BASSETERRE, St. Kitts , JULY24th , 2010: Chairperson of the UNESCO Slave Route Project, Dr. Ken Ballentyne, sees the recent public launch of the project as an opportunity for the people and citizens of African roots- here in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis -to look back so as to make way for a better future for us as Black people.
“(It is an) opportunity to look back and reacquaint ourselves with our painful but illustrious and significant part in order to chart a new and wholesome course for the future,” he said.
Dr. Ballentyne made the disclosure in his capacity as the feature speaker at last Tuesday night’s public launch of the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Slave Route project, lecture series and consultations for St. Kitts/Nevis.
The event was held at the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), located at The Gardens.
"Slavery happened, so we can't sweep it like dust under the rug of modern times. We can't change the course of history.....Slavery is the (dreading) of a people's history. Therefore it is not to advocate is return. No not by any stretch of the imagination, it is simply to recall what happened," Dr. Ballentyne outlined.
During his presentation, this UNESCO Slave Route Project official outlined that in the Afkan language there is a term called Sankofa, which means “taking from the past what is good and bringing it to the present in order to make positive progress.”
Dr. Ballenyne explained that Sankofa is portrayed as a mythical bird flying forward while looking backward with an egg in its mouth, highlighting that the egg symbolizes the future.
“Sankofa teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to look forward, that is we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has for the future so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward,” he remarked. “Why Sankofa you asked”, he highlighted while addressing the audience, “because we may have forgotten that our ancestors once lived as free men and women in Africa.
Master of the greatest civilization before they were hunted like animals, kidnapped against their will , forcibly placed in detention enclosers and slave bancoons , shackled with chains, branded and jammed into tight unsanitary spaces in the crowded hall of ram shackled boards for months at a time on the dangerous seas across an infamous middle passage bound for these islands in the Caribbean as products and sold at auctions.”
In another point-among others- made to deliver his message, Dr. Ballentyne also stated: “Why Sankofa, because we must know the truth about the black family. There are those who would tell you that slavery destroyed the black family and so the black condition was blamed on family cruelty rather than poverty, injustice and prejudice.”
He shared that Blacks without family became helpless, lack in kinship and identity and no will to resist. In contrast to those factors blamed for the destruction of the Black family, Interview with ex slaves in 1930s “showed a different story.”
Dr. Ballentyne further explained that author, George Warwick inSun Down to Sown Up, outlined that “The slave community acted like a generalized extend kinship system in which all adults looked after all children and there was little division between my children for whom I’m responsible and your children for whom you’re responsible .
A kind of family relationships in which older children have great responsibility for caring with younger siblings is obviously more functionally integrated and useful to slaves than the pattern of sibling rivalry and often dislike that often comes out of contemporary middle class nuclear families…..”
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