Advertise on podcast: Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Chinese communities have been an integral part of Caribbean history for generations, shaping the region's economic, social, and cultural development. Yet their histories and contributions remain underrepresented in broader narratives of the Caribbean past. In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Nikolai Attai, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University, to explore the history of Chinese migration to the Caribbean, from indentured labor and subsequent voluntary migration to the evolving relationships between Chinese Caribbean communities and the wider diaspora. Our conversation traces the different waves of Chinese migration to Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, and Cuba, examining the significance of Chinese indentured labor within the post-emancipation plantation economy. We also explore the development of diaspora networks and community institutions, including Chinese associations and benevolent societies, and their roles in preserving, adapting, and negotiating cultural identities across generations. Drawing on his grandfather's experiences and family correspondence as described in The Asian Caribbean in the Caribbean Diaspora: Essays on Migration, Identity, and Literary and Cultural Representations, Dr. Attai reflects on how personal archives, memory, and silence can illuminate questions of identity and belonging, particularly where official historical records remain incomplete. We also consider the lasting consequences of colonial racial hierarchies, including how divisions cultivated under colonial rule continue to shape interethnic relations, xenophobia, and stereotypes surrounding Chinese Caribbean entrepreneurship. From the experiences of Chinese shopkeepers to the influence of Chinese Caribbean communities on regional foodways and music industries, this conversation highlights the community's enduring contributions to Caribbean societies while challenging reductive understandings of their place in the region's history. Nikoli Attai received his PhD in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, a Master of Philosophy in Cultural Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communication from the University of the West Indies. His most recent book, Defiant Bodies: Making Queer Community in the Anglophone Caribbean, was published in 2023.  Attai’s broader research focuses on queer experiences in the Anglophone Caribbean beyond notions of disease and violence, and the need to flee the region. He also investigates international queer asylum interventions in Canada and the Netherlands, and decolonial cultural formations in Trinidad and Tobago and the anglophone Caribbean. This work appears in several academic essays and his recent co-edited collection titled Free Up Yuhself: Transgressive Bodies and Contestations in the Carnivalesque, published by Rutgers University Press in May 2026. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. There is a common myth surrounding Caribbean indigenous history that starts and ends with colonialism. In today's episode, we are joined by linguist Dr. Paula Prescod to explore what her new scholarly collection The Carib, Kalinago, and Garifuna Peoples: Indigeneity, Hybridization, and Mobility in the Americas reveals about indigeneity, mobility, and the myths we inherited from colonial writers. We look specificallt into the case of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where indigenous resistance, African survival, and deep cultural exchange shaped Afro-Indigenous communities whose descendants are known today as the Garifuna or Garinagu. We break down myths around indigenous communities and get precise about language and power: Carib, Kalinago, Kalina, Garifuna, Garinagu, even “cannibal” are not neutral words. Dr. Prescod explains how sound shifts, mishearings, and outside labeling shaped the record, and why self-identification still varies, even within St. Vincent. Mobility ties everything together. We talk forced exile from St. Vincent to Baliceaux and Roatán, the building of Garifuna communities along the Central American Caribbean coast, and the modern “third exile” framework that links today’s migration routes and asylum claims to older histories of dispossession. We also look at cultural survival in practice: cassava bread traditions, spiritual life, music-making in tourism economies, and education policy proposals like intercultural bilingual education to reclaim heritage language at the homeland. If you are interested in Garifuna culture, Kalinago identity, diaspora studies, or decolonizing the archive, listen through and share your biggest takeaway.  Paula Prescod is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Didactics of French. Her research focuses on four key areas: the linguistic and cultural implications of learning new languages, the linguistic description of contact languages, hybridization practices in the French Caribbean novel, and the sociohistorical and cultural study of the Indigenous peoples of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. She previously taught at the secondary and tertiary levels in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and later at university in the English department at Bielefeld University. She earned her Ph.D from the University of Paris III in 2004 with a thesis titled Une grammaire descriptive du syntagme nominal dans le créole anglophone de Saint-Vincent-et-les-Grenadines, which was later published in English as A Grammatical Description of the Noun Phrase in the English-based Creole of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Lincom Europa, 2010).  Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. In honor of Calypso History Month this October and the recent passing of the great "Calypso King of the World" Slinger “Mighty Sparrow” Francisco, we reshare this throwback episode with music sociologist Dr. Meagan A. Sylvester. Calypso isn’t just a sound you dance to, it’s a way Caribbean people have documented power, pain, pride, and punchlines for centuries. Together, we follow calypso from its roots in the slavery era, where satire and storytelling become tools for survival, into a genre that still functions like public commentary set to rhythm. Along the way we unpack why “mother music” matters, and why the calypsonian’s job has never been only to entertain.  We also zoom in on Trinidad and Tobago’s outsized role in shaping calypso’s modern identity, from early recording history to the migration that brings artists from across the region into Port of Spain’s competitive calypso scene. Dr. Sylvester breaks down how language and tempo shift over time, and why double entendre becomes a signature strategy when you want leaders to hear the song but miss the sting. Carnival sits at the center of the story, not as a side note but as a major stage where lyrics carry debates about colonization, independence, republicanism, civil rights, and everyday governance. We talk calypso’s relationship to soca, how generations argue about what counts as “real” calypso, and how new artists move between styles.  Meagan A. Sylvester - Music Sociologist.Author.Researcher is a published author of over fifteen book chapters and journal articles and is a well know public academic in her native Trinidad and Tobago where she participates in both television and radio discussions on the Calypso and Soca musical artforms. Her research topics of interest are Music and National Identity in Calypso and Soca, Music of Diasporic Carnivals, Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Soca music, Steelpan and kaisoJazz musical identities, Gender and Identity in Calypso and Soca music and Music and Human Rights in the Americas. She has presented academic papers and hosted scholarly workshops in several spaces across the globe including Europe, Latin America, South America, the United States and numerous islands in the Caribbean.Follow Dr. Sylvester on Facebook and Twitter.  Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Caribbean people know all too well that the story of migration doesn’t end at the border. Dr. Tyesha Maddox, Associate Professor at Fordham University, joins us for a conversation about the history of Caribbean mutual aid societies and benevolent associations that help communities upon their arrival in the US. We dig into what mutual aid actually means in Caribbean migration history: not charity, not a top-down savior model, but an egalitarian system where members build solutions together. Dr. Maddox connects Caribbean American mutual aid societies in New York to earlier Caribbean friendly societies after emancipation and to West African traditions of collective care. We talk burial and funeral funds as a dignified corrective to slavery’s violence, support during illness and injury that looks like early workers’ comp, and even maternity benefits that were well ahead of their time. We also get into susu and padna style rotating savings, and why trust is the real currency behind these networks. Then we zoom out to the social and political power of these groups. They throw parties, organize trips, teach culture to children through auxiliaries, and help people become Caribbean in the diaspora, sometimes for the first time. We also place these organizations inside the New York landscape of Harlem, Garveyism, and Black political organizing, where Caribbean immigrants help shape the world many of us now take for granted. If you care about Caribbean diaspora community, Black history, New York history, or mutual aid today, this conversation offers a blueprint worth revisiting. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review if this made you think. Tyesha Maddox is an Associate Professor at Fordham University in the Department of African & African American Studies. She received her PhD in History from New York University in 2016. She received a BA in History and Africana Studies and a MPS in Africana Studies both from Cornell University in 2006 and 2008. Her book, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (Penn Press, 2024) examines the significance of early twentieth century Anglophone Caribbean immigrant mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in New York City. In 2020, she co-edited a comprehensive resource guide and website titled "This is Not a Riot!" (www.notariot.com) to help contextualize the Black Lives Matter Uprisings of 2020 and place them in the historical radical tradition of Black protest in the US. She also serves as a key organizer for Mutual Aid NYC's Organizing Archive and Library as well as their Public History and Political Education Committee. