Garinagu Are Indigenous Peoples

I Myrtle Palacio
January 2021

In Belize there are two groups of indigenous peoples—the Maya and the Garifuna. YES, the Garifuna!.

And while the awareness about indigeneity is limited to only the Maya, the other group is disregarded or overlooked. Presently our schools invariably attribute to this gross misinformation in the teachings of the subject Belizean Studies. This require urgent correction.

The Black Caribs as descendants of Arawaks and Carib Indians are of Amerindian, Aboriginal heritage. As descendants of Africans they are also of African heritage. A meeting of African slaves and Arawaks/Caribs from South American in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and other Eastern Caribbean countries in the 1600’s formed the “Black Caribs”.

The journey to Belize started in 1797 after their expulsion from their homeland of St. Vincent and dumped on Roatan in Honduras by the British. Mass movement of “Black Caribs” to Belize from Honduras was in 1832, when large numbers from Trujillo escaped to save their lives. This was after the defeat of conservative Spanish forces who enlisted their support in an effort to re-establish Spanish colonial possession of Honduras.

Through the advocacy efforts of Garifuna scholars and leaders in the mid-1970’s, the term Garifuna gained currency and was legitimized as a way of expressing identity in place of “Black Carib”. “Black Carib” was perceived as the Anglo version, which contradicted with the name the people used and continue to use as self-identification.

To reiterate the Garifuna people are biologically and culturally indigenous to the Circum Caribbean sub-region, where Belize is located. Their biological and cultural origins come from the Arawak and Carib peoples, and an intermixture with Africans which took place in the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent.

So, in reinforcing the above mentioned information, the Garinagu are one of the two groups of indigenous peoples in Belize due to their aboriginal origin and being natives of the Caribbean region. Both language and people are called Garifuna in the singular form and Garinagu in the plural form.

References:

Adugurahani—A Walk Through Garifuna Spirituality, I Myrtle Palacio 2011
Redefining Ethnicity—The Experience of the Garifuna and Creole in Post-independent
Belize, I Myrtle Palacio, M. Sc. Thesis 1995