ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean:
Amerindian Survival and Revival
Edited by Maximilian C. Forte
Published by Peter Lang, New York, 2006

José Barreiro, Taíno, senior editor at Indian Country Today and founding editor of Native Americas journal, has for nearly 20 years helped to forge the American Indian Program at Cornell University, where he served as associate director and editor-in-chief of Akwe:kon Press and its journal Native Americas. A member of the Taíno Nation of the Antilles, Barreiro was instrumental in remodeling Indian Country Today into the United States’ leading American Indian news source. Barreiro has edited several books on indigenous American topics, including Indian Roots of American Democracy; View from the Shore: American Indian Perspectives on the Quincentenary; Chiapas: Challenging History; Panchito: Cacique de Montaña, a testimony narrative; and, most recently, with Tim Johnson, he edited America Is Indian Country. He is author of the novel, The Indian Chronicles (Arte Publico Press–University of Houston, 1993). For 25 years, Barreiro has worked on development of communications networks among indigenous peoples of North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. He has been an advisor to several Native nations and a consultant with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, and the Council on Indigenous Peoples’ Economies. Barreiro was chosen as one of the most influential 100 Latinos in the US in 1993 for his work in ethnic literatures. He holds a PhD in American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is also a member of the editorial board of Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology (www.kacike.org).

Ricardo Bharath Hernandez has been the President of the Santa Rosa Carib Community of Arima, Trinidad, since 1976. Bharath Hernandez has been a central figure in the revitalization of the Arima Carib Community, following his return from living in Detroit, Michigan, during the early 1970s. He has served four terms as an elected representative on the Arima Borough Council, with responsibility for culture, and has recently been appointed Deputy Mayor. His primary activities have been the annual preparation of the Santa Rosa Festival and the maintenance of Carib traditions in processing cassava and in weaving, which he also teaches to school children. Bharath Hernandez has also been responsible for building a wide network of exchange and solidarity with numerous Amerindian communities and organizations across the Caribbean, South America and North America. His work in representing Arima’s Caribs has taken him to indigenous gatherings in Canada, Cuba, Dominica, Guyana, Belize and as far away as India.

Arif Bulkan has practiced as an Attorney-at-Law, specializing in Criminal Law as well as Human Rights and Environmental Law. At present, he is a PhD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. In the past, he has worked with the Government of Guyana as the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, and was on contract with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs in Guyana as the lead Legal Consultant on the revision of the 1951 Amerindian Act. Arif Bulkan has also been on staff at the University of Guyana as a part-time lecturer, where he lectured on Human Rights Law. He has published on Amerindian land rights in Guyana in the Guyana Law Review.

Janette Bulkan is a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She is an anthropologist by training and has work experience in social forestry, participatory community development, teaching and diplomacy. Her most recent full-time job was as Senior Social Scientist with the Iwokrama International Program for Rainforest Conservation and Development in Guyana (March 2000–2003) where she coordinated various projects in participatory resource management, sustainable livelihoods, Makushi linguistics, environmental education, monitoring and evaluation, and cultural diversity awareness and protection. She has published on forest peoples and broader forest issues in Guyana, including in publications and reports issued by Social and Economic Studies (1990), UNDP Program for Forests, PROFOR (2001), Tropenbos (1998, 1999) and New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (1999).

Gérard Collomb obtained his doctorate in Anthropology from the Sorbonne in 1973. He is currently a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Institutions). His present research deals with three main questions: the political organization of the Kali’na Amerindians in French Guiana and Suriname; the making of a collective identity; and Amerindian self-representation. Collomb has published in numerous French-language journals, including Journal de la Société des Américanistes, Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, Ethnologie Française, and Socio-Anthropologie. With Felix Tiouka, an Amerindian leader in French Guiana, he authored Na’na kali’na: une histoire des Amérindiens Kali’na en Guyane (Ibis Rouge Editions, 2000), and has published a chapter in the book Zoos Humains, Mémoire coloniale, edited by N. Bancel, P. Blanchard, G. Boëtsch, S. Lemaire and É. Deroo (Editions La Découverte, 2002). He is also an editor with the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink (www.centrelink.org) and a member of the editorial board of Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology (www.kacike.org).

