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  • 1 year ago
There continues to be public reaction to the announcement by the Prime Minister that Columbus' three ships will be removed from the Coat of Arms.


On Tuesday, Caribbean Freedom Project leader Shabaka Kambon said he his members are very excited and look forward to the change.
Transcript
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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