In the crucible of global climate chaos, Caribbean Indigenous Peoples stand at the frontlines of survival, their centuries-old ecological wisdom silenced while their ancestral lands and culture teeter on the brink of extinction. Along Dominica’s north-eastern coast, an intricate tapestry of cultural survival is being woven – larouman by larouman (Ischnosiphon arouma), story by story.
Settled on the water’s boundary of north-east Wai’tukubuli (the Kalinago name for Dominica), where the tides shape the land and the land shapes their lives, are the Kalinago People. As descendants of the original stewards of their volcanic paradise, their presence predates European arrival by centuries. The Kalinago worldview, rooted in respect for their land, permeated every aspect of their existence – from the sacred mountain peaks that pierce the clouds to the cliff’s edge where their ancestors defended and protected their homeland. Their spiritual practices, craftsmanship, and oral traditions flowed naturally from their intimate relationship with the land, where every river tells a story, every stone holds memory, and every plant offers sustenance or healing.
Here, climate change is not just an environmental crisis, but a relentless assault on cultural identity. In a landscape sculpted by hurricane winds and colonial legacies, cultural survival and climate resilience are not merely measured in economic metrics, but in the preservation of a basket weave, the whispered knowledge of a medicinal herb, and the memory of a traditional boat-making technique.
Inside the Kalinago Territory, cultural identity is maintained by individuals like Ma Joe, an elderly Kalinago basket weaver. Her fingers, mapped with decades of intricate weaving, move with a practiced rhythm that seems to whisper ancestral stories. Each twist of the larouman reed represents defiance against forgetting – a physical manifestation of cultural memory increasingly threatened by not just economic pressures but by the shifting climate that alters the very landscape from which these traditions emerge. As she weaves, Ma Joe reminisces on the years when her grandma taught her this craft, a continuity now hanging by threads. Unlike previous generations where skills passed naturally through daily living, Ma Joe has become a cultural guardian by necessity. Her craft, once the heartbeat of cultural transmission, faces extinction not simply through modernisation but through the subtle erasure that comes when climate disruption fragments communities, displaces members, and transforms the natural resources upon which traditional knowledge depends. This Kalinago experience reveals a profound truth: climate change threatens the larouman reeds Ma Joe weaves, the sacred mountains that define Wai’tukubuli’s skyline, and the coastal boundaries where their ancestors stood guard.
In response to this unfolding narrative of loss, a collaborative research and advocacy project by Kopounoule Inc., funded by CANARI, (Caribbean Natural Resources Institute) through the support of Open Society Foundation, emerged as a critical initiative to document the Kalinago’s threatened cultural heritage. By methodically investigating the non-economic losses triggered by climate-related events, the project amplified Indigenous voices, advocated for climate justice, and highlighted the disproportionate impact of environmental changes on Indigenous communities like the Kalinago Territory.
Whispers of Cultural Erosion: Slow and Creeping
When Hurricane Maria’s fierce winds ravaged Wai’tukubuli in 2017, they left behind more than splintered homes and uprooted trees. The marked the breaking point after years of incremental climate impacts, intensifying the tearing of the very fabric of Kalinago ancestral knowledge. Craft materials and medicinal herbs were scatted to the winds, whilst young bearers of tradition were forced to flee, carrying fragments of identity that may never truly find their way home. This catastrophic moment crystalised the accumulation of non-economic losses that had been mounting for decades. This assault on their ecological wisdom isn’t captured in GDP statistics but manifests in the vanishing techniques for hurricane-resistant structures and fading medicinal knowledge.
The quiet tragedy illuminates a blind spot in climate discourse. When international bodies calculate the cost of climate disasters, they meticulously document destroyed infrastructure, damaged crops, and lost tourism revenue. Yet what of the cultural tapestry that unravels with each storm, with continued climate inaction? How might our understanding of climate impacts transform if we equally valued indigenous knowledge systems and cultural heritage in our assessment frameworks? Though progress has emerged in this area recently, the path ahead invites deeper reflection and genuine collaboration.
In this vein, the research by Kopounoule Inc. (soon to be renamed The Philz Foundation) encourages the expansion of our collective understanding of climate justice to include intangible dimensions of loss in official climate accounting and reporting. For Indigenous communities worldwide, climate change represents not just material deprivation but cultural genocide. It is a slow violence against ways of being and knowing that have sustained humanity’s relationship with the earth for millennia.
Walk through the eight hamlets of the Kalinago Territory today, and you will witness a geography of cultural participation as varied as the island’s terrain. In Sineku, culture thrives with a vibrant 38.7% of all engagement across the territory. Yet cross into hamlets like Crayfish River, and cultural identity begins to dwindle.
Community involvement chart
This uneven topography of tradition mirrors the growing chasm between generations. While elders move with hands that remember the exact pressure needed to clean the larouman reeds and the knowledge to identify the right boat-making tree, many Kalinago youth navigate a different landscape, one shaped by external influences that draw them away from their cultural roots.
The numbers tell only part of this story: 53.3% decline in plant diversity, 48.1% reduction in medicinal herbs availability, and 41.4% disruption of traditional food ingredients. Behind these percentages lies a cultural amputation that cannot be measured by economists or captured in disaster reports. For the Kalinago, this is not merely environmental change; it is identity under siege.
