KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves addresses the three-day 11th International Garifuna Conference that gets underway here on March 11.
The Garifuna Heritage Foundation (TGHF), in collaboration with the University of the West Indies Global Campus (UWIGC), will host the conference being held under the theme “Promoting Reparatory Justice: Towards the Development and Implementation of a 2030 Indigenous People’s Development Plan”.
Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, Jovan Scott Lewis, will deliver the keynote address at the opening of the IGC 2024 Conference, which will be conducted virtually and in person.
Lewis, the author of “Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica” and “Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa,” has studied Black people’s lived experience of racial capitalism and underdevelopment and advanced radical and productive reparative frameworks.
Prime Minister Mitchell will deliver the keynote address on “Balliceaux: Representation of Reparatory Justice for Indigenous people in the Caribbean” on March 12.
The organizers said that as part of the day’s session, there would be a panel discussion on “The significance of Balliceaux to Garinagu in the Diaspora,” with the panelists describing the situation of Garifuna communities in various countries, including Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.
The conference’s final day will focus on the theme of reparations, with the keynote address being delivered by attorney and Professor Christian Callejas Escoto of the University of San Jose, Costa Rica, and the University of San Francisco, California.
Callejas Escoto is a prominent human rights attorney who has litigated cases before the International Court of Justice about the fight for the land rights of the Garifuna people in Honduras.
He will speak on “The Use of Systems of International Law for the Promotion of Ancestral Rights of Garifuna People.”
Dominican-born historian Dr. Lennox Honychurch will address the issue of the rights of indigenous people in Dominica. In contrast, Garrey Dennie, associate professor of history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and historian Adrian Fraser will both speak on topics relevant to the historical basis for reparatory justice for the Garifuna.
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