Paper short abstract:

There is a need to unpick the fraught conversation on development and reparations. In particular, the discussion has failed to center the experiences of Afro-indigenous populations. This paper considers new ways to locate these histories, and contemporary struggles for justice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on unravelling the historic and contemporary connections among black indigenous communities in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, namely, the Garifuna in Belize, the Arawak in the Caribbean and the Nama people of Namibia. Drawing upon the work of Tuck and Winter the presentation explores the various claims for reparations that have arisen among these peoples. It goes on to draw linkages between their calls for justice, methods of resistance, the engagements with the post-colonial state. Ultimately the paper aims to provide a more complex conceptualisation of the intersections of indigeneity, blackness and settler-colonialism and development and a more nuanced understanding of the weight of erasure for black indigenous populations.