Carib Territory
The Carib Territory, also known as the Carib Reserve or Kalinago Territory, is a 3,700-acre (15 km2) district in the Caribbean island-nation of Dominica. It was established for the indigenous Carib people, also known as the Kalinago, who inhabited Dominica prior to European colonization and settlement.
The Carib Territory was officially formed by British colonial authorities in 1903, in a remote and mountainous area of Dominica's Atlantic coast. Its population remained largely isolated from the rest of the island throughout most of the 20th century, with only a ceremonial chief and no other formal self-governance. An incident later known as "the Carib War" escalated from a brief skirmish in the Territory in 1930, when law enforcement attempted to crack down on smuggling, to a political controversy ending with the abolition of the post of chief. The Chief was reinstated in 1952, and formalized local government was instituted the same year as part of an island-wide system. The Carib Reserve Act, enacted the year of Dominica's independence in 1978, reaffirmed the Carib Territory's boundaries, its land management, and institutions of local government. In the last decades of the 20th century, modern utilities and infrastructure were finally introduced to the Carib Territory, which also established contacts with foreign governments and other indigenous peoples in the region.
The present population of the Carib Territory is estimated around 3,000 Caribs. Legal residents share communal ownership of all land within the Territory. The Carib Territory has limited local government in the institutions of the Carib Council, and its head the Carib Chief, which are the equivalent in power of village councils and council chairpersons elsewhere in Dominica. The administrative centre is in Salybia, the largest of eight hamlets in the Carib Territory.
A modern movement in the Carib Territory has supported the rediscovery and preservation of Carib culture. This has been fueled in part by Dominica's tourist industry. A model Carib village was established in the Territory in 2006. Cultural preservation groups stage performances at the model village and other locations, and practice traditional Carib crafts, such as making baskets and pottery, that are sold to tourists as souvenirs.
Dominica is the only Eastern Caribbean island that still has a population of pre-Columbian native Caribs, who were exterminated or driven from neighbouring islands. The Caribs on Dominica fought against the Spanish and later European settlers for two centuries. Over time, however, their population declined and they were forced into remote regions of the island as European settlers and imported African slaves grew in number on the island. The first reservation of land for the Carib people occurred in 1763, when 232 acres (0.94 km2) of mountainous land and rocky shoreline around Salybia, on the east coast, were set aside by British colonial authorities as part of the surveying of the island and its division into lots. A legend arose that this land was set aside by the request of Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III; from this another legend spread, and persisted among some Carib to the present, that Charlotte had set aside half of Dominica for the Carib people. Later colonial officials were unable to locate any record of a title deed for the 232 acres (0.94 km2), however. European settlers continued attempts to turn the Carib lands into plantations through the end of the 18th century, but the Caribs successfully held out, often with the assistance of runaway slaves.
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