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Country music in Jamaica sounds like a contradiction until you hear the connections. We connect the dots between Radio Jamaica Rediffusion, Western films on local screens, farm work migration, and a Caribbean listening culture that never treated genres like sealed boxes. We are joined by Jamal Khadar, writer and host of Reimagining Country, who explains how artists like Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline became part of Jamaican soundtracks, and why the cowboy image traveled so well across the Black Atlantic. We go deeper than influence and ask what listeners recognized in country: rural self-recognition, church-rooted morality, survival stories, heartbreak, and the constant question of home. That recognition shows up in reggae’s early formation, in rude boy outlaw symbolism, and later in dancehall’s Western references and stage names. We also unpack cover culture as a Jamaican superpower, where a song gets re-voiced, re-scored, and re-felt until it becomes something else entirely, sometimes even pushing back into the global north through collaborations and reinterpretations. The conversation also challenges today’s narrow story about who “belongs” in country music. Yes, Black roots matter and contemporary moments like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter open doors, but Jamaica’s long-standing love for classic country complicates the picture in a different way: Black audiences have always had wide tastes, including deep affection for “classic” country often made by white artists. We close by widening the map again to African country histories, showing how radio networks, empire, guitars, and post-independence creativity helped build global country scenes that still thrive. Jamal Khadar is a writer, broadcaster, DJ and a key voice on the global history and resurgence of country music, with by-lines in The Guardian, Bandcamp and The European Review of Books and mentions in publications such as the Swiss-German Newspaper WOZ. He also hosts Reimagining Country on NTS Radio. Jamal has shared his research via talks at Goldsmiths, University of London and Newcastle University; with brands like DAZED and Nii Journal; and album liner notes for Mississippi Records. Born in the UK, raised in the Netherlands, but connected to Nashville, he regularly interviews major country artists on their Amsterdam tour stop. After 15 years in London, he now lives in the Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Most of us talk about Caribbean language like it only lives on the tongue, but the region has a whole world of languages that live on the hands, in space, and through community memory. We sit down with linguist Kris Ali, a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara from Trinidad and Tobago, to trace the real story of Caribbean Sign Languages and why they deserve the same respect we fight for in spoken language politics. Along the way, we break down the biggest misconception of all: sign language is not universal, and it is definitely not “English on the hands.” We dig into how sign languages actually begin, from organic community formation across generations to the influence of American Sign Language through missionary networks, churches, and deaf education across the Caribbean in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We talk language prestige and what gets labeled “proper,” why smaller rural varieties can be pushed aside, and how even within one territory you can find multiple sign languages and signing styles. Kristy also shares a concrete example of variation inside Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language that shows how folklore and local culture get encoded into everyday signs. Then we expand the map with the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras, a place with a strong Caribbean identity and a remarkable history of tactile signing among deaf-blind community members. That story makes the stakes clear: endangered languages documentation is not just academic, it is a way to preserve Caribbean history, protect access to information, and honor communities that have been ignored for too long. We close by naming the goal plainly: legal recognition of local sign languages, better interpreter access in healthcare and justice settings, and real equity for deaf people across the region.  Be sure to check out the transcript of this episode here. Kris Ali is a PhD candidate in the department of linguistics at University of California Santa Barbara. Her research interests are broadly Caribbean languages, language documentation and description, social and linguistic justice for Caribbean people, decolonial theory, queer and trans linguistics and sign language linguistics. She uses collaborative and community-based research methods, is interested in indigenous research methodologies and follows the Caribbean tradition of liberatory linguistics in which she was trained during her first two degrees at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. She is a trained Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language interpreter. Home for her is Trinidad and Tobago. Learn more about Kris on her website and connect with her on LinkedIn. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Jamaica qualifying for the 1998 FIFA World Cup is one of those rare moments that people can locate in their body: where they stood, who they were with, what they heard first, and how the whole community sounded afterward. We wanted to honor that feeling, so we built something different this time, a chorus of voices sharing what France ‘98 meant to them in real time and in memory. You’ll hear stories of the day qualification became official: the disbelief, the pride, the surprise public holiday, and the way celebration turned roads, yards, bars, and living rooms into an extension of the National Stadium. We talk about the details that statistics cannot hold, like pot covers ringing out for goals, horns blaring through neighborhoods, and the specific kind of unity Jamaicans recognize immediately. It’s also a snapshot of how sport shifts culture, from kids dreaming bigger to communities feeling, even briefly, like everyone is moving together. Then we turn to France ‘98 itself: the nerves and hope against Croatia, the tough reality of Argentina, and the joy of Jamaica’s first World Cup victory over Japan. We reflect on the national anthem, the Rise Up song that still triggers pride, and the pop culture trail that followed the Reggae Boyz everywhere, right down to jerseys and keepsakes people saved for years. As Jamaica marks 64 years of independence, we also hold space for St. Elizabeth and the wider island recovering after Hurricane Melissa, and why memory can be both a comfort and a call to care for home. Press play, share this with someone who remembers 1997, and then tell us your story: where were you when the Reggae Boyz qualified for France ‘98, and where were you when you learned Curacao or Haiti made history this year? If you loved this, subscribe, leave a review, and share the episode so more people can hear these Caribbean stories. