UWinnipeg’s Vice-President of Research, the Anthropology Department, the Anthropology Student Association and the Caribbean Research Institute presents prominent Caribbean archaeologist Dr. Rodriguez Ramos who will be speaking on Shared Precolonial Histories in the Greater Caribbean at The University of Winnipeg on Tuesday, February 24 at 5:30pm in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall.
Ramos will explore the extent of the relations between the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean and those of contiguous continental regions and the implications that these entanglements had on all of those groups that were united by the Caribbean Sea.
“The Caribbean is the place where many influences still meet and interact today. It has a far larger imprint on global culture than is warranted by its size – from linguistic to music,” expressed Dr. Mirjana Roksandic (Chair, Anthropology). “Dr. Ramos brings a refreshing perspective on the past shared histories in the Crcum-Caribbean and how they counter divisions imposed not only by 500 year of colonialism, but also by the colonial academic practice.”
The Caribbean was the context of the first contacts between Europeans and the so-called “New World”. Traditionally, most perspectives about the indigenous societies that inhabited those islands have been based on the information provided by the Spaniards in their chronicles of their early forays into the Antillean archipelago. However, the research that has been conducted in the past decades in the islands has demonstrated the existence of markedly different cultural and social ways of life for those societies, which in great part resulted from the relationships that they kept with peoples from the surrounding mainlands from which they originated.
The Caribbean Research Institute advances research in the circum-Caribbean region, provides fora for dissemination of findings, and promotes mobility in education of Canadian and Caribbean students and scholars. The work of the Institute is conducted through collaboration among researchers at Canadian (University of Winnipeg, Bishops University, Lakehead University and University of Toronto), Cuban (University of Havana), Nicaraguan (Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University), and Puerto Rican universities (University of Puerto Rico, Inter-American University of Puerto Rico). The Institute also works in partnership with various local and national heritage institutions: Cuban Institute of Anthropology (Havana, Cuba) and Jamaica National Heritage Trust (Jamaica).
