Ep. 144 — Rethinking Caribbean Indigeneity Through Garifuna History with Dr. Paula Prescod

There is a common myth surrounding Caribbean indigenous history that starts and ends with colonialism. In today's episode, we are joined by linguist Dr. Paula Prescod to explore what her new scholarly collection The Carib, Kalinago, and Garifuna Peoples: Indigeneity, Hybridization, and Mobility in the Americas reveals about indigeneity, mobility, and the myths we inherited from colonial writers. We look specificallt into the case of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where indigenous resistance, African survival, and deep cultural exchange shaped Afro-Indigenous communities whose descendants are known today as the Garifuna or Garinagu. We break down myths around indigenous communities and get precise about language and power: Carib, Kalinago, Kalina, Garifuna, Garinagu, even “cannibal” are not neutral words. Dr. Prescod explains how sound shifts, mishearings, and outside labeling shaped the record, and why self-identification still varies, even within St. Vincent.

Mobility ties everything together. We talk forced exile from St. Vincent to Baliceaux and Roatán, the building of Garifuna communities along the Central American Caribbean coast, and the modern “third exile” framework that links today’s migration routes and asylum claims to older histories of dispossession. We also look at cultural survival in practice: cassava bread traditions, spiritual life, music-making in tourism economies, and education policy proposals like intercultural bilingual education to reclaim heritage language at the homeland. If you are interested in Garifuna culture, Kalinago identity, diaspora studies, or decolonizing the archive, listen through and share your biggest takeaway. 

Paula Prescod is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Didactics of French. Her research focuses on four key areas: the linguistic and cultural implications of learning new languages, the linguistic description of contact languages, hybridization practices in the French Caribbean novel, and the sociohistorical and cultural study of the Indigenous peoples of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. She previously taught at the secondary and tertiary levels in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and later at university in the English department at Bielefeld University. She earned her Ph.D from the University of Paris III in 2004 with a thesis titled Une grammaire descriptive du syntagme nominal dans le créole anglophone de Saint-Vincent-et-les-Grenadines, which was later published in English as A Grammatical Description of the Noun Phrase in the English-based Creole of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Lincom Europa, 2010). 

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