AUTHOR Mark Twain says, “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Environmental controversies have a subtle rhythm. History has patterns.
A calypsonian this year may sing “Yuh can’t kill Cahill. Not suh easy. Yuh cu’nt kill Greenland so yuh better had leave me.”
High stakes deals “die hard” like actor Bruce Willis’ character John McClane.
Ken Saro Wiwa was an environmental activist who suffered a hard death. In the 1990s the Nigerian waged a non-violent campaign against the Shell Oil Company. Oil drilling and dumping of waste materials caused an environmental disaster in the area where Saro Wiwa was from.
For his efforts the Nigerian government trumped up charges and executed him. Shell never admitted having any influence on the actions of the Nigerian government. They did settle a lawsuit out of court and agreed to pay US$15.5 million to the families of Saro Wiwa and the others killed with him.
The grieving families may have related to the song by Pic-O-De-Crop king, Classic, All O Dem In Bed Together.
This may be the rhythm behind the operations of some international companies in the Third World. Also in the 90s, a Shell pipeline leaked gallons of oil, polluting agricultural land on the south coast of Barbados. The then Barbadian Government administration was unable or unwilling to hold Shell fully accountable.
Dozens of Bajan Ken Saro Wiwas attended town hall meetings on the proposed Cahill project. They were intent on holding the authors of the plan accountable. From all accounts, theirs was a formidable showing. Rarely is there an issue in Barbados that so unites persons from different classes and races like this issue does.
If history is any indication, it will take a broad-based mass movement to kill Cahill. A handful of farmers from Christ Church were no match for Shell. A few voices in the wilderness did nothing to prevent the Greenland landfill.
No identity
However, as pointed out by author Aldous Huxley, the most important lesson from history is that men do not learn from history. How can we, if we don’t even respect it and those who tell it?
Fellow columnist Dr Frances Chandler asked last week, “Why do historians get stuck in the past and reduce every issue to history and race? Every ill we suffer from is apparently because of slavery and colonialism. Is this where we should be after 50 years of Independence?”
Though I am no historian, I will attempt to answer.
Imagine you woke up this morning with amnesia. You have no recollection of your past. Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you be? Have you ever had a loved one who wandered away from home, suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s?
In an excerpt from a BBC lecture, famous scientist Stephen Hawking argues that without our history, a sense of the past, we have no identity.
Imagine that your grandmother, confused and disoriented from Alzheimer’s, finds herself at the door of someone who extends a hand and tells her, “Your past does not matter. Do not try and remember. Come and live with me.”
Sankofa is a principle of the Ashanti people of Ghana, West Africa. It says that you should look to the past in order to chart your way forward. Nothing controversial about this, except when persons feel threatened by what the past may reveal.
Then they say, “Forget about it, move on, leave the past in the past.”
This should not need repeating but… for around 200 years black Barbadians were enslaved and white Barbadians grew rich from that enslavement. For another 100 years black Barbadians existed in a condition akin to slavery called colonialism. After 300 years of race-based slavery and colonialism Barbados became “Independent”.
Slavery a part of us
Do the 50 years of Independence have more impact than the 300 years of bondage? To paraphrase Bob Marley, hundreds of years of slavery are not wiped away so easily.
When granny with Alzheimer’s wanders from home, the person who finds her may treat her well, wash, clothe and feed her. But we will not look kindly on that person if granny wakes up one morning and decides she wants to find her family, and that person tries to discourage her.
My questions for Dr Chandler would be, “Is it all history and historians to which we should be opposed, or just black history and historians. How can we dismiss those who specialise in exposing us to black history without addressing those who have historically sought to cover it up?”
My suggestion is that it is the avoidance of openly, directly and vigorously addressing history that causes us to trip on it like a bulge under the rug. Again Bob Marley tells us that half the story has never been told.
When we say things like “Sugar made us free,” we tell half the story. Sugar was the reason we were enslaved in the first place. When we say “Admiral Nelson saved us from the French,” we only tell half the story. Who was supposed to save us from the British?
According to Dr Martin Luther King Jr, “We are not makers of history. History made us.” The work of historians is a form of reverse engineering. We study how we were made to figure out how to remake ourselves.
Who knows how the study of history can guide us forward on the Cahill issue? In decades to come, when we tell the story of Cahill, will it rhyme with the stories of Ken Saro Wiwa, the Shell Oil leak, and the Greenland landfill? Again Bob Marley answers, “Time alone, oh time will tell.”
He who has ears to hear let him hear.
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email Adriangreen14@gmail.com.
