Ep. 119 — Saint Vincent and the Grenadines' Three Hundred-Year Fight For Sovereignty with Dr. Garrey Dennie

Sacred land, contested memory, and a centuries-long fight for sovereignty, this conversation with Dr. Garrey Dennie traces the deep antiquity of the Kalinago in St. Vincent, their transformation into a maritime powerhouse, and the strategic choices that delayed European domination for generations. Instead of a single “first contact,” we explore two: the catastrophic arrival of Europeans and the liberatory meeting of Kalinago communities with Africans who escaped or were freed from bondage.

Dr. Dennie unpacks genocide as a 300-year process, where pathogens, forced labor, and scorched-earth campaigns worked in tandem to clear land for sugar and slavery. He explains how the union that produced the Garifuna did more than build solidarity; it created a hybrid identity with immunological resilience that helped communities survive. From the First and Second Carib Wars to the brutal detention on Baliceaux and the mass exile of 1797, we follow the pivotal moments that transformed St. Vincent and, paradoxically, shortened its time as a British slave society through relentless resistance.

We also step inside a landmark scholarly effort: the forthcoming multi-volume Native Genocide and African Enslavement in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He is one of four Vincentian historians co-authoring the series that restores Indigenous and Garifuna perspectives to the center, bridges archaeology and epidemiology with political history, and invites listeners to reconsider where homeland and belonging truly reside. If you’re ready to move beyond textbook myths and confront the intertwined stories of survival, identity, and power, this episode offers a clear, compelling path forward.

Dr. Garrey Dennie is an Associate Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a founder of its Program in African and African Diaspora Studies. He obtained his first degree at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados and his Ph. D at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Dennie has also lectured at the University of the West Indies at the Mona campus in Jamaica. Dr. Dennie has produced and published original scholarship on the politics of death in modern South Africa. His major South African works include Flames of Race, Ashes of Death: Re-inventing Cremation in Johannesburg and The Standard of Dying: Race, Indigence, and the Disposal of the Dead Body in Johannesburg. And in the greatest privilege of his life, Dr. Dennie served as a speechwriter for Nelson Mandela in the battle to destroy white rule in apartheid South Africa.

Over the past decade Dr. Dennie has been deeply engaged in researching, writing, and lecturing on the history of the Garifuna and their foundational role in the history of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He is one of four Vincentian historians currently writing a multi volume History of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Volume One of this history focuses on the history of native genocide and African enslavement in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It is scheduled to be published this year.

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