Poverty & Social Development: A Caribbean Perspective

Talking about Caribbean Indigenous Knowledge and Language
Too often in the context of development practices, the issues of indigenous knowledge and languages are passed by.
And despite ongoing efforts by indigenous people throughout the world to make the points about the revitalization of their languages, which represents a great part in the diffusion of their knowledge, development circles are opening themselves up very slowly to the values and issues raised in this paradox.

The calls behind such movements underline a strong dynamic, where the maintenance of cultural identity and integrity are bound together in efforts to cope with all the structural changes that have been moving their concepts of communities, and social practices.
And a better way to understand these elements is to work toward the development of bodies of knowledge, as platforms that document indigenous life and practices, as those constructs have evolved though different patterns of change entrenched in deep socio-historical clusters.

A good step forward would be this joint initiative by UNESCO, and the University of the West Indies, at Mona which in itself is an innovative approach within this paradigm to explore the diversity behind the Caribbean Indigenous languages and their evolutions/constraints experienced over time “The first authoritative website on Caribbean Indigenous and Endangered Language (CIEL).