Carib Chief: 'Marry the same race or risk extinction'

[The Sushi Bandit]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7529143.stm

<snip>

In May this year, the chief of an ancient Caribbean people came up with a drastic solution to protect their heritage - and their future.

Chief Charles Williams of the Carib - or Kalinago - people of Dominica said they should not marry non-Kalinago people. "The impact of colonization has been so strong on us that if we do not take steps to protect the race, it will be soon extinct," he said.

Extinct is a word that the academics who study this people would never use, but Chief Williams has little doubt that the Kalinago could be in danger of disappearing altogether.

There are now about 3,000 tribal members left on the island, which has a total population of some 70,000 - and the chief's radical views have found support amongst other leaders.

[mike_c]

1. note to Chief Charles: Google "inbreeding depression..."

'''and follow the literature trail from there to "minimum effective population."

[tularetom]

3. Google Pitcairn Island and see what 200 years of intermarriage among Bounty survivors

has led to.

Or look into the genetic defects now turning up among children of the fundamentalist mormon populations of isolated Arizona and Utah towns.

[Ian David]

6. Not just the Mormons, but much of the Chasidic community, and many others.

The most inbred are probably so small and isolated they haven't been discovered- or at least not closely studied- by modern science.

[GodlessBiker]

2. A "tribe" is a "race"?

[Ian David]

7. There really is only ONE race of humans. We're all one species.

The Pygmies of Africa are certainly more genetically similar to the Eskimos of Alaska than a St. Bernard is to an Australian Dingo, yet we don't talk about them as different species or "races" of dog.

[CarbonDate]

4. I prefer the Bulworth remedy.

God, it's been too long since I've seen that movie.

[rebel with a cause]

5. Whether it is true or not,

the Carib were thought to be a warring tribe and practiced some form of cannibalism in their war rituals. They were known for raids on the other islands, and were resented by the people that populated those islands. They are still today. If you accuse the people from other islands of being Carib it is not taken well. With that said, I had a mid-wife from Dominica and she was as sweet a person as could be, but her being from Dominica does not mean she is of that tribe since they are a minority there. She probably would more likely be a descendant of the escaped slaves. And with that said, a people's history does not mean it is true for their descendants. The Carib people of today are probably totally different than their ancestors.

My ex was from the Dominican Republic, and when my children went to school in Illinois, they had a teacher that taught that DR had been populated by the Carib tribe and that the Dominicans were descendants of cannibals. It made it really hard on my kids because the other kids were prejudice enough without this misinformation being fed to them. There was no excuse for the teacher's actions, because after she taught my daughter, I went to her and explained that the original natives of DR were the Tainos and that the Carib had never lived on the island of Hispaniola, and the Taino had never practiced cannibalism. In fact the Tainos were a non-warring people that did not even have a word for war. There is a story in the DR history that when the Carib tried to invade their island, one of their female tribal leaders fed them bitter Cassava and killed part of them, with the rest so ill they escaped to the sea. Four years later she taught the same lesson to my son's class and he endured even worse treatment as a result of it. I really did not like that woman.