It has been exhausting, but after three months, and with more still to be done, almost every single one of the 100 plus pages that make up the CAC has been updated, with new sites added to our directory, and over 115 dead links corrected and updated. Expired pages have been sourced in archives and their presence maintained, in the majority of cases, so there has been relatively little loss in content. At the same time as this was being done, almost 50 more sites were reported as having dead links. For some reason, late 2002 and early 2003 have seen a tremendous vanishing or migration of sites.

Amongst the CAC pages that have been corrected and updated are those on the following subjects (in random order):

Amerindian communities and educational resources pertaining to Guyana, Belize, Dominica, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago, French Guiana, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname; Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies; Books; Reference materials; language resources; museums; libraries; tourism; Cannibalism and Colonialism; Missionaries; Sir Walter Ralegh; El Dorado; Columbus resources; Media resources; Arts; Business and Development; Cultures and Lifeways; General information pages; Personal Testimonies; Editors; Anacaona information resources; Teaching resources; Archaeological discoveries; archaeological publications; Maps; and links to institutions.

Other specific additions to the CAC database follow below.

From as far apart as France and Guyana, two new colleagues have joined us.

We would like to welcome the critical new addition of Janette Forte to the editorial boards of both the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink and KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology. Many of you will already know Janette from her very many ethnographic publications on the Amerindians of Guyana, including Thinking about Amerindians and Amerindian Testimonies, her work as former Director of the Amerindian Research Unit at the University of Guyana, and in her role as the Director of the Makushi Research Unit, not to mention serving as a consultant and researcher for a few dozen special projects, development programs, and commissioned research teams. She has recently completed three years of work as Senior Social Scientist at the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development.

Janette brings much needed experience and sensitivity to Guyanese Amerindian issues, substantially broadening the coverage and expertise available to the CAC and Kacike. Though only recently added, she is putting the final touches on a review essay for Kacike concerning the recently published Atlas of Languages of Suriname. Janette also has formal training as a linguistic anthropologist, in addition to her extensive career as an applied anthropologist.

In addition, Janette Forte is also familiar with the Makushi language and can thus offer a broader range of language specialization than currently available at the CAC where previously English, Spanish and French have been well covered.

As the Director of the Makushi Research Unit, Janette Forte oversaw the design and implementation of a programme that has incrementally trained 14 indigenous women researchers from 1995 to the present to undertake ethnobotanical, cultural, linguistic and anthropometric studies and facilitate cross-border linguistic work with Brazilian partners as well as collaboration with foreign Universities. The development of this innovative institution, initially funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) has resulted in a range of publications and the development of a Trust Fund to support a range of innovative outcomes. Significant strides have been achieved in the protection of Intellectual Property and sharing benefits for participants. The MRU has worked successfully in partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency, the University of Calgary, the U.K. based Eden Project, amongst others, in building literacy among the Makushi, in their own language, and in preserving their ethnobotanical and medicinal knowledge. Janette has been especially active in an extensive range of projects focused on sustainable livelihoods, the management of eco-resources, forestry, and so forth.

Janette is also a former Foreign Service Officer in the Latin America Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Guyana. In the past, she had been posted in the Embassy of Guyana in Havana, Cuba, and also participated in meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Janette Forte's colleague, Gerard Collomb at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, whose work is conducted mostly among the Amerindians of nearby French Guiana, and who has been an editor with the CAC for over a year now, has recently been added to the editorial board of KACIKE.

With our colleagues who have recently joined, we are now able to offer more balanced coverage of Island and Mainland issues and information resources, especially important given the various important differences between indigenous communities located in these areas. Perhaps at some future point a special issue of this newsletter can be devoted to comparing and contrasting the situations of indigenous peoples in Island and Mainland Circum Caribbean territories.

