00:00With the Coat of Arms soon to be stripped of images of the European colonizer Christopher
00:05Columbus' three ships, the Santa Maria, La Pinta and La Nina, the director of the
00:12Caribbean Freedom Project, Shabaka Kambon, salutes the Prime Minister for taking what
00:17he calls this bold initiative to remove the ships from the Coat of Arms.
00:22He said, in July 2020, he and other members of his organization submitted a letter to
00:28the National Committee to review all national monuments, signs and symbols to ensure that
00:35we were not celebrating a colonial violence, racism and a white supreme in this country.
00:41We have a coat of arms that, you know, in fact reflects an imperialist view of history
00:53which rationalizes the expansion of empire, justifies the subjugation, extermination and
00:59exploitation of indigenous peoples and their lands and frames the protagonists of these
01:03crimes as heroes and agents of progress and civilization.
01:08This symbol diminishes us as a nation and makes a mockery of all the values that we
01:14proclaim, all the values that we tell the world that they should come here to enjoy.
01:21Mr. Kambon said, if one really knows the history of Christopher Columbus and how he
01:26came to Trinidad and Tobago and the ships, they will know that Columbus never discovered
01:31the island and he was never a hero.
01:33Those ships, when we talk about the discovery of the islands and those ships, we're talking
01:39about the discovery of the Caribbean and that really is not a discovery, there is a euphemism
01:46for the violent invasion and genocidal occupation of the Caribbean.
01:52He said, a change like this will take time before we as a nation can address certain
01:57issues and we need to address the epistemic space if we expect to emerge out of the shadow
02:02of colonialism and violence into a more caring environment.
02:07What kind of messages does a colonial education system send to our people about the marginalized
02:15groups in a society?
02:16How do Africans and Indians interact?
02:18How do we look at each other?
02:20Do we look at each other as equals or do we look down at each other?
02:23Is there a kind of inherited negativity that we find hard to break through even to today?
02:30How does our political system reflect that history?
02:34Sharla Kisto, TV6 News.
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