Arthur Einhorn has had a life-long interest in the indigenous peoples of the United States as well as the Caribbean and further afield. Formerly director of the Lewis County (New York) Historical Society and Museum, Lewis County Historian, Chair of the History Department at Lowville Academy (one of the oldest schools in New York State, and where he introduced the first anthropology courses for high school approved by the state of New York in the 1960s), he was also an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Jefferson Community College (Watertown, NY), and taught briefly at the State University of New York at Buffalo while studying there. He served as Associate Director for an Institute on Indians in higher education at St. Lawrence University (Canton, NY), for three years. In 1974 Einhorn was elected as a Fellow in the American Anthropological Association. Einhorn’s fieldwork, spanning a half-century among Amerindians, has taken him to the Cree and Algonquin of the Sub-Arctic under the aegis of the Canadian National Museum, and all the way to visiting the Carib people of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean. His major work, however, has been with the Iroquoian peoples of New York and Canada. During the early 1970s he was a consultant to the New York State Assembly Sub-Committee on Indian Affairs relating to laws for protecting Indian burials from collectors, an early effort that eventually led to the Federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) legislation in 1990. His ethnohistoric research over the years has uncovered unexpected links during the colonial period between Amerindians of Northeast North America and the Caribbean. Amongst his other research interests has been a devotion to indigenous traditional technology, with the aim of fostering its revival and maintenance. Einhorn’s publications have appeared in major journals, as well as the Encyclopedia of Anthropology, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the American Indian Art Magazine, and most recently in the Encyclopedia of New York State. Although officially retired now, he continues research and publishing.

Jorge Estevez, a Taíno from the Dominican Republic, is Participant Coordinator of Public Programs at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York. Estevez’s contact information is one of the first passed on by those “in the know” to anyone who is seriously interested in research about the Taíno or, better said, to anyone who has any questions at all about the Taíno of the past or present. Estevez gives dozens of presentations about the Taíno and their culture each year to school groups in the state of New York and abroad as a special lecturer, including a visit to the Dominican Republic in 2003 to address an educational conference on indigenous revival. He is a frequent contributor to the Smithsonian Museum’s magazine, and has written for Native Peoples as well as for the soon-to-be-published Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions. He is also an editor with the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink (www.centrelink.org) and a member of the editorial board of Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology (www.kacike.org).

Pedro J. Ferbel-Azcarate earned his PhD in Interdisciplinary Archaeology from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; a master’s in Anthropology/Archaeology from the University of South Carolina; and a BA in Psychology from the University of Michigan. He is an interdisciplinary archaeologist, an independent scholar affiliated with the Archivo Histórico de Santiago, Dominican Republic, and currently teaches in the Department of Black Studies at Portland State University, Oregon. A dynamic speaker, Ferbel-Azcarate has presented talks and directed workshops on the Taíno, archaeology, anthropology, and related topics at different venues in the US, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. For four years he was the director and principal field researcher, project coordinator, instructor, advisor, public speaker, and curator for historical and cultural projects at the public archives of Santiago, Dominican Republic. He has published articles in La Información and El Siglo newspapers, in Acta Americana and the Boletín of the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, and is coauthor of The Practice of Colonial Archaeology in the Dominican Republic and The Ancient Caribbean: Research Guides to Ancient Civilizations. Ferbel-Azcarate is an editor with the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink (www.centrelink.org) and a member of the editorial board of Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology (www.kacike.org).

Maximilian C. Forte is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Forte, a Permanent Resident of Trinidad and Tobago, lived and studied in Trinidad for almost seven years, with most of those years spent in Arima researching the Santa Rosa Carib Community. He has also conducted limited field research in Dominica. He obtained a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Adelaide in 2002. His dissertation research focused on practices of representation by and about the Caribs of Trinidad and the cultural politics of indigeneity. Related research foci included ethnohistory, colonial political economy and globalization. He has published aspects of his research in Cultural Survival Quarterly, Indigenous Affairs and The Indigenous World. He is the founding editor of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink (www.centrelink.org) and the current senior editor of Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology (www.kacike.org). Forte also serves as the webmaster for the Santa Rosa Carib Community and has posted numerous research essays online. A book, based on his research in Trinidad, titled Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post) Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago was published by the University Press of Florida in 2005 (click here for more on that book).