Climate impact chart
In the forest clearings, where medicinal knowledge once passed from wrinkled hands to young fingers eager to learn, silence now grows like an invasive species. Only 30 respondents of the 375 surveyed, are knowledgeable about the healing properties of their pharmacopoeia. As they pass on, they take with them traditional healing practices and medicinal formulas refined over centuries.
The artistry of basket weaving – once as natural to Kalinago life as breathing – now struggles for air. While 139 out of 154 respondents affirmed that this craft formed the cornerstone of their cultural identity, today only 22.4% of Kalinago youth (aged 15-30) engage with this tradition.
Perhaps most alarming is the state of boat-making, where the knowledge that once carried the Kalinago across Caribbean waters now rests in the hands of approximately 3.5% of the population. When the last boat maker lays down his tools, it will not simply be a craft that disappears but an embodiment of Kalinago resilience and ingenuity.
As Kalinago elder Proper Paris noted, “Appreciative-ness of our culture brings self-respect, collectiveness, and self-confidence”. Without this appreciation, the community loses not just the practices but the foundation of its collective identity. When younger people no longer recognise the names of the plants their grandparents used for healing, when traditional meals become restaurant curiosity rather than daily sustenance, the soul of a people begins to diminish.
The statistical portrait is sobering, only 25.2% of youth engage with Kalinago cuisine, 5.1% with boat-making, and virtually none actively preserve knowledge of medicinal herbs. Each data point represents not just data but dreams unfulfilled, stories untold, and wisdom unshared.
Seeds of Resistance in Hurricane Soil
Yet amid this narrative of loss, resistance takes root. In classrooms at Salybia Primary School, and the Sineku Primary School, the Kalinago Heritage Programme and the Language Corner stand as quiet revolutions against cultural amnesia. These efforts face formidable obstacles. Without formal inclusion in the national curriculum, cultural education remains peripheral, dependent on the passion of individual teachers and community members. As community advocate Natasha Green boldly challenges: “Are we going to take the bold step that Sineku Primary School has taken by intentionally including Kalinago culture in our teaching and activities, or will we wait for someone else to do it for us…?”
The community’s response has been to imagine new paths forward. Through focus groups and interviews, they have crafted recommendations that blend tradition with innovation. Examples include a Digital Archive that would capture traditional knowledge before it vanishes; climate-resilient agricultural practices that acknowledge both ancestorial wisdom and contemporary challenges; and community gardens dedicated to medicinal plants that would serve as living classrooms for intergenerational learning.
Perhaps most revolutionary is the proposed Kalinago Traditional Knowledge Council – a governance structure that would place equal value on the voices of youth and elders, creating a circle of wisdom where knowledge flows in both directions. This reimagining of cultural governance represents not just preservation but evolution – a recognition that Kalinago identity, like the larouman reed, must be both flexible and strong to survive.
These strategies are not isolated interventions, but carefully interwoven threads designed to rebuild and revitalise a living cultural tapestry. The most powerful narrative emerging from this research is the potential of Kalinago knowledge as a holistic climate adaptation strategy – ancient wisdom offering guidance through modern crisis. Each recommendation serves as a bridge, reconnecting severed timelines whilst creating paths that honour both past and future.
The vision extends far beyond survival. It speaks of cultural regeneration—a dynamic alchemy of continuous creation, adaptation, and empowerment. In the face of climate crisis and cultural threat, the Kalinago are not just preserving relics; they are reimagining their heritage, transforming existential threat into an opportunity for profound renaissance.
The Continuing Weave
Ma Joe’s fingers continue their ancient dance with larouman reeds, and a few hamlets over, 16-year-old Deanne learns the rhythms. Each basket is an act of resistance, a declaration that cultural survival is not a passive inheritance but an active creation. The Kalinago story refuses the narrative of victimhood. It is about resilience, about the profound understanding that culture is not a static artifact but a living, breathing entity that adapts, transforms, and endures beyond the storms that seek to silence it.
This narrative stands as a clarion call for knowledge to flow between generations and across divided territories – a call for capacity building, and strategic alliance among Caribbean Indigenous Peoples who might transcend historical fractures to forge a collective voice too powerful to ignore. As COP30 approaches in Brazil, the imperative is clear: transform fragmentation into a unified movement of resistance and resilience.
From the Arctic to the Amazon, from the Pacific Islands to the Caribbean shores, Indigenous communities face parallel struggles against the dual threats of climate chaos and cultural erasure. The Kalinago experience offers a blueprint for Indigenous survival that transcends geographical boundaries – where traditional knowledge becomes not just a repository of the past but a living framework for navigating uncertain futures. As seas rise, forests burn, and glaciers melt, the collective wisdom of Earth’s first stewards offers humanity its most profound resource for survival—a relationship with the natural world rooted in reciprocity rather than extraction.
“We need to place value on what we have and who we have,” Natasha Green reminds us. And in that valuing, hope takes root – a living testament of a culture that refuses extinction.
I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to all Kalinago community members who participated in this research project. Your knowledge, insights, and continued engagement serve as the foundation for preserving Indigenous identity in the face of our global climate emergency.
Special thanks to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit who, upon reviewing the preliminary research findings, committed to supporting the proposals emerging from this analysis. We value the dedication of both community and national leaders in our collective pursuit of social and climate justice.
Together, we continue the vital work of documenting, preserving, and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge systems as essential components of climate resilience.
