April 5, 2020 ~ By Shari Rose – https://blurredbylines.com
On slave ships to the Americas, West African slaves braided rice seeds in their hair & forever altered the New World economy with their knowledge of the rice crop
Bundle of harvested rice gathered by a Maroon farmer in French Guiana. {Source: Tinde van Andel}
During the African slave trade, enslaved peoples found ways to retain their agency, and keep themselves and their cultures alive in ways that were not widely acknowledged by Western historians until the late 2000s.
As Dutch slave owners forcibly transported people from West Africa to colonies in modern-day Brazil and throughout the Americas, some African women, namely rice farmers, braided rice seeds into their hair as a means for survival of themselves and the culture of their homeland.
READ MORE: https://blurredbylines.com/blog/west-african-slaves-rice-hair-maroon-french-guiana-colonialism/
The View from Europe: Oil, the environment and the Caribbean – By David Jessop
David Jessop
By David Jessop
Earlier this month Exxon announced that that it had made a major new oil find off Guyana. It was, it said, the largest since it began exploration there in 2015. The company’s statement followed one last June advising of a ‘world-class discovery’ on another well, and before that, announcements about four other commercially exploitable finds.
What this and Exxon’s recent request to the Guyanese government for permission to drill up to 40 new wells after 2022 suggests, is that the country is about to become a major oil producer in the Western Hemisphere. Continue reading →
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