Cultural heritage and local ecological knowledge under threat: Two Caribbean examples from Barbuda and Puerto Rico

Abstract

While the impacts to the infrastructures in Barbuda and Puerto Rico by Hurricanes Irma and Maria have received attention in the news media, less has been reported about the impacts of these catastrophic events on the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of these Caribbean islands. This report provides an assessment of the impacts on the cultural heritage by these storms; tangible heritageincludeshistoricbuildings, museums, monuments, documents and other artifacts and intangible heritageincludestraditionalartistry, festivities, and more frequent activities such as religious services and laundering. While the physical destruction was massive, the social contexts in which these islands existed lessened the resiliency of the people to respond and rebuild after the storms. While change may be inevitable for Barbuda and Puerto Rico, disaster capitalism is threatening the cultures of the people, and may result in the loss of local knowledge and practices.

Addressing the challenges of climate-driven community-led resettlement and site expansion: knowledge sharing, storytelling, healing, and collaborative coalition building

“…Indigeneity in Boriké has to be contextualized in historical processes of identity disenfranchisement, and the complex geography of a multiethnic archipelago. Similar to Barbuda (Boger et al 2019 ), traditional household tenure in Boriké includes continued occupation on the same location along generations of the same family. This traditional practice however means that many often do not hold legal title to their traditional lands and lack the acquisition power or financial means to either purchase the land they live on or other land where they could relocate to if needed.…”

Stemming the Tide: Global Strategies for Sustaining Cultural Heritage through Climate Change

“…For example, during Hurricane Maria, historical knowledge of abandoned cisterns was used to obtain water (Boger, Perdikaris, and Rivera-Collazo, 2019). Accounts of past hurricanes and earthquakes have been widely circulated in social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and…”

Resilient Caribbean Communities: A Long-Term Perspective on Sustainability and Social Adaptability to Natural Hazards in the Lesser Antilles

“…Irma's total destruction of Barbuda, Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico; Maria's devastation of Dominica in September 2017; and Dorian's incursion into the Bahamas in 2019 all happened in a matter of hours, though the havoc they wreaked will be felt for years. Extreme weather and storm events continue to affect shorelines in terms of submerging, covering, severely eroding, and/or eradicating coastal archaeological sites [35,39,45,85,97,98]. The dramatic impact of such events on the archaeological record and cultural heritage of the Caribbean is often accelerated due to adverse human impacts arising from uncontrolled construction activities, sand mining, and looting (e.g., [35,68,97,99]).…”

“…Mitigation and adaptive planning measures are a top priority to safeguard these coastal environments and livelihoods, and to avoid the further and irreversible loss of the archaeological record and often unwritten histories. Understanding the role of heritage and community is key to incorporating long-term processes of social adaptability to climatic challenges and of resilience (see also [35,38,42]). The Kalinago and Garifuna communities of the Windward Islands, who in recent years have been severely impacted by the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria (2017), the eruption of the La Soufrière volcano on Saint Vincent (2021) (Figure 2), and other social threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rely heavily-like other Indigenous and local communities-on traditional knowledge practices for adapting to such crises and building resilience for a sustainable future (e.g., [38,[70][71][72]).…”