The St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance will host several community-engagement events in St. Eustatius in the next coming weeks. Among these is the screening of the documentary A Story of Bones (2022), directed by Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere.

On December 11, there will be a screening of the documentary A Story of Bones in the Lion’s Den in Statia.

On December 15, a walk-in session for residents is organized to hear the ideas and opinions of the community on what should happen to the excavated ancestral remains. Marjolijn kok, an archeologist from Rotterdam who is part of the Alliance and specialized in community archaeology, traveled especially to Statia to hear and listen to the views of the community and to answer questions. Another activity is a walking tour to the Godet burial ground where excavations of human remains took place in 2012 and 2018.

St. Helena documentary ‘A Story of Bones’: The story of the Golden Rock and Godet burial grounds are not unique. There are many Afrikan burial grounds in the Americas that tell a similar story. One of these is told in the documentary ‘A Story of Bones’ about the remains of 325 so-called liberated Afrikans that were reburied in St. Helena Island in August this year. Protagonist Annina van Neel got the help of Peggy King Jorde in New York, advocate for Afrikan burial grounds worldwide. Both, together with director Dominic Aubrey de Vere, will be joining in online after the screening to answer questions.

UNESCO Nomination for Golden Rock and Godet burial grounds
In November this year, the Alliance nominated the Golden Rock and Godet burial site in St. Eustatius to be included in Unesco’s Routes of Enslaved People. This project plays a major role in “breaking” the silence surrounding the history of slavery and placing this tragedy that has shaped the modern world in the universal memory. The nominations have been prepared in close cooperation with Unesco Netherlands and have been endorsed by the public entity St. Eustatius and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).

How to get involved?
All events and activities will be announced in the media, on the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance Facebookpage www.facebook.com/groups/steustatiusafrikanburialgroundalliance/ and  blog https://afrikanhistoryandconsciousness.blogspot.com/. You can also send a Whatsapp message to +599 319 4975.