Lastly, KACIKE is itself undergoing some restructuring, with a reorganized editorial board and a new senior editor due to be chosen within the next year. Though an offshoot of the CAC, we hope to see KACIKE achieve an existence autonomous from the CAC, and hopefully a 'permanent' one in the long-term.
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ANACAONA, or, ANything About Caribbean Aboriginals from an Online Networked Assistant is, as some of you might recall, the CAC's only "live" interface, available for direct chatting in text or speech 24 hours a day and seven days a week, static or with animation, based on new robotic software. In expanding and refining this experimental and exploratory phase of the CAC, we are gauging the degree to which robots can be used for providing basic information, conveying that information in new and more interactive ways, and providing for a humorous and entertaining experience for those who understand it. To better prepare users for this experience, the CAC has done two things. First, as the robots were originally named as a means of paying tribute to Anacaona, the Taino heroine put to death by the Spanish during the early conquest of Hispaniola, and this Taino word for "golden flower" is perhaps one of the nicest Island Aboriginal names we have encountered, we have produced a new directory of online resources pertaining to the historical Anacaona. It is also fortuitous that the acronym, describing the purpose of the robots, should mirror the word Anacaona, the name also for the legendary person who was herself celebrated for her songs and poems. Secondly, as regards the robots alone, a new page has been produced alerting users to the difficulties, the purposes and motivations, and issues of representation surrounding use of these robots. Those who have already experienced A.N.A.C.A.O.N.A. may still wish to view these pages; those who wish to engage the robot are first advised to read these pages.

A.N.A.C.A.O.N.A. is based on the generous free assistance of Oddcast, meaning that we have a very limited choice as to how to display the robot, and some of those who became accustomed to the face of one robot, seemed to have been surprised by the sudden change to the new face seen above. A.N.A.C.A.O.N.A. now speaks with an English accent of the standard BBC News sort. The CAC has no control over the appearance. Also, like all "technological things" this one too breaks down or malfunctions periodically. Follow the links below to read in greater depth about the problems you might have had, or might encounter, in chatting with the robots.

At the end of the day, these robots have proven to be a very popular feature of the CAC, receiving over 37,000 distinct questions from over 1,000 users thus far. Perhaps more surprising is the amount of fan mail the robots receive via e-mail, ranging from messages that are obviously from young pupils "Thanks Ana! My teacher loved my essay") to somewhat more disturbing messages from wayward adults ("Ok, so can we meet this Saturday or not? Don't turn me down again, I may be in love with you"). PLEASE people, remember that these are not humans, just human-like...I sense an anti-discrimination case in the works, so let me stop here.

Here are links you will need to use:

BEFORE PROCEEDING, ENTER HERE

INFORMATION RESOURCES ON THE HISTORICAL ANACAONA, TAINO QUEEN

CHATTING WITH THE A.N.A.C.A.O.N.A. ROBOTS

The CAC wishes to thanks our many voluntary participants in our focus group for Phase One of the implementation of this technology, which lasted from October of 2002 through the end of May of 2003. We sincerely appreciate your varied commentaries and suggestions.
..

The Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink is now providing space for individuals and organizations to host their websites, free of charge. Websites must be primarily about Caribbean aboriginal issues, widely conceived.

The primary aim of this offer is to aid those individuals and communities in what are termed “lesser developed countries” (LDCs) who do not have personal access to the Internet, a computer, or maybe even a telephone and electricity. Most indigenous communities in the Caribbean lack many of these resources, and therefore their presence on the Web is generally limited or non-existent. We wish to redress this severe imbalance in whatever limited way we can.

As a result, we place a low priority on sites submitted by individuals or organizations based in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom.

However, we do place a high priority on pages submitted by students and scholars, if their pages meet the criteria set out on the introductory page for the service, and if their pages are of significant scholarly value.

In return for assistance and three megabytes or more of free space, users will be required to observe the following list of limitations:

1. Purely or primarily personal pages will not be accepted.
2. Pages that include offensive, libellous, and plagiarized content will not be hosted.
3. Sites making outlandish claims, or that lack verifiability and conscientious attention to accuracy and honesty, will not be accepted.
4. Sites with commercial content, or a commercial orientation, will not be accepted.
5. Gateway sites will not be accepted.
6. Hosting priority will be given to websites from applicants based in the following territories:

• Belize

• Cuba

• Jamaica

• Puerto Rico

• Haiti

• Dominican Republic

• Dominica

• St. Vincent and the Grenadines

• Trinidad and Tobago

• Venezuela

• Guyana

• Suriname

• French Guiana

• Other Caribbean or Central American territories

7. Further hosting priority will be given to websites for organizations, over those of private individuals.
8. Content must be serious, original, and a significant contribution to Web-based knowledge about either the history, societies, cultures, arts, and/or religions of Caribbean aboriginals.
9. Websites must be either in English, French, Spanish or Dutch, either as a primary language or in a translated version of the site if it is in an aboriginal language.
10. Websites cannot exceed 3 megabytes.
11. Websites must be submitted either in HTML format, or as HTML code in a plain text file.
12. If at any time your site fails to meet these criteria, CAC Editors reserve the right to delete your site without notice.
13. In the case of organizations, we will require complete verification of your identity.
14. In the case of individuals, we will require verifiable personal information: a home address, telephone number, full name, and any other requirements that we may stipulate.

