24 Apr NiteCap Journal: Who Really Owns St. John?

My previous entry in this journal and the feedback it’s inspired has caused me to dig deeper into the fantasy that has become St. John. 

I’m compelled to further understand this tortured paradise that’s possibly on the brink of a Fountain Valleyesque tragedy if its local youth – those I’ve seen loitering aimlessly outside of Cruz Bay’s new shops, owned primarily by US mainland transplants – continue to see their dreams ignored in the shadows of what some developers envision as the Caribbean’s Beverly Hills. 

St. John’s youth are void of a high school and its elders lack a hospital, yet Peter Bay boasts mega-mansions. Also, the Beverly Hills moniker strikes a nerve in me given Hollywood’s blatant disregard for marginalized communities. I should know since I’ve spent the past several years explaining to Tinseltown’s elite why our story matters. 

My high school football teammate Brummell who starred in Ed Laborde’s Timeless, has sparked a movement with St. John’s first island-wide skating event. Theodora E. Moorehead continues to follow in her father’s iconic footsteps of championing the rights of St. Johnians, but I wonder if their noble efforts can withstand what’s on the horizon. 

However, my quest to probe further into the story of the land separated by Pillsbury Sound from my native St. Thomas is inspired most by Keana Jacobs and her University of the Virgin Islands peers who invited me to speak at the student-run UVI Caribbean Cinematic & Arts Festival on this Sunday. 

Their passion to begin owning our story in these islands is one that should embolden us to search for truth regardless of the fantasy it shatters. 

It’s why I thank members of the Arawak nation for reminding me that indigenous people had settled St. John long before anyone, evident by the petroglyphs which to this day leave me spellbound.

In response to my writing they wrote:

As an Arawak, we find it comical that one would assume a demographic of people own this land. For Arawak was before Carib, before African and before the white. If you’re truly interested in portraying truth, please write a follow up article about how the Arawak’s land was taken first and the demographics that follow are just a symbol of what is to come next. Years after 2022, there might possible be another group of people taking over an island, perhaps Asian? Who knows. Your opinion is great as we respect it. But please don’t change history as you must reference the island from the Arawak. As we were the first to be eaten, beaten and thrusted from our Holy water. Surely you’re a modern day witness to our carvings.

When I saw these carvings for the first time while resting at the waterfall in Reef Bay Trail I stood transfixed. My mind drifted to a time and place historians have all but forgotten or buried. 

Somewhere in this layered and complex history of changing demographics, more and more present-day St. Johnians are finding themselves buried financially by sky-rocketing housing costs. 

Others have been embroiled in an ongoing battle with the National Park Service since the inception of the Virgin Islands National Park, arguing that the park was formed with zero input from locals. Needless to say, the ongoing development in Cruz Bay and contention over Caneel Bay Resort tell on the obvious. 

This island’s struggle will continue to be used as political fodder in a bureaucratic tug of war between who will eventually take credit for making St. John the epicenter of the Uber rich while somehow managing to throw a few scraps to appease the locals. 

Good luck. 

So in light of this uncompromising reality do we turn to the lessons learned from the Arawaks as noted in the note sent to me and accept displacement as a natural cycle of life?

Or is Love City’s rapid gentrification reminiscent of the barbaric tactics dating back to the Vikings which makes it a man-made condition we can finally choose to put an end to?

And if we choose to end it, would it lead to reparations for the Arawak nation whose current population is estimated to be at 10,000?

As irony would have it, Denmark is home to some of the first Vikings, the former colonial superpower that sold us to the current one and whose slavery was among the most brutal as far as the twisted levels of inhumanity go.

While lecturing at the University of Delaware back in 2015 during the school’s National Agenda series I had either the pleasure or horror of meeting the wife of Professor William W. Boye who wrote “America’s Virgin Islands: A History of Human Rights and Wrongs”. That sweet old lady told me she attended my lecture to give me the book because her husband would appreciate a local’s perspective. What I read on my flight back to Miami was horrific.

It detailed just how inhumane the Danes were.

Yet, I can’t turn on Netflix without seeing a film celebrating the Vikings. Why can’t The Unbreakable Virgin Islanders – the descendants of those who defied their onslaught – be shown the same love?

Furthermore, if we as Virgin Islanders – the current residents – don’t truly own these lands then who does? 

Hopefully, we’ll be brave enough to continue to ask these questions, because Keana and the rest of our islands’ future story-tellers deserve answers. 

We welcome your feedback to our NiteCap Journal series so feel free to leave a comment below and read our previous entries.