7 News Belize

Emancipation Day, The State Acknowledges
posted (August 1, 2019)
August 1st is celebrated as Emancipation day in the wider Caribbean as a National Holiday.

This morning at 6:00 on Marine Parade, the significance of the day was marked by a drumming and libation rituals organized by the UBAD Education Foundation.

And, while that was a community effort, a few hundred feet away, the state made its observance at the Museum of Belize.

In its effort to acknowledge and observe the importance of the British Empire's abolition of slavery, NICH invited the public to the Museum of Belize for a free viewing of the Museum's "Enslaved" exhibit. The event featured Jamaican dub poet and social commentator Mutabaruka, Belizean cultural stakeholders, and Belizean youth in live performances of drumming, Poetry, and spoken word. Here's more:

Orson Elrington, Attorney at Law
"On this day August 1st in 1838 slavery was abolished. But for Belize and for us it marks and occasion where we are supposed to reflect and where we are supposed to ensure that we do all in our power to complete the process of emancipation. What does that mean? We have done many great things, there have been many great achievements but until we do certain things to ensure that we complete this process, to make sure that every person understands what slavery represented and what it was before slavery for our ancestors, then the process will be truly complete."

"The general public, many people don't appreciate, nor understand, nor may not even know that today is emancipation day. So it is our responsibility to ensure that we educate our brothers, our sisters, and our children as to the Importance of this day."

"Today again, it is that a great step has been taken whereby I think, for the first time ever, emancipation day will be officially observed."

"The History of many of us doesn't begin, we are whitewashed in many cases by history, our perspective on history is based on European perspective. It is HIStory as opposed to OURstory. So, we need to seek out education. We need to look beyond maybe even what is provided in the formal school environments and to educate ourselves and once we understand from where we came, then we will be able to better appreciate and understand and be able to evolve and be able to meet our maximum capacity as a people and as a nation."

Sapna Budhrani, President, National Institute of Culture & History
"NICH has been the one has been pushing this forward. We have assisted UBAD for four years I believe or more than five years supporting their initiatives. This is the first year NICH has done one on its own. It's a representation of our summer arts program at the museum, the drumming program, at the museum and the poets from 501; where we want to continue involving our youth our community to be involved in activities that we have. So NICH has been fully involved. We give credit to the Belize Electricity Limited for supporting the summer program at the museum of Belize."

Alexis Salazar, Director NICH, responsibility for the Museum of Belize and the houses of Culture
"Three years ago for the commemoration of emancipation day we opened the enslaved exhibit that talks about slavery in Belize and how that then affects the society that we're currently living in today. What we decided to do was instead of just being a sponsor to the cultural stakeholders who do the yearly activities, We decided to do our own event also for the commemoration of the day which is: drumming, poetry, the speeches done by Felene Caytano and ambassador barrow and OJ Elrington on behalf of the minister. So,we decided as the government institute for culture that we should be at the forefront of these emancipation activities as well."

"It's being discussed in cabinet this week so obviously that is one of the first steps to, some people are proponents for it being a holiday, some aren't , some say just observe it. But the point is that it's being discussed. We opened up the museum this morning and we had Belizeans come in because they said you know we wanted to see the enslaved exhibit because its free. We do it every year but this year we've been getting more and more Belizeans coming in to do it. So what we hope for the long run is just more awareness of the day. If you compare Belize with the English speaking Caribbean everybody else has a holiday and they know what emancipation day whereas our population wouldn't as much as their awareness of it."

The event also featured Live Music by "DIH MAROONS" and poetry by "501 Poets"

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