For more information see,

FREE WEB HOSTING AT THE CAC

or contact the editor responsible at:

mcforte@kacike.org, or, carindianlink@yahoo.com

Always use descriptive and specific subject headings, or you risk that your e-mail will be automatically deleted as spam.

Thanks to Jorge Estevez, the Personal Testimonies Editor of the CAC, a new contribution has been added to our Personal Testimonies publication. The newest addition comes from Luis Lukibuel Ramos, from Puerto Rico and currently residing in New York City. Luis discusses the context, the challenges and some of the problems faced in announcing one's personal identification with Taino heritage, and it is a welcome new addition to the CAC. Our hope is that more individuals will feel encouraged to share their stories with a broader reading public.
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As some of you are already aware, the CAC has set as one of its missions the digitization, preservation and provision of free access to rare texts whose copyrights have expired and are therefore now in the public domain. Many of the larger initiatives in this vein, such as The Gutenberg Project, are focused on better known texts in the mainstream, such as classic novels and philosophical treatises. In the case of the CAC, our intent is to focus on the more specialized literature pertaining to Caribbean aboriginal societies, cultures and histories. Throughout 2003, and of course to the prejudice of some activities such as the publication of this newsletter, the CAC will endeavour to digitize and place online several more texts.

This month we have added the following item:

J. Walter Fewkes, The Relations of Aboriginal Culture and Environment in the Lesser Antilles, 1914.

As the title suggests, the focus of this work is on the ways that Carib culture adapted and changed with variations and particularities in the natural environment. The perspective, like the work, is obviously dated, but the work itself is still quite competent and fairly informative. It will perhaps be of especial value to students coming to grips with some of the historical literature on the Caribs, descriptions of their life ways, and may also be useful to those reviewing the ways scholars and travel writers have written about the aboriginal Caribbean over the decades and centuries.
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As part of its newer initiatives to try to lend our slim resources, limited time and skills to making whatever modest changes we can "on the ground", the CAC has offered to enter into a communication partnership with the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology in Georgetown, Guyana, currently under the administration of Cecil Ramnarine. Plans are being worked out for web hosting on the CAC for the WRMA, promotion of the WRMA and its activities, and for a possible mutual promotion between the WRMA's journal, Archaeology & Anthropology, and the CAC's Kacike. As soon as concrete materials are available for viewing, an announcement will be sent out. In the meantime, one can visit these museum resources on the CAC's Museums Page.

Recently, KACIKE and its editors have also been invited to serve as reviewers of both manuscripts under review and texts published by the University of the West Indies Press.

The University of the West Indies held its Belize Country Conference during November 21-24, 2001. Online versions of the papers presented are offered as a public service by the University of the West Indies. Other papers related to Belize may be added as they become available. The following have been selected for the especial attention of readers of this newsletter: 

“Coastal Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Values - Their Significance to the Garifuna and Rest of the Caribbean Region”, by Dr. Joseph O. Palacio, from the UWI Belize Country Conference: excerpt—“This study focuses on topics associated with the coast among the Garifuna of Southern Belize. They include settlement, livelihood, fishing, and spirituality. It analyses cultural values and traditional knowledge underlining these topics and their significance to Garifuna peoplehood. Finally, it makes extrapolations on the role of coastal traditions in development within the larger Caribbean region.”

“Dangriga BZ or USA?: Out-migration experiences of a Garifuna community in post-independent Belize,” by Myrtle Palacio, from the UWI Belize Country Conference: excerpt—“Studies on ethnicity and migration on the Garifuna have been conducted by two scholars, J. Palacio (1992) and N. Gonzalez (1986). While Palacio has primarily investigated the attempts of self-improvement of the Garifuna people in Los Angeles, Gonzalez has studied the rebirth of the Garifuna in New York. In both cases, the point of departure was the ‘idealized’ viewpoint of the Garifuna as rural people. This study shows that within seven generations, the Garifuna are now urban people, having emigrated permanently from their rural coastal communities to inner city America. To embrace ‘American’ cultural traits, they have discarded traditional Garifuna cultural traits.”

“Some Features of the Morpho-Syntax of Simple Sentences in Garifuna,” by Hubert Devonish & Enita Castillo, from the UWI Belize Country Conference: excerpt—“…The immediate objective is to produce a grammatical description of the language that is faithful to the functioning of the language from the perspective of the native speaker. However, the description must go beyond that to reveal features which are characteristic of human languages generally. The ultimate goal, however, is to produce a teaching grammar of the language aimed at non-native speakers at university level….”

