Lo­cal his­to­ri­ans are in full sup­port of the move by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­name Nel­son Is­land, which is lo­cat­ed off the west coast of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the Gulf of Paria.

Renowned his­to­ri­an Pro­fes­sor Brid­get Br­ere­ton prof­fered that the is­land was named af­ter a pre­vi­ous own­er named Dr Thomas Neil­son/Nel­son. Al­though oth­er sources im­ply the is­land’s ti­tle was giv­en in ho­n­our of the fa­mous British Ad­mi­ral Ho­r­a­tio Nel­son the fact re­mains that “Nel­son” or “Neil­son” holds no sig­nif­i­cance to T&T and is not rel­e­vant to na­tion­als.

Like sev­er­al oth­er his­to­ri­ans, while I agree with the name chang­ing ini­tia­tive, the is­land’s new ti­tle should re­flect el­e­ments of the di­ver­si­ty of the is­land’s rich his­to­ry, as not­ed be­low:

• The is­land served as a hold­ing and pro­cess­ing sta­tion where im­mi­grants from In­dia were reg­is­tered, med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and quar­an­tined, if nec­es­sary, be­fore be­ing dis­patched to plan­ta­tions across Trinidad. Con­se­quent­ly, Nel­son Is­land holds deep cul­tur­al and an­ces­tral im­por­tance to In­do-na­tion­als.

• African slaves were used by the British to build mil­i­tary struc­tures on the is­land. Con­se­quent­ly, the fore­fa­thers of Afro T&T cit­i­zens were large­ly slaves – a his­tor­i­cal abom­i­na­tion to which Nel­son Is­land was aligned for years. So, like the In­do cit­i­zen­ry, the is­land holds great his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance for na­tion­als of African de­scent, al­beit in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances.

• Po­lit­i­cal and union ac­tivists in­clud­ing labour lead­ers were de­tained on the is­land. Most no­table de­tainees in­clud­ed Tubal Uri­ah But­ler, Khafra Kem­bon and Makan­dal Daa­ga. This his­to­ry is im­por­tant to many Afro na­tion­als since it in­volves strug­gles for fair­ness and bet­ter­ment, which many per­ceive are bur­dens they cur­rent­ly car­ry.

• Jew­ish refugees flee­ing the Holo­caust were al­so held on the is­land in the 1930s. It is rea­son­able to as­sume that they would have had off­spring and con­tributed to T&T’s multi­na­tion­al­ism.

• In 1797 the British wrest­ed T&T (which in­clud­ed Nel­son Is­land) from Spain, adding to the rich her­itage and di­ver­si­ty of the is­land. Apart from ob­vi­ous British Colo­nial in­flu­ences, Span­ish his­to­ry is rich in our cul­ture and is clear­ly re­flect­ed in the names of many town­ships across Trinidad.

In con­sid­er­ing Nel­son Is­land’s rich his­to­ry, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­port­ed that the is­land’s true iden­ti­ty was shaped by the 143,000 In­di­an labour­ers that passed through it. In oth­er words, she sees that as­pect as the most sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal event re­lat­ed to the is­land. More­over, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar vis­it­ed the is­land with In­dia’s Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Dr Sub­rah­manyam, cit­ing the pro­pos­al to re­name it to ho­n­our the “ja­ha­ji lega­cy.” So, she clear­ly favours a name as­so­ci­at­ed with In­di­an in­den­ture­ship, a tru­ism that would not au­gur well for half of the pop­u­la­tion yet sup­port­ed by Pro­fes­sor Br­ere­ton in sug­gest­ing “Ar­rival Day” as the new name for Nel­son Is­land. The good­ly his­to­ri­an went fur­ther to say that you can’t do every­thing in a sin­gle name, a state­ment that lends it­self to a my­opic mind­set in this case.

Notwith­stand­ing her prompt­ing for a par­tic­u­lar nam­ing con­ven­tion, cred­it must be giv­en to PM Per­sad Bisses­sar for her in­ten­tion to al­low the pub­lic to par­tic­i­pate in the name-chang­ing process. She con­veyed that the process would in­volve a com­mit­tee that will over­see a web­site es­tab­lished to fa­cil­i­tate mem­bers of the pub­lic sub­mit­ting rec­om­men­da­tions for a new name.

In hold­ing the view that the new name must be all en­com­pass­ing, my hum­ble pro­pos­al is for Nel­son Is­land to be re­named, Lit­tle Trin­ba­go.

Dex­ter Rigs­by

Mt Lam­bert