Roots or Routes:

migrations of identity in the Bahamas

by Nicolette Bethel

(published in Yinna Vol. 2, forthcoming)

It is not at all uncommon for Bahamian intellectuals to assert that the Bahamas has little or no sense of national identity. Often discussions of the topic are greeted with raised eyebrows and comments like “National identity? and what is that?” or “We don’t have a national identity”. One woman told me that her sense of paucity of the Bahamian national identity was derived from what she had observed Bahamians do in Miami: as soon as they landed, they assumed American personae, took on American accents, and blended into the landscape — unlike their Jamaican counterparts, who remained actively Jamaican years after they had adopted American citizenship. Another person argued that “The outside, the American media, is really the thing that to me shapes the culture. ” And even this august body, the Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies, entitled its first annual conference Uncovering Bahamian Selves — implying that if a “Bahamian self” exists, then it is very well hidden indeed.

It is true that if we believe that a national identity of any worth resides in literate manifestations of that identity — and throughout the post-colonial world, literature is seen as a cornerstone of nationalist movements — the palpable absence in the Bahamas of a readily observable literary product poses some problems for the student who accepts such a position. Bahamian writers are quick to express their frustration at their marginality. Ian Strachan, opening the BACUS conference on cultural identity in June 1998, recognised the need to control “the recording of our culture” and called for Bahamian intellectuals to “assume their rightful role” in Bahamian life (Strachan 1998); on the same occasion Patricia Glinton-Meicholas deplored the “cover-up” of the self as part of the tourist endeavour, and sought empowerment in literature (1998). Central to the feelings of powerlessness among these intellectuals was the fact that, twenty-five years after Independence, the Bahamas has no national library (Johnson 1998). In the Bahamas, the national literary output appears irrelevant to the official nationalist enterprise.

But that is not all. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson discusses the “three institutions of power” that helped solidify the nationalist enterprise — the census, the map, and the museum, which “shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined ... the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry.” (1991). For him, these institutions were central to the creation of colonial, and subsequently post-colonial, nationalisms. The census was used not only to count, but to categorize and thus control the inhabitants of the colonial state. The map enabled the state to delineate boundaries and to imagine the physical shape of the country; ultimately such iconising provided the post-colonial nation with an identifying emblem. And the museum reconstructed — or created —histories for the colonial and the post-colonial state alike.

But in the Bahamas, we break the mold. Censuses enumerate, but do little to help categorize the constantly shifting population of the country. Millions of non-Bahamian transients — refugees from the south, and tourists from the north — make the officially-sanctioned figures published by the Department of Statistics somewhat absurd. Maps exist, but are difficult to keep in order. The nation is an archipelago; its major boundaries are defined by the sea, not by governments. On land, we recognise three different types of tenure: private property, Crown land, and generation property, and the intermingling of the three makes mapping a complex endeavour. As for museums, they tend to be unprofitable, both in financial and social terms, and are therefore uncommon. The government sponsors two in the capital, and the rest are privately or communally owned. The role of the museum in the creation/reconstruction of a concrete Bahamian history, therefore, is problematic. For the student of identity, Bahamian nationalism is a nebulous thing, difficult to describe in any systematic fashion, and puzzling in its various manifestations.

Let’s go further. What about monuments, edifices, the human landscape? For Peirce Lewis, “Tangible objects form a challenging and stubborn kind of historic record. They challenge us because they are there ... Human landscapes ... become in effect ... a kind of cultural autobiography that humans have carved and continue to carve into the surface of the earth. (Lewis 1993: 115-6). According to his view, the human landscape — that of a town, for instance — should, when studied like a document, yield valuable information on the culture that created it. Yet a landscape is not a document; to approach it as one may be misleading, as it assumes that the creators of the culture and the creators of the landscape are identical. If we apply his reasoning to the city of Nassau, starting at the public squares, we can get some idea of the difficulties inherent in it.

The city of Nassau, as designed by the Loyalist settlers in 1788, lies on the northern coast of New Providence, in the centre of the natural harbour protected by Paradise and Athol Islands. The town was constructed along one major thoroughfare: Bay Street, originally built along the coast, but now land-locked owing to extensive land reclamation schemes throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In its earliest conception, the town was centred around Fort Nassau, a stronghold built on the harbour. Soon, however, the town centre was moved eastward with the Loyalists’ construction of a major seat of government. The new main square, constructed on the southern side of the Bay Street, was surrounded by the Houses of Parliament and the courts of justice; opposite this point was the main wharf. During the mid-nineteenth century, partly as a result of the money earned by smuggling guns and cotton between the Bahamas and the American South, the land along the harbour was reclaimed and a second square, on the northern side of the street, constructed. This square was named after a former Royal Governor, Rawson W. Rawson, and served as the main landing for passengers and freight. Arguably, its main function was to provide a fine vista of Parliament Square, as many paintings and photographs depict the Houses of Parliament — touted by architects as a very fine example of colonial Georgian design (Douglas 1992; Saunders and Cartwright 1979) — as though regarded from the centre of Rawson Square.

The distinction between these squares is a fine one, but symbolic. One might conceivably interpret this symbolism by examining the statues which grace them. In Parliament Square to the south, surrounded by the seats of government, sits a statue of Queen Victoria. She is carved out of whitewashed stone, larger than life, stern, raised on a pedestal which requires the craning of necks to admire her. Hers is a monument erected during the early years of the twentieth century in memory of the queen who created a global empire and freed the slaves. To the north, in Rawson Square, blending with landscaping designed to welcome cruise ship passengers to the centre of town, is the smiling torso of