Jeannette Cooperman’s essay “How the Wreckage of Slavery Washes Upon the Shores of a Small Island” explores how the legacy of slavery persists on the small Caribbean island of St. Eustatius—known locally as Statia—and how confronting this past exposes the enduring wounds of colonialism and historical neglect.
Cooperman arrives in Statia expecting a sleepy, history-rich island and finds a place where relics of empire and enslavement lie literally underfoot. Her guide, Kenneth Cuvalay, president of the St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance, challenges her—and the island—to see through euphemisms that obscure this brutal history. He rejects the term “slave trade,” insisting instead on “trafficking in enslaved Afrikans,” emphasizing their humanity and the violence done to them.
Cuvalay takes Cooperman to neglected burial grounds like Godet and Golden Rock, where enslaved Afrikans were laid to rest but whose graves have been disturbed by archaeology, construction, and indifference. Unconsulted scientific excavations, often carried out by foreign teams, perpetuate the exploitative mindset of slavery by asserting control over Black bodies for the sake of knowledge or prestige, according to him. “The disease,” he says bitterly, “was enslavement.”
The article also examines religious and cultural alienation among Statia’s largely Afrikan-descended population. Christianity, imposed during colonization, left many islanders wary of Afrikan spiritual practices such as libations or voodoom, now stigmatized as “satanic.” Cuvalay and culture commissioner Rechelline Leerdam both lament this internalized shame, seeing cultural reclamation as essential to healing. Leerdam hopes heritage projects can transform pain into pride, helping Statians embrace their ancestry as descendants of “kings and queens,” not “slaves.”
Meanwhile, bureaucratic disputes and private land claims obstruct efforts to recognize burial grounds officially. The remains of 69 enslaved men, women, and children unearthed at Golden Rock still await reburial, stored in a facility ironically open for public display. To Cuvalay and his allies, this continued exposure symbolizes ongoing degradation.
Cooperman ends haunted by what she witnesses. In Statia’s beauty and stillness, she feels the persistence of historical violence—the way colonial wealth and modern tourism still rest on buried suffering. The island’s struggle mirrors a global reckoning: how societies remember, commodify, or suppress the traumas that built them. The piece closes with a fragile hope—that facing this past honestly might finally lead to collective healing and respect for the ancestors whose labor and lives shaped the modern world.
Read the full article below:
How the Wreckage of Slavery Washes Upon the Shores of a Small Island