past that perpetuated the injustice that anything black is “no good”, is being reversed to say, anything that is not black is “no good”. We must understand that we can change the perception of Africa as tribal and poor without imposing destructive ethnocentric views.

I conclude that, it is time we try our best to empower ourselves and seek to live in harmony. Living as Marcus Garvey did, to make our work and talents be the voice of our worth, justifying our confidence as a race. Liberating the mind of men and changing the world.