Atlantic Creole
Black Folk Don’t Sail
Invitation
This aspect of our site, Atlantic Creole, is an invitation for you who are interested in the accumulation and distribution of our up to this point invisible maritime heritage to participate in any part and for any amount that you feel you can contribute. This is not an instant thing. It will take time to pull together and to some degree verify what we are doing. There is a step by step procedure that will complement what is already there without the nationalistic monetised subjectivity that has left so much of history and heritage to the side. We want to fill in the gaps but not create other gaps in the process. There are enough empty history spaces to fill without needing to exclude much.
For this project we do need academics but we will not just rely on them. As I noticed in Cayman the academics took a long time studying the Green Sea Turtle before they asked the turtlers about them. The turtlers reduced the research time because they had studied and orally passed on the knowledge of the Greens for generations even though they never wrote a paper on them. We can all contribute without pre-judgement and we can re-word or get stimulus in our searching from the little things offered.
Invisible Sailors
Invisible Ships
After conducting a random 40+ year survey I have come to the conclusion that the combination of Black person, sailing and heritage is not a threat to neither us nor others and have received encouragement to continue that combination in a heritage format. I have no real marketing/sales skills and need assistance.
Publishing & Media
I was focussed on British and American African Diaspora contemporary maritime preservation that pulled me into looking further into our past and eventually into our beginning so this is as exciting to me as it could be to you who are interested in getting what we find out to the public. I would include the importance of media production under our Publishing title.
Griot
In traditional Africa, Griots constituted a caste of individuals whose lives are dedicated to no other purpose than the keeping of history.
Research and Documentation
I have been collecting information our involvement in sailing for over 40 years and have an old Blog that I am basing this one on as a continuation. I carried on the old Atlantic Creole Blog for a little over two years with trips to major archives, interviews and creating a small library for immediate reference materials. This is what we would be doing using the gathered material as a base.
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The African Race
TAR
A Tar is an old term for a sailor because of the tar they used for waterproofing their clothing. The African Race proposes to circle the Atlantic Trade Route that was also used for African kidnapping industry. Our aim in TAR is to stop over enroute with educational presentations that there is more to our involvement in sailing than being aboard those vessels and to emphasise that we crossed the seas thousands of years before that evil took place.
Griot
‘… as Griots, we must make a rigorous adherence to truth, regardless of whether it makes anyone feel good or bad’. -Professor Dinizulu Gene Tinnie