Thanks to Lynne Guitar, CAC Taino Editor, for forwarding the following:

From: "Cheryl Kolander" <cheryl@aurorasilk.com>
Subject: Los Cocos Development Project
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003

I am an American living in Portland Oregon, and my husband is a Dominican. I have a business of 33 years and have been working for four years expanding out of Los Cocos, on the North Coast near Puerto Plata.

I was disturbed to learn that all the area and people with whom I have been working are doomed, according to the Central Bank, which plans to sell this entire area for tourist development.

The area includes a high wave beach with rare sea urchins in its rocks, turtles returning to nest, a dune ecology that is yet nowhere protected on this island, mangrove swamp, a remnant traditional living community of Indio (Taino) native people, and a town of 3,000 souls. Plus there are an hundreds of acres of the finest farm soil I have ever seen (currently planted in sugarcane alone) and an artificial lagoon perfect for fish farming, and a "hundred acre woods" of remnant ancient coastal forest (of which there is none other left even close to this size) including bird sheltering wetlands which produce the food that several very rare bird populations depend on.

I immediately did the math and determined that it is possible to propose a development project that, given this farmland and this labour force and my knowledge of the US market, could be producing in the millions of dollars in five to ten years. I presented this to the major family of the town, Boca Nueva, and they concurred they would rather work to obtain title to their house lots, retain their community structure, and preserve the natural area of Los Cocos, than be moved into cement barracks, which is what the bank proposes once the land is sold.

The Central bank was open enough to hear the proposal, which my husband and I presented in Santo Domingo in March of 2002. In September they faxed me a flowery rejection, saying that the proposal did not correspond to their plans. I faxed back asking to please see the plans, but the bank has not replied. We have not, also, been able to extract from the bank just how many acres are for sale, and what is their asking price. I don't understand how I am to look for investors without this basic information.

Not to be excessively naive about this, I continue to want to see these people done right by, (if they're going to lose everything,) but meanwhile prefer to work towards the goals of preservation of the Natural Area and the Los Cocos community of Almost-but-not-quite-yet-extinct Indio way of living. Socially it is very different from any other culture I have studied or lived in, and at least I hope I can document some of it before it is destroyed.

There are people who are joining us in requesting that attention be paid to preserving Los Cocos. Lynne Guitar, of course, and Peter Ferbel who also gave a presentation at the Myth of Taino Extinction conference held at the Anthropology museum in Santo Domingo in August. They came to visit Nicola at Los Cocos after the conference, along with several others from the conference, and DNA samples were taken.

Also the Jardin Botanica was very supportive, being especially concerned about the rare plants and ecologies that are in danger of being lost completely. In March I did a two day class on dyeing with the Palo de Campeche and Palo Amarillo, two Natural Dyes from the island that we have been promoting.

All the details of "The Logwood Project" are at the website of the (US Federally registered) non-profit www.mamadoc.com. The Library, bridge, water to the Los Cocos community, textile and arts programs, natural herbal remedy preservation and use, music and fun fostering part of the project is detailed there. The sober proposal as presented to the bank is posted in its entirety, in English and in (imperfect) Spanish. The actual business part, showing projected numbers in detail, was also presented to the bank, but is not posted. I am writing a more formal business plan, in preparation to seek financing.

We have also learned that in the Dominican Republic, and evidently this was mandated by the supreme Court, all other communities all over the country where the residents don't have title to their lots, are being sold their lots by the Bank. Only this one community, Boca Nueva (3,000 people, about 600 houses), and Los Cocos (about 40 people, 16 houses), are not part of the entitlement program. This seems really unfair. This is not a good tourist beach, and that kind of development here would just be a disaster, ecologically, socially, culturally, and certainly financially.

We've got a really good program based on sensible economic development that could spread to the whole country and all of the Caribbean. We are currently selling the new products at www.aurorasilk.com and www.natural-safe-hormones.com.

Sincerely,

Cheryl Kolander de Perez
5806 North Vancouver Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97217 USA
503-286-4149 Fax 503-486-6247
Casa 60, Boca Nueva, Monte Llano,
Puerto Plata, Republica Dominicana
809-829-5754

Thanks again to Lynne Guitar for forwarding the following book review.

