Waitukubuli Virtual Museum

As we approach Remembrance Day Sunday, here is an overview of Dominica's Cenotaph.

THE INDIGENOUS ISLAND NAMES

From the time of the earliest human settlement of the islands that became known as the Lesser Antilles or the Eastern Caribbean, indigenous adventurers coming from the Orinoco region of South America, were giving names to the islands that they discovered. Most of these names related to the natural resources, wildlife, or type of landscapes that they found on these islands.

When Columbus and later arrivals from Europe sailed among the islands for the first time they renamed them without even asking about the original names. Consumed with the myths of late Medieval Christianity, they imposed religious names of Christiandom upon these islands, most of which are the official names still used today.

In the 1640s, a French missionary, Fr. Raymond Breton, settled for some years in Guadeloupe and Dominica. He travelled among the islands asking the indigenous Kalinago people what their names of the islands were. On this map we use the names that Fr. Breton collected, although since the 1500s other Europeans had also been collecting names and there is a confusion depending on the sources used. Breton, for instance, is told that Trinidad is Chaleibe, but Walter Raleigh, some fifty years before says it is Caire, which he acknowledges. Smaller, less visited islands such as Bequia, Cannouan, Carriacou, Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, kept more or less the pronunciation of their original names.

The spelling has also changed over the centuries: What Breton records for Dominica as Ouaitoucoubouli, is now more phonetically written as Wai'tukubuli. St. Lucia, Iounalao, has become, Hewanorra. The meanings of the names is also much debated. But whatever the differences, it gives us a taste of what this indigenous island world was like when there was total freedom of movement and trade and interaction, from the mainland up the islands and beyond.

Tewe Vaval - The End of 🤍🎭 Dominica's carnival season has come to a close with a celebration of and dancing at the Kalinago Territory.