Fried Plantain🔥

Fifteen Kalinago chiefs walked into a meeting with the British and French empires in 1660 and walked out with both sides agreeing the island was theirs. Their descendants still live there today. You just watched some of them dance. The Kalinago are the only native group in the Eastern Caribbean still around from before Columbus. Almost every other native group in the region was wiped out by European disease, slavery, displacement, or war. The Kalinago survived because they made Dominica too expensive to conquer. They had the land on their side. Dominica is mountainous and wild, full of dense rainforest. Kalinago warriors raided European ships and ambushed anyone who tried to land on the coast. After nearly two centuries of failed invasions, both empires finally gave up. They signed a treaty making Dominica officially Kalinago land. That deal lasted more than a hundred years. When Britain finally took the island in 1763, the Kalinago kept the rough east coast. They are still there. In 1903, Britain officially marked out the 3,700-acre territory, roughly six square miles. About 3,000 Kalinago live there today in eight small villages. The whole area runs by Kalinago rules. The land is shared and can only be sold to someone of Kalinago descent. Every five years, the Kalinago vote for their own chief and a six-member council to run the territory. Police based in Salybia keep order. They send their own representative to Dominica's parliament. Two Kalinago women lead Dominica today. Sylvanie Burton became the country's first female and first Kalinago president in October 2023. A year later, Anette Sanford was sworn in as the first female Kalinago chief in almost 400 years. The Kalinago's main traditional dance group is called Karifuna. The traditions they keep alive survived Spanish ships, French plantations, British soldiers, and Hurricane Maria, the 2017 storm that ripped the roof off almost every house in the territory.