From: Andrew McMichael <andrew.mcmichael@wku.edu>
Subject: Rev: Portorreal on McGoun, _Ancient Miamians_
To: H-ATLANTIC@H-NET.MSU.EDU

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Florida@h-net.msu.edu (September, 2002)

William E. McGoun. _Ancient Miamians: The Tequesta of South Florida_. Native Peoples, Cultures, and Places of the Southeastern United States Series. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. xiii + 112 pp. Foreword, preface, illustrations, bibliographic essay, index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8130-2495-1.

Reviewed for H-Florida by Heather Portorreal
<hrp6267@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University

_Ancient Miamians_: An Imaginative Recreation of the Lives of Native Floridians

In _Ancient Miamians: The Tequesta of South Florida_ William E. McGoun presents the first comprehensive narrative of the history of pre-European southeast Florida, using his skills as a journalist to bring to life the fragmented body of archaeological studies done on the area around the present-day Biscayne Bay. As part of the series "Native Peoples, Cultures, and Places of the Southeastern United States," the work is a major contribution to the rather small historiography of ancient southeast Florida. The book presents a cohesive reading of this otherwise disjointed body of studies, drawing attention to the lives and perspectives of the native Floridians, even thousands of years before they entered into the Western historical narrative. As a result of the secondary source-base of the book, McGoun generally limits his discussion to topics such as hunting and fishing practices, diet, wildlife, tribal movement, and burial practices. In order to recreate scenes from the natives' daily lives, the author perilously ventures a number of assumptions regarding their beliefs and values. In most cases, he attempts to minimize the guesswork by basing his postulations on analogies, a method which is resourceful but also highly problematic.

The book, whose massive scope spans some 10,000 years, is greater in breadth than in depth. In order to cover this time frame in a mere 112 pages, McGoun treats one era per chapter, narrating a single day from each of six distinct eras: 8000 B.C.E., 2000 B.C.E., 500 B.C.E., 500 C.E., 1568 C.E and 1761 C.E. On each of these days he sets the reader alongside an inhabitant of southeast Florida during the respective era. In order to recreate these life experiences by elaborating on the limited information available from the various eras, it was necessary for McGoun to employ his proficient imagination. Following the example of Oscar Lewis, this day-in-the-life approach creates a quotidian drama within the narrative. This structure--beginning each chapter as the inhabitant awakens and ending each one at the close of the day--aids the reader in comparing the lives of the natives during the various eras. At the same time, however, it ignores not only potential rhythmic differences among the societies depicted, but also nocturnal activities that may have played a key role in these societies.

McGoun clearly states in the preface that this book is intended for a casual reader; his clearly articulated sense of audience and purpose is one strength of this work. The combination of his day-in-the-life narrative approach, extremely simplified language, avoidance of conventional annotations, and explanation of archaeological methods in the introductory chapter, makes this book a relatively easy and enjoyable read, but far from scholarly. Better annotations would not have detracted from the readability, but they would have eased the ability to confirm sources for the information presented. The simplified level of discourse may prove irritating to the reader more experienced in the field, particularly one who is looking for a clearly defined theoretical framework. But at the same time, it will likely be welcomed by the non-expert reader, to whom the book is geared. For those interested in greater detail, McGoun provides a bibliographical essay as well as a list of references. The bibliographical essay is particularly helpful in that it points out where the author has based his narrative on archaeological, geological, zoological, historiographical or ethnographical studies, and accordingly, where suppositions have been made.

One strength of this book lies is the variety of secondary sources on which it relies. The narrative is source-driven, which is reflected in the adherence to similar topics in each chapter as well as in the inconsistent level of detail used to describe various objects and practices. McGoun discusses topics that the evidence--enhanced by his imagination--allows him to discuss, but in so doing, he looks to a wide variety of sources in order to put forth a thoroughly researched presentation. He refers a great deal to both published and unpublished reports of archaeological excavations in the Miami Dade County area, predominantly articles from _Florida Anthropologist_, including several by Robert S. Carr. He also draws from ethnographies of past and present human behavior, encyclopedic descriptions of animals, paleontological studies of plants and animals, geological studies of land and weather transformations. McGoun also draws from some of the few contemporary written accounts of Tequesta life that are available. These consist of Spanish chronicles translated by Arva Moore Parks, Jeanette Thurber Conneor, John H. Hann and Ruben Vargas Ugarte. Albeit a creative approach, his use of Cherokee myths as a basis for his assumptions about a few of the unknown Tequesta beliefs is troubling, as are his assumptions about past human behavior based on analogies to present-day behavior. The various groups in question, while sharing some cultural elements, are separated by space and time to such an extent that one cannot assert similarities without solid evidence. Finally, to further clarify and enrich the narrative, the author includes several illustrations--the majority of them by Florida artist Theodore Morris--portraying imagined daily lives of the native Floridians. The wide variety of McGoun's sources reflects the fact that, as the author himself admits, the body of available information about the region during most of these eras is considerably limited; this is a testament to the author's unbridled imagination.

