Panellists at the town-hall meeting, with from left, osteoarchaeologist Felicia Fricke, interim director of St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research (SECAR) Alex Hinton, GR2021 director Ruud Stelten and programme director at the Department of Culture Natasha Radjouki.
ST. EUSTATIUS–A good-sized crowd came out to Monday’s informative town-hall meeting about the Golden Rock 2021 (GR2021) archaeological dig site at the Mike van Putten Youth Center/Lion’s Den.
The panel at the meeting was composed of GR2021 director Ruud Stelten, interim director of St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research (SECAR) Alex Hinton, osteoarchaeologist Felicia Fricke and programme director at the Department of Culture Natasha Radjouki.
Government Commissioner Alida Francis and deputy Government Commissioner Claudia Toet were also present to answer questions from the public pertaining to the public entity’s involvement with the project.
The evening was informative and interactive. During the question-and-answer session, interaction became very heated between some members of the public and the panellists, pertaining to the site and how it is being handled.
Some persons were not happy that the site was being disturbed, which they find disrespectful to the deceased.
Some people did not like the tone in which certain questions were answered during the town-hall meeting which was broadcast live on the public entity’s Facebook page. The meeting was scheduled to last one hour but went far over the allotted time.
Stelten stated that, should persons have questions they can always contact him.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/informative-interactive-town-hall-meeting-about-archaeological-site
It has come this far that everything that is initiated by the colonial puppet government is seen as unwanted. Those who identify with these collaborators of the dutch colonialist, or those who are part in that organization, are living in an elite cocoon and have little real contact with the mayority of our people. Aclear signal is, that when communication in such a small community goes almost completely via television, radio or internet, there is something very wrong with the people who do so.
We have experienced this also with the vaccination, where the mayority of the Statians do not trust the puppet government and therefore also not their policy of vaccination. Unfortunately the Moderna vaccin is actually very good, and many Caribbean people would like to have it. Just the fact that the traitor Van Rij proposed a certain policy is for most of our people enough reason not to trust that vaccination policy. I hope they rethink and choose for themselves, before our complete Statia-born population dies out, and be replaced by the sunseeking dutch colonial civil servants.
As with the excavations, never before were so many contra sounds heard. But we all know that public relations is the baddest quality the puppet government ventilates. Never before the puppet government has taken any interest in the true and complete history of the people. It is not just a meeting after a dig has begun! Community based used to be a collective initiative, but it was killed by the white dutch archeologists from Leiden, miss prof. in first position.
Crocodile tears are not in place here. The faults and mistakes were made in the last many years. History is not for a tesis for some university, but it should reveal our past so we can integrate that knowledge in our politics, economics, daily life, etc.