Last month the National Kriol Council made a submission to UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, in an attempt to garner assistance and support from international partners to preserve Gales Point Manatee's rich kriol and Maroon ancestry and culture.
Selene Solis from the National Kriol Council told us more about the consultation process to put their submission together and what this means for the residents of Gales Point.
Selene Solis, National Kriol Council
"The representative list or the list of the 2003 convention for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage is a UNESCO mechanism and framework to identify cultural practices, traditions, expressions that are practiced by communities and people across the globe that represent some significance for those communities, for development, for human value, for national significance, for global significance that provides spaces for expression of identity that provides some sense of place, some historical context to peoples and cultures and traditions."
"And so the mechanism and the framework allows for highlighting those traditions of living heritage as it's called and to bring attention to them, recognizing their value, the role that they play in identity formation, in development and establishing community histories and the role that they play in safeguarding cultural values for communities that are at risk of being lost especially."
"We got a sense of where the cultural tradition is at now and in collaboration with the communities, we elaborated this nomination file which includes the description, taking pictures, getting an understanding of who practices it, how they practice it, how they transmit it, how they safeguard it."
"So it's really a process that's rooted in community involvement. It is essential to the convention and to its framework that the community be the ones who drive the process, drive the nomination, provide their support and feedback and that they actually want to be recognized in that way."