Lynne Guitar, a Fulbright Fellow, earned her PhD in History and Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as a Master’s in history from Vanderbilt, and two BA’s from Michigan State University (one in history and the other in anthropology). She is an independent historian and anthropologist in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She has taught at El Colegio Americano de Santo Domingo, guiding educational tours, and writing two series of books about the Taíno, one for children and one for adults, among other diverse projects. She is currently the Resident Director of the Council on International Education Exchange’s program in Spanish and Caribbean Studies at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. She is an editor with the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink (www.centrelink.org) and a member of the editorial board of Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology (www.kacike.org), where she has also served as the guest editor of an immensely popular special issue on “New Directions in Taíno Research.” Guitar is a gifted lecturer, who has spoken on the Taíno and Dominican popular culture across the US, in Europe, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Martinique, and Mexico. Her publications include articles on the Taíno and Dominican history and culture for a wide variety of encyclopedias, for an upcoming collection edited by Jane Landers titled Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America, to be published by the University of New Mexico Press, in Native Peoples, and academic journals including the Boletín of the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Revista Interamericana, Ethnohistory, and Colonial Latin American Historical Review. Guitar and her work were recently spotlighted in Deep Sea Detectives, a documentary aired on the History Channel.

Fergus MacKay is a human rights lawyer trained at the California Western School of Law. He is an expert in indigenous rights and has written a number of books and articles on the subject. He has worked as an attorney for indigenous peoples in Alaska. As legal adviser to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, he worked with indigenous organizations throughout the Americas and the Pacific and was actively involved in the development of the draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the draft Organization of American States Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international standard-setting exercises pertaining to indigenous peoples. He presently acts as Coordinator of the Three Guyanas Programme, working with indigenous and tribal peoples in Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, and Coordinator of the Human Rights and Legal Programme of UK-based nongovernmental organization, the Forest Peoples Programme. He is also attorney of record in two cases involving Suriname Maroons before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. Recent publications include, with E-R Kambel, De Rechten van Inheemse Volken en Marrons in Suriname (2003) and The Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Maroons in Suriname (1999). He has published for the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs, in American University International Law Review, in Human Rights and the Environment: Conflicts and Norms in a Globalizing World, and in Cultural Survival Quarterly.

Joseph O. Palacio, a Belizean Garifuna, recently retired (2004) from the University of the West Indies, where he served as Resident Tutor, reaching the level of Senior Lecturer. His main responsibility was designing and implementing several continuing studies programs as well as fielding degree-level programs originating from the University. In 1982 he received his doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley with a focus on the Caribbean/Central American subregion, food studies, and development. During his tenure at the University of the West Indies he did research on indigenous peoples, migration, and rural community development. He has published several articles and monographs on these topics in Belize and within the Caribbean and Central America. In 2005, The Garifuna, A Nation Across Borders: Essays in Social Anthropology, a volume edited by Palacio, was published by CUBOLA, Belize.

Kelvin Smith is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. His research looks at the economic and political positioning of the indigenous community of Dominica, and how it has been affected by the initiatives of the global finance and development organizations. Funded by the European Social Research Council, he conducted fieldwork during 2003 in the Carib Territory.  He also teaches part time within the Anthropology pathway at the University of East London.

Paul Twinn studied Ancient History and Social Anthropology at University College London, 1973–76. After a long period in management he returned to university in 1994 to complete an MSc in Social Anthropology (with distinction). Since then he has been conducting research in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has made four field trips to the island, and currently holds citizenship there. He has been visiting Tutor at Goldsmiths College and Tutorial Assistant at University College London. At present he is an Associate Lecturer with the Open University based in London.