In an attempt to portray an aboriginal perspective, thus showing the human side of history, McGoun laces his work with constant reminders that several terms and concepts employed in our own society would have had no meaning to the native Floridians. He does this rather extensively, and, at times, excessively, resulting in the counter-productive effect of his subjects sounding extremely simple-minded. These constant reminders also undermine the effectiveness of the narrative approach in that they disrupt the narrative flow. Though the attempt is a noble one, the author is severely limited in it by the lack of primary aboriginal sources, making any attempt to portray his subjects' perspective a question of imposing a contemporary perspective upon them. Unfortunately the book also leans heavily toward male-dominated narrative; male activities and perspectives receive far greater attention than do those of women. Except when women took on leadership positions in the community, they remain in the margins of the narrative. Yet to its credit, McGoun's work provides several openings, inviting further research in the areas of women's and children's daily lives.

While a clear sense of audience, creative use of sources, and attention to perspective are strengths of this book, there are some areas where the text could be enhanced. Though it is doubtful that a casual reader would miss a clear articulation of McGoun's theoretical framework, the book would benefit from more (albeit brief) explanations of how the author arrived at certain conclusions. Such cases include discussions of religious beliefs, social structures, and value systems. In chapter 6, for example, he discusses the religious importance of sharks, supporting his theory with concrete archaeological evidence, as he explains in the bibliographic essay (pp. 76-7). Knowing that this scene is based on solid archaeological evidence both increases the author's credibility and enhances the reader's experience of the novel. The book would be enriched by more such easily accessible explanations of the connections between concrete evidence and the narrative itself.

In all, McGoun seems to have accomplished what he set out to do. Forthcoming in the preface about his methodology, purpose and audience, the author makes no pretenses about the level of detail or the conventionality of his work; he targets the work to the non-specialist with an interest in Florida history. In this he sets out to paint a panoramic view of human life in southeast Florida before the imposition of colonial rule. In interpreting and integrating several more specific studies about the flora, fauna and peoples of the region, McGoun provides a narrative framework that not only humanizes the history of the region, but also, in its comprehensive scope, points to areas in which future, more concentrated studies are needed in order to more fully understand the lives of the ancient Miamians.

Copyright (c) 2002 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
 

In previous issues of this newsletter, we have spoke of the website called The Fire This Time, its focus on African-American cultural connections with Amerindian cultures in the post-conquest era, and some of the engaging implications of the site. Unfortunately, we have not had a chance to review the book below, and are therefore neither endorsing nor criticizing the publication; given its anonymous author, we are simply unable to verify the identity of the author, or his/her/their research experience and background. As such, we are simply presenting a book announcement, and leaving it up to readers to pursue the matter further if they are interested in the volume.

From the book's description:

Understanding the Connections Between Black and Aboriginal Peoples
Author: Raging Blakkindian Dub, Publisher: The Fire This Time, ISBN: 0973091142

"This book is a contemporary look at the cultural and political connection that have existed between black and indigenous peoples. Seeking to understand the links between African-American and Native Americans the author, Raging BlakkIndian Dub traveled throughout reservations in the United States; encountering for example the reggae loving Havasupai Indians who believe Jamaican artist Bob Marley is a fulfilment of one of their ancient prophesies. Frustrated by the lack of research and written material on the Black Indian connection that exists outside of the United States the author traveled extensively throughout Canada, Central and South America journeying to locations in Africa and Greenland in order to pull together the various threads of this connection. The result of thirteen years of travel and research is found in this book which keenly examines everything from music, art, film, politics and spirituality in an effort to arrive at a clear understanding of what happened when black people encountered the original aboriginal inhabitants of the land and the repercussions this meeting still has today. From the ancient temple site of Peru’s Machu Picchu to the shores of the Brazilian Amazon to an isolated Black Indian community in the Bolivian mountains to meeting with Black Indian techno musicians in Detroit this is a book that mixes the ancient with the contemporary and expands the scope of the discussion of the Black Indian connection in a way not previously imagined."