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Reggae has never been a boys-only story, so why do women keep getting filed under “backup,” “footnote,” or “first female to…”?  Mikelah Malcolm from Style and Vibes guest hosts a Breadfruit Media crossover and sits down with me to talk about my dissertation on women in reggae, what pushed me to spend years on the research, and what I found when I went looking for women in the archive. We get into the real mechanics of the reggae industry and Jamaican music history: who controls rhythms, who gets paid, and why royalty splits and copyright enforcement become uniquely brutal for women. We also name the hard realities that shape careers, including sexual harassment, intimidation in studio spaces, and how relationships and childcare labor can derail momentum in ways male artists rarely face. At the same time, we talk solutions that actually move the needle: ownership, independent labels, business literacy, and women building networks that make leadership possible behind the scenes, not just on stage. Then we zoom out to method and memory. I share how I used archival research in Kingston, oral history interviews with pioneers, and close reading of reggae lyrics as historical texts to map themes like violence, belonging, and resistance across generations. We also grapple with femininity, dancehall’s influence, Rastafari, and how respectability politics shape what the culture celebrates or hides. This first of many conversations on the topic so if this conversation shifts how you hear reggae, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners find the stories women have always carried. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. A child grows up learning that love can arrive in a barrel, but comfort cannot. That tension sits at the heart of our conversation with Grenadian director, producer, and creative industry strategist Meschida Phillip, whose documentary work asks what migration costs families long after the plane takes off. We trace how the Grenada Revolution, early separation, and years of “waiting” shaped her sense of connection and pushed her toward filmmaking as a way to name what Caribbean families often keep silent. Meschida shares the story behind her feature documentary Scars of Our Mother’s Dreams, grounded in Dr. Claudette Crawford-Brown’s concept of “barrel children,” where parents migrate for opportunity while children remain at home with relatives. We talk about emotional trauma, reunification, and why seeing these stories on screen lands differently than reading them. Meschida also pulls back the curtain on responsible documentary practice, from deep research and interviews to building a film that works as an archive and a conversation starter for Caribbean history, culture, and healing. We then zoom out to the film industry itself, including Caribbean Tales Media Group’s Cross-Continental Forum and what Black diaspora collaboration can look like when it’s intentional. Meschida breaks down the real barriers Caribbean filmmakers face funding infrastructure, banking access, co-production limits, and distribution networks and paints a vivid vision of Global South co-production funds, direct Caribbean Africa pipelines, and a market that rewards cultural specificity instead of asking creators to dilute it.  Meschida Philip is a filmmaker, producer, creative-industry strategist, Executive Director of Mprojekts Creative Group, and Founder and Festival Director of the 12°N, 61°W Grenada Film Festival. She is a director, producer, and creative industries strategist working at the intersection of film production and screen industry development in the Caribbean. With over 20 years of professional experience, including more than a decade leading regional initiatives, her work focuses on positioning the Caribbean as an originating creative economy, capable of developing, financing, and exporting its own stories through equitable international co-production. Her work spans both content creation and industry development, with a focus on co-production frameworks, talent pipelines, and market access for creators in small island developing states. This episode was created in collaboration with Caribbean Tales Media Group to highlight the annual Cross-Continental Forum, a curated, decolonial co-production hub specifically designed to connect Black producers across Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe and the Americas. It offers a structured pathway from information sharing to treaty-driven deals and market access. As an intensive hybrid accelerator, it functions as a “strategic gateway” to co-productions, beginning with an online Accelerator covering legal, financial and distribution frameworks, followed by two in-person events including a pitch showcase. Editor's Note: Philips participated in the Cross-Continental Forum with Canary, a documentary project that was in development at the time. She is credited as the project’s director and co-producer. Scars of Our Mother’s Dreams was not the project presented at the Forum, however it was screened at the festival.  Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Caribbean food travels the world as flavor, nostalgia, and restaurant culture but what if it also traveled as real economic infrastructure? We’re asking a harder question: how do we move from beloved recipes to Caribbean food systems that reduce import dependence, strengthen food security, and create durable industries across the region. I’m joined by Taymer Mason, a Barbadian food scientist and Caribbean product developer with more than 20 years of experience across food safety, kitchens, and innovation. Taymer breaks down why so many islands still carry a massive import bill even when breadfruit, cassava, and fruit trees are all around us, and why the missing piece is often not farming alone but systems: consistent raw materials, regional cooperation, accessible financing, shelf-life testing, packaging options, and reliable transport between islands. We also get practical about what “legacy products” look like, why shelf-stable ambient foods often scale better than cold-chain exports, and how standardizing recipes can protect quality as brands grow. Taymer shares eye-opening stories, from green seasoning selling better when people used it like a dip, to learning from boxed fufu as a convenience model, to reimagining moringa as an everyday seasoning that boosts nutrition. Then we zoom out to solutions: farmer-producer planning, government policy changes, white labeling pathways, CARICOM-style data sharing on crop gluts, and smarter diaspora investment that builds market pipelines, warehouses, and storefronts. If you care about Caribbean agriculture, sustainable food entrepreneurship, disaster resilience, and the future of Caribbean economies, this conversation is for you.  Taymer Mason is a food scientist, cookbook author, and entrepreneur based in Barbados. She is the founder of Harbourvale Foods, a modern Caribbean vegan pantry brand built on clean-label formulation and plant-based food science. Her debut cookbook, Caribbean Vegan, has been in print for sixteen years and holds a starred Library Journal review. Taymer's work sits at the intersection of Caribbean culinary heritage and innovation, with a deep conviction that the region's food systems deserve both scientific rigour and world-class storytelling. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Caribbean culture is one of the most copied, quoted, and consumed forces on the planet and yet the Caribbean is still too often treated like a place to extract value from, not a place to build value with. That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with Alistair Scott, founder of the Diaspora Legacy Collective, as we dig into how Caribbean futures can be shaped through renewed connection with Africa and the global African diaspora for Caribbean American Heritage Month. We get specific about cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and why music, film, fashion, festivals, and digital storytelling should be treated as serious economic development strategy. That leads us into intellectual property rights, licensing, brand protection, and the unglamorous but critical reality that policy only works when governments invest in enforcement capacity. From there, we zoom out to the bigger architecture of Afro-Caribbean cooperation: new business modalities that make cross-diaspora partnerships easier, visa and mobility barriers that slow trade, and why language learning and education can function like infrastructure. Along the way, we challenge misinformation that distorts Pan-Africanism, lift up older cooperative models like partner and susu, and point to modern examples like YouTube creator networks and major cultural moments that prove collaboration already works when we let it. If you care about Caribbean history, Caribbean culture, the creative economy, diaspora development, or people-centered sustainability, you’ll leave with both a clearer diagnosis and a more practical vision. Alistair Scott is founder of the nonprofit, Diaspora Legacy Collective. He is also Principal Advisor at Synergy Ecosystems LLC, a coaching and connections service. A lifelong development generalist and Pan African educator, Alistair is passionate about applying a systems and sustainability lens to rethinking how we organize thriving economies and societies. His career over the last two decades has spanned extensive community development, tourism, workforce development, sales and education; and as a civil servant, entrepreneur and non-profit professional across the U.S and the Caribbean. He has built up expertise in fostering developing and deploying social capital, particularly when  he led the build out of Basta’s Alumni Success workstream and also in his advisory of African diasporan entrepreneurs and young professionals in the diaspora. Alistair also maintains a blog on addressing socio-economic and African diasporan themes,  including futuristic takes on countries like Jamaica and Haiti and published a fictional essay in the Atlantic Fellowship’s Moya magazine. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Caribbean culture is everywhere, but visibility is not the same as power. As we mark Caribbean American Heritage Month this June, I want to push past the easy parts of celebration and ask a harder question: what are we building with what we know about our history, politics, and cultural practices? In today's episode, we ground ourselves in Caribbean American Heritage Month's official recognition and why Caribbean identity in the US still fights to be seen clearly. Then we pivot to Caribbean futures: moving from global cultural recognition to structural power that sustains communities economically and politically. We talk institutions, learning across global communities, and diaspora responsibility beyond remittances. Most importantly, we want to know: what does Caribbean American Heritage Month mean to you, and what actions are you willing to take next to support our communities? Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Museums don’t just preserve history. They decide which stories become a nation’s memory and which stories get buried under polite silence. I’m joined by Kevin Farmer, Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, to talk about Caribbean museums as real tools of nation building, cultural heritage, and post-independence identity. We start by tracing the roots of colonial museums and collections built to explain the Caribbean to Europe, often without listening to Indigenous knowledge or acknowledging the realities of slavery, resistance, and survival. From there, we move into the radical energy of the post-1960s period, when new scholars, artists, national galleries, and cultural movements helped reshape what counted as “our” history and “our” creativity across the region.  Then we get practical about what museums still need to fix: whose voices were pushed aside, how co-curation and community collaboration can change exhibitions, and why documenting migration and labor history is urgent before firsthand accounts disappear. We also dig into decolonizing museums through provenance work and repatriation, and how technology can help connect Caribbean stories across borders and the diaspora.  Kevin Farmer is currently Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS). As Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum, he has the responsibility for museum exhibition programming and capital campaign fundraising. He holds a Master’s degree in History (Heritage Studies) from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, and has lectured in Archaeology at the Department of History at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and taught at the UWI Cave Hill in their MA Heritage Studies program.  His research interests include the creation of cultural identity in post-colonial states, the role of museums in national development, the management and curation of archaeological resources, and the role of heritage in national development.  Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. Obeah has been called superstition, “black magic,” and even a crime but those labels have a history, and that history was built to serve colonial power. We sit down with historian Dr. Katharine Gerbner to trace how African-derived spiritual and healing traditions in Jamaica were deliberately stigmatized through slavery, missionary politics, and law. We follow the chain from a rare 1755 archival reference to the shockwaves of 1760, when Tacky's Rebellion prompts British colonial authorities to outlaw Obeah as a threat to control. Along the way, we unpack why defining Obeah is so difficult when most surviving sources come from enslavers and missionaries, and how Gerbner’s microhistory method reads the archive for what it tries to hide. One of the most surprising turns is the Moravian missionary Zacharias George Caries being called an “Obeahman,” opening up a “space of correlation” where Afro-Jamaicans do not separate Christianity from Obeah in the rigid way many of us inherit today. We also connect this history to the present: Obeah remains illegal in Jamaica, and the long arc of criminalization still shapes public stigma, community silence, and debates about decriminalization. If you care about Caribbean history, Jamaican culture, African diaspora religion, and the politics of the archive, this conversation offers a new way to see what we have been taught to fear and who benefits from that fear.  Katharine Gerbner is a historian of religion, race, and freedom. She examines religious practices that have been excluded from traditional definitions of religion and develops multilingual archival strategies to uncover stories that have been marginalized and forgotten. She is the author of Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2025) and Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). She is Associate Professor of History and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts. The strangest thing about the truth is how often it arrives late. A story your elders carried for years gets dismissed as “just talk” until an archive opens, a report drops, a government admits wrongdoing, or scholars finally confirm what communities already knew. When that happens, the past doesn’t simply become clearer. It becomes heavier, more complicated, and harder to tuck away. In today's episode, I offer a reflection on Caribbean history, memory, and what it means to relearn entire narratives, not just “humanize” individual historical figures. I think through why truth is less a single revelation and more a long process, shaped by silence, denial, and distortion.  Then comes the question that won’t let go: what does reconciliation actually require? Forgiveness, acknowledgement, accountability, compensation, structural change? And who gets to decide when it’s “done”? If you care about Caribbean history and culture, political violence, colonial legacies, activism, and public memory, this reflection is for you. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review, then tell me how you choose to carry your history forward. Support the show Connect with Strictly Facts -  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email! Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platformShare this episode with someone or online and tag usSend us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and educationProduced by Breadfruit Media