Statia pays homage to the Golden Rock Ancestors

On February 16th & February 17th, 2024, the Statia Cultural Heritage Committee (SCHIC), in collaboration with the St. Eustatius Historical Foundation, will host a community engagement event that will bring the descendant community of enslaved Africans together in sacred spaces to honor and remember them. The funding of this event was made possible through the National Institute for the Dutch Slavery History and Legacy (NiNsee).

During 2020-2021, sixty-nine ancestral remains from the 18th-century Golden Rock plantation were excavated, which led to protests from various groups within the local community. The excavations were halted, and the Executive Council of St. Eustatius put the Statia Heritage Research Commission (SHRC) in place to examine what went wrong around the excavations and develop recommendations to safeguard Statia's cultural heritage better. One of the recommendations was to seek input from the descendant community of Statia about a respectful and dignified reburial of the ancestral remains, including creating a memorial space for the descendant community to visit. The implementation of such now falls under the responsibility of the SCHIC, which the Executive Council established in September 2022.

The organizers explained that the two-day event will be a spiritual and emotional journey towards rediscovering and reclaiming who we are as people of African ancestry.

The first-day event will occur on the grounds of the Museum from 2:00 pm until 6:00 pm. “Through various means (music, story-telling, foodways, artifacts, waist-bead demonstration workshop), our stories of survival, despite physical captivity, through intentional acts of rebellion and resistance, will be shared. Despite our interrupted history, we have held on to some of the traditions and values that have sustained us over the years. Everyone is encouraged to bring objects and other symbols of cultural value to the space, to share their stories with the community”.

On February 17th, from 7:00 pm until 10:00 pm, the community will gather at the Lion's Den to continue paying homage to the ancestors through a libation ceremony and conversations about the conditions under which the ancestral remains were dug up, how they were managed, who they were and how they lived. In addition, the organizers will share some of the concerns and suggestions given by persons in the community about the reburial location and Statia’s cultural heritage. The descendant community will identify a reburial location for the ancestral remains and discuss how to create the memorial space and what they want to experience when visiting it.

The organizers strongly urge the descendant community to come out in numbers to the two-day event to help rewrite the narrative so that the Golden Rock Ancestors can be given the dignified reburial they deserve. The organizers said the community cannot rest until the Golden Rock ancestral remains are permanently at peace.