Happy Garifuna Settlement Day from Remedia!

The Garinagu (singular and adjective - Garifuna) are an afro-indigenous ethnic group living primarily along the Caribbean coast of Central America.  The Garinagu are descended from West Africans brought to the Americas to be enslaved.  They escaped a shipwreck in the Caribbean and intermarried with an already mixed Amerindian group, the Carib-Arawak people, living on the island of St. Vincent.  These Amerindian people were comprised of Arawak women and Carib men, from two distinct indigenous groups originating in South America, who migrated independently to the Caribbean.  The people resulting from the intermarriage of West African, Arawak, and Carib, were the Garinagu.  Europeans distinguised the Black Caribs from the Red or Yellow Caribs, who were not descendents of intermarriages with West Africans.  In 1797, the British permanently exiled the Black Caribs to the island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras, and from there they spread to mainland Central America.

Garifuna Settlement Day is celebrated every year in Belize on November 19th, to commemorate the arrival of Garifuna ancestors on Belizean shores in Stann Creek in 1823.  In 1977, November 19th was established as a national holiday in Belize.  Each year early in the morning of November 19th there are reenactments of the Garifuna people coming to shore in dories (dug-out canoes) and boats wearing traditional Garifuna clothing, in towns along the coast of Belize.  People waiting on land wave cassava, plantain, and sugarcane plants recently pulled from the ground as the boats come in - these symbolize some of the traditional food plants that the Garinagu brought with them to plant in their new environment when they first arrived.  The days surrounding Garifuna Settlement Day are filled with events celebrating the vibrant culture still thriving among the Garinagu, complete with traditional clothing, foods, drumming, singing, and dancing!