Drama at first consultation on statues, monuments

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

There was dra­ma at the first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and oth­er his­tor­i­cal sig­nage yes­ter­day, af­ter one mem­ber of the au­di­ence used a phrase deemed to be of­fen­sive by some in the au­di­ence.

Not even half an hour had passed dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, Port-of-Spain, be­fore a dis­rup­tion oc­curred.

The in­ci­dent played out af­ter the view of Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da, of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, was shut down by an­oth­er mem­ber of the au­di­ence, Frank Fer­ri­er.

Uzoma-Wada­da had called for a change of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and oth­er his­tor­i­cal sig­nage to peo­ple of im­por­tance to Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.

“Who are im­por­tant to us, whom do we want to see in our spaces, who do we want our chil­dren to feel proud about and it can­not be Pic­ton, it can­not be Christo­pher Colum­bus,” Uzoma-Wada­da said.

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er, Fer­ri­er in­ter­rupt­ed, say­ing, “I dis­agree with you…you are ram­bling.”

He was told to wait his turn to con­tribute by the mod­er­a­tor Dike Ros­tant.

He did not, how­ev­er, and as Uzoma-Wada­da called for the re­nam­ing of Ox­ford Street to Kwame Ture Street, Fer­ri­er ex­claimed, “Well go back to Africa then.”

This com­ment did not sit well with the oth­er groups in the au­di­ence, who called for him to be “put out of the ses­sion.”

“Mr chair­man, he asked her to go back to Africa, at this time I think that is a lit­tle bit be­yond re­pair,” ac­tivist Shaba­ka Kam­bon said.

“Put him out,” po­et and cul­tur­al ac­tivist Ein­tou Pearl Springer shout­ed.

But Fer­ri­er did not stop there and dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, scold­ed the pan­el and au­di­ence for what he be­lieved was their one-sided view of his­to­ry.

He ques­tioned why Trin­bag­o­ni­ans would want to make Stoke­ly Carmichael, al­so known as Kwame Ture, a hero.

“A hero, re­al­ly, re­al­ly, I said no you can’t make that man a hero…Er­ic Williams must be turn­ing in his grave to see what you all could do to de­stroy Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Fer­ri­er said.

In 1969, when Carmichael burst on­to the scene in the Unit­ed States as a Black Pow­er leader, the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go im­posed a ban on him pre­vent­ing him from re­turn­ing to this coun­try.

Fer­ri­er al­so chal­lenged the his­to­ry of the First Peo­ples present, say­ing “they com­mit­ted mur­der, you are a mur­der­ous gang of peo­ple.”

He de­scribed Colum­bus as an or­di­nary in­di­vid­ual and added that if the goal/in­ten­tion was to re­move the stat­ue of Colum­bus then he felt “sor­ry for T&T.”

“You will find this coun­try will be a liv­ing hell soon­er than lat­er,” he warned.

Apart from Fer­ri­er, the con­tri­bu­tions of the oth­ers present were sim­i­lar, with all find­ing com­mon ground in the fact that the stat­ues, mon­u­ments and oth­er his­tor­i­cal sig­nage which ex­ist do not rep­re­sent this coun­try.

How­ev­er, the Grand Chief of the First Peo­ples, Er­ic Lewis, called for the re­nam­ing of the cap­i­tal Port-of-Spain.

“There is no rea­son un­der the sun that the city that our an­ces­tors in­hab­it­ed should be called Port-of-Spain,” he stat­ed.

Lewis al­so asked for the First Peo­ples com­mu­ni­ty to be added to the cal­en­dar of hol­i­days and for Wood­ford Square to be re­named.

Wendy Sealy, of the Wood­brook Com­mu­ni­ty Com­mit­tee, said 16 of the 38 streets in the dis­trict were named af­ter British gen­er­als. These street names in­clude Kitch­en­er and Baden-Pow­ell.

Artist Rubadiri Vic­tor mean­while said he be­lieves T&T has pro­duced enough no­table peo­ple who have done ex­cep­tion­al in­ter­na­tion­al work who can re­place the cur­rent stat­ues, mon­u­ments, and sig­nage.

Merikin de­scen­dant Abeo Jack­son said she agreed with the re­nam­ing and re­mov­ing of stat­ues, but asked the pan­el where this ex­er­cise was fit­ting in a wider con­ver­sa­tion.

She asked if there would be a na­tion­al dri­ve for re-ed­u­ca­tion, through the for­malised ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and this coun­try’s cre­ative and cul­tur­al forms.

“Priv­i­lege might be the loud­est in the room at times but loud tru­ly doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean eq­ui­table or just,” she said.

While the re­nam­ing and re­moval of stat­ues and mon­u­ments were the pop­u­lar views at the con­sul­ta­tion, Jack­son did not agree with the call to put the stat­ues in a mu­se­um.

“I am a lit­tle less pre­cious about putting them in mu­se­ums, I feel rapists and mur­der­ers and de­stroy­ers of peo­ples and civil­i­sa­tions de­serve no space, but that is me,” she said.

On Ju­ly 21, 2022, the Cab­i­net agreed to the ap­point­ment of a com­mit­tee to re­view and re­port on the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and oth­er his­tor­i­cal sig­nage and recog­ni­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go by De­cem­ber 31.

The com­mit­tee in­cludes chair Emeri­ta Pro­fes­sor Brid­get Br­ere­ton, Dr East­lyn McKen­zie, Zai­da Ra­j­nauth, Chief Ri­car­do Bharath-Her­nan­dez, Lawrence Ar­joon and Kobe Sandy.

The com­mit­tee said they have al­ready spo­ken to 43 stake­hold­er groups and the sug­ges­tions from the pub­lic will be put in­to rec­om­men­da­tions and pre­sent­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter.