The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Digital Editor

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMIANS must confront the lingering psychological and social effects of slavery and colonialism if the country is to achieve meaningful healing, according to community psychologist Dr Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean.

Dr Campbell-Dean, chair of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, made the case for reparatory justice as a tool for wellness and social transformation during a four-day Conference on Trauma, Healing and Social Transformation in The Bahamas, which concluded on Sunday.

The conference, held from October 1 to 4 at the University of The Bahamas and Sacred Islands Sanctuary, brought together scholars, artists, cultural activists, scientists, therapists and healing practitioners to explore how trauma manifests in individuals and communities and what healing could look like in a Bahamian context.

In her keynote address, I want my people to be free: Reparations as wellness, a case for Bahamian emancipation, Dr Campbell-Dean traced what she described as a direct connection between the country's colonial history, its education system and present-day ideas about identity, wellness and justice.

She argued that reparations should not be understood solely as financial compensation, but as a broader process of repairing the consequences of slavery and colonialism and addressing systems that continue to affect their descendants.

“Rather than an identified destination our reparations can be viewed as the dismantling of systems that prevent us from knowing the true reality of who we are.

“This is not us begging the white man for a handout this is what Panashe Chigumadzi, The architect of the African Union’s reparations framework for the historic UN resolution refers to as ‘world breaking work’. This is not being stuck with things that happened in the past. This is throwing the whole thing away and starting over.”

Dr Campbell-Dean devoted a significant portion of her address to the history of education in The Bahamas, arguing that its colonial origins were principally intended to impart religious and colonial values rather than develop a distinctly Bahamian understanding of history and identity.

She noted that compulsory education was not established until the Educational Act of 1862 and that wider access to secondary education came considerably later.

She used the experiences of earlier generations of Bahamian women, including her own grandmothers, to illustrate the consequences of limited access to education.

Dr Campbell-Dean recalled complaining about the difficulties of pursuing her PhD when her paternal grandmother, Orion Johnson of Crooked Island, told her she had always wished she could attend school.

“I was stunned. I didn’t have anything to say other than ‘yes, ma'am’. In one sentence, she completely transformed my entire perspective on my graduate experience from gratuitous to grateful.

“She reminded me with grace that the challenges that I was complaining about were actually privileges. She did not deny my experiences and feelings, but she highlighted a perspective that I had not fully taken into account.”

Her address also recalled the story of Kate Moss, an enslaved 14-year-old girl on Crooked Island who, according to Dr Campbell-Dean, was tortured after resisting her enslaver and later died. Dr Campbell-Dean said she did not learn Moss' story during her formal education in The Bahamas.

Turning to what reparations could involve, Dr Campbell-Dean highlighted five components within the United Nations reparations framework: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.

She said CARICOM's reparations agenda also addresses education, public health, psychological rehabilitation, debt cancellation and decolonisation, among other areas.

Dr Campbell-Dean placed particular emphasis on psychological rehabilitation, arguing that justice and wellness are closely connected and that healing cannot be achieved solely at an individual level.

“Our harm was and is enacted collectively and in public therefore individual approaches to healing will prove to be insufficient and serve to reinforce shame narratives that purport African people to be the architects of their own oppression.

“We must therefore embrace an Ubuntu philosophy that recognizes ‘I am because we are’ an understanding that people are people because of other people and that I can not diminish your humanity without actively endangering my own.”

Dr Campbell-Dean said the mandate of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee is to advocate for reparations for the genocide of indigenous people and the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of Africans, while its broader work involves confronting what the committee regards as continuing vestiges of colonialism and white supremacy.

She pointed to community lectures, historical tours and other forms of cultural engagement as part of that work.

“This is a collective rallying cry for the acknowledgement of our humanity and the humanity of our ancestors. This is the practice of healing in community and out loud.

“This is a jackhammer in the dismantling of systems of belief, a deconstruction of epistemologies in which light skin is always fairer, ontologies in which the foreign consultant is always smarter, axiologies in which the loose curl hair pattern is always better, and cosmologies where the image of God, if an image exists, is one that does not reflect oneself.”

The conference was organised by UB's School of Communication and Creative Arts, School of English Studies and School of Social Sciences in collaboration with the Bahamas National Reparations Committee.