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Southern Anthropologist

Abstract

The Kalinago of Dominica have engaged in various efforts at cultural renewal in the past three decades. In this paper I examine one particular activity, recreated traditional dancing, and analyze how performers combine current and past cultural practices from their own community together with knowledge garnered from other indigenous groups to reinvent dance performances. Such performances represent a recent manifestation of successful cultural renewal in which community members use known resources to re-imagine and recreate meaningful tradition(s). Analysis of recreated traditional dance performances provides insight regarding how some members of the Kalinago community think about and utilize the ancestral knowledge base that forms the wellspring of their identity and reveals the regional and global exchanges that contribute to and enrich processes of cultural renewal. Performers interpret this type of cultural borrowing as a positive strategic maneuver because situating the community in a regional indigenous context bolsters claims to a strong, vibrant Kalinago identity. In this context, both the act of borrowing and the final product are expressions of indigeneity.

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