Minister of Education and Culture, Hon. Myron V. Walwyn

Culture Week has been celebrated in the Territory since 1994 and strives to promote and preserve the Territory’s cultural heritage as it educates residents on Virgin Islands Culture. It also serves to bring attention to the areas in culture that requires special attention while engaging our young people in cultural activities that will enhance their learning.

This year’s Culture Week will be celebrated under the theme, “From Whence We Came: Our Virgin Islands History.”

Quite often we hear it said that our young people do not know their history or their culture. But it is incumbent on us, adult BVIslanders to pass on our heritage to the next generation and also the many residents from various nations from around the world that live amongst us, in order to assert the identity of our people. Over the next four years as your Education and Culture Minister, we will strive to work towards removing the often ornamental nature of Virgin Islands culture to ensure that our traditional ways of life is something we live, do and appreciate on a daily basis.

We only have to turn the pages in our history and see the very foundations on which this territory was made. In them we see a people who owned more land than the plantation owners after slavery was abolished. Some even owned land while still slaves. In them we see a people who pooled their resources and purchased large tracts of land, which still remain in the hands of families today.

The opportunity to own land has been and will always be intrinsically tied to the identity of who we are as Virgin Islanders. A greater awareness and appreciation of this will help our people understand how a Territory, once called nothing more than a bird sanctuary has now advanced to a leading financial service jurisdiction and tourism destination, thanks to the work of BVIslanders before us who used their land as a means to gain economic, social and educational empowerment.

In our history, we see a people who helped each other through thick and thin. They shared the produce of the land; they shared the slaughter of the animals. When one laughed, the community laughed with them, and when they cried, likewise.

We see a people who helped raise each other’s children, and no child was left without. We see a people who worked hard to develop their beloved Virgin Islands and make a better place for themselves, their children, and their children’s children.

Yes, this is our Virgin Islands history and this is the history we need to share and pass on with the younger generation to empower them in knowing that they are the descendents of an industrious, proud people. I fervently believe that if our children are given this understanding they too would be motivated to add to the greatness of our Territory as their self esteem and self worth would be rooted in their knowledge of self.

This Government recognizes that the inculcation of a cultural identity must form part of the educational curriculum at all levels of our school system to safeguard inter-generational spread of the Virgin Islands culture. We must teach our young people about our Virgin Islands heroes. Teach them that Nottingham Estate was owned by the first freed slaves in the entire Western Hemisphere. Teach them about the men and women who fought to make the Virgin Islands an economic success for 100 years after the abolition of slavery. Teach them about the 1949 March and the likes of Christopher Flemming. Teach them of the importance of men like Noel Lloyd and the Positive Action Movement who fought for the rights of Virgin Islanders. Teach them from whence they came.

It is our responsibility as citizens and the protectors of our culture to actively pass on the heritage and history of our people to the next generation. Over the next four years, the Ministry of Education and Culture will be utilizing opportunities such as Culture Week to give Virgin Islanders and residents a greater sense of who we are. I look forward to working on initiatives such as institutionalizing a national dress for the Territory, a national song, restoring important relics of our heritage, working with older Virgin Islanders to document much of this history through books and the establishment of a national museum and finding ways to assert the Virgin Islands identity in the appearance of our villages and capital.

The activities for Culture Week 2011 will take place Monday through Friday with school-based activities. I encourage all parents and guardians along with the public to attend and give support to programmes and activities held at our schools.