Kamala’s real Caribbean Heritage via Jamaican Artworks
Vice President, Kamala Harris backed by flags of her three heritages.- Artwork by Jamaican-American artist, Michael Auld.
Vice President Kamala Harris, is of paternal Jamaican descent, and will soon become America's first woman multiethnic president. Christened with a Euro-Jamaican surname, she is fittingly, also tri-racial, a descendant of proud Jamaican, Asiatic Indian, and European ancestry. |
She said that she fell in love with Bob Marley early, and knew the lyrics to many of his songs. She was hooked on Jamaican pride. As a Jamaican myself, Africans from many countries burst into Bob’s songs when they find out I’m a “Yardie”, an affectionate term for the island.
Although her birth family is rooted in ancient cultures, as a Jamaican artist with similar genes, I present here aspects of her Jamaican roots, via my researched Yamayeka and African inspired artworks. My genetic background is Scottish, West African, and Indigenous Asiatic Amerindian, a.k.a. the island's Yamaye Taíno ancestors. |
What is Kamala’s Jamaica?
The island is a multicultural society whose name, "Jamaica" is derived from Yamayeka, the indigenous Yamaye Taíno culture whose presence in this Northern Caribbean territory, was via an early colonization by my Amerindian ancestors around 2,124 years ago, around the birth of Jesus the Christ of Palestine. The Taíno were originally an Orinoco Basin's river community who, because of a population explosion, and directed in an ancient mythology by the Supreme Being, Yaya, because of an infraction by his son, Yaya-el to, upon the pain of death, leave the homeland and never return. Following the god’s advise, they left the South American continent to become seafarers, traveling island by island, north up the chain of Caribbean Islands, into Florida, settling in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic & Haiti, and the western tip of Florida. Along the way to becoming empires, as was true of their Central and South American neighbors, they created cacigazos, or ruling cacike chiefdoms on each territory
They came from an Amerindian Continent familiar with many very ancient and technologically and agriculturally advanced pyramid and empire-building civilizations. For example, how do you turn a poisonous tuber like bitter yuca/cassava/manioc into a nourishing daily bread, or cross-pollinate a grass and invent life-giving majisi/maize/"corn". Via the invading Spanish and Portuguese, they introduced the world to over 60 items, including words like hurricane, sacred cojibi (a.k.a. “tobacco”), hammock, maize, sweet potatoes, aji (capsicum peppers), tapioca, key or cay, and much more words, technologies, and food items now commonly used by Eastern Hemisphere cultures.
Jamaica's later 1665 arriving British Colonial clergy created our Coat of Arms which honors the Taíno.
Jamaica’s Coat of Arms whose top was originally designed by a British Colonial cleric, William Sancroft who was then Archbishop of Canterbury. The "Out of Many, One People" epithet was added later for the island's Independence in 1962. It has a Yamaye Taíno couple, a Jamaican crocodile, a British herald’s crown with a St. Andrew cross and shield, with five endemic pineapples.
Genetically, Vice President Kamala Harris, soon to become a US President, is half maternal Asiatic Indian with large percentages of paternal African and European admixtures, a fitting combination for the USA, her multiethnic country of birth. However, in the United States of America’s racist “*One Drop Rule” practice, her paternal Jamaican part African ancestry makes her 100% "Black" in America's eyes. So, what racial category does she belong? Via my artworks, here is an artistic breakdown of the Jamaican groups to which she is ethnically connected.
* That is , before the invention of DNA, in racist America,"One Drop" of strong Sub-Saharan "blood" makes a human being totally Black.
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The Peculiarity of "Race" in the Americas
Above: An early Mexican painting of Racial divisions in Mexico |
Since VP Kamala Harris' race has become an issue to some Americans, here is one country of the Americas' take on race-mixing. The above painting is Mexican, and represents the Spanish attempt to introduce 16 varieties of racial mixing in this oldest European country in the Americas. Spain was accustomed in its Iberian homeland, to North African Moores (for 700 years), Jews, and white Christians already mixing there. With the added indigenous Amerindian's Anahuac of the Mexica (Me-she-ka) or "Aztec" Tripple Alliance Empire and other local nations, Sub-Saharan Africans, "white" Spanish, and hiding Converso Jews, hiding out from the Spanish Inquisition.
America’s racism has been used in art and now highlighted with Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential race trying to rewrite a US historical racist agenda. In the past, he attacked Pequots for not being “Indian" enough when they were competitively applying for a casino in Connecticut. Kamala Harris was born enmeshed in American racial history and not in Jamaica's own classification of “Browning”, similar to South African “Colored” designation, as is peculiar to those countries. These are acknowledgments of race mixing. Not so in America, who does not have those racial categories, except "other".
KAMALA's CARIBBEAN PEDIGREE:BY ART
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Taíno Jamaica (Yamayeka)
My Taíno Creation Storybook. (Click to the YouTube link for my narrated 5-minute story). |
Wood and shell sculpture of Ataberia, the Virgin Mother giving birth to Yucahu, the Taíno |
Next is Guahayona as he leaves Matinino and travels to its twin Island of Guanin (14k Gold). The Taíno used the hummingbird's metallic feathers as a symbol of gold. (incorporated woodcut image of Taínos panning for gold. A technique employed by arriving Europeans, called by them, "panning" for gold).
Kamala’s African Heritage
Ghana
Ghanaian influences in Jamaica are the strongest manifestations of the island's African cultural retentions. This is especially true of the Asanti's Akan Anansi the Spider-Man, whose morality-based stories have been passed down and recorded through the centuries. Jamaicans would automatically dismissively say, "Cho man, yu a tell a Anansi Story!" (Meaning, "You are not telling the truth!").
Next comes the Maroons, led by escaped enslaved Asanti (Ashanti) sugarcane plantations escapees. They went to the mountains and formed gurilla bands, twice defeating the British, where they were welcomed by the Yamaye Taíno Cimarrones who had earlier removed themselves from Spanish ranches where they were forced to work and bring in the island's sparse gold reserves.
Kamala’s childhood photos with her island cousins in Jamaica, reveal that she would have heard AnansiStories or (Anansesem in Ghana’s Twi language,). Anansi, imported from the Akan of Ghana, is a very deeply ingrained moral guide for all Jamaicans. (See my anansistories.com). |
My Anansi the Spider (doll) with six of his seven Ghanaian children. Only his wife, Aso, (a.k.a. "Cookie") and his youngest son, Intikuma (Ticky-Ticky in my novel) came to Jamaica with him.
My Anansi and his back-up posse, Me, Myself, and I & I as condoms, all masked for both the Aids and the Corona Virus campaigns.
My story illustration of Anansi and the Yam Hills. created at my Howard University class for a children's book illustration assignment. |
My Anansi rag doll, books, and comic strip panels. |
The Yoruba gods series in Jamaica
There are many people of both Yoruba and Ibo descent in the island. Some have retained many aspects of their Nigerian culture.
Olokun, Yoruba God of the Sea. with mudfish for his legs, next to my photo in a Howard University faculty exhibition. An ode to the Caribbean Sea.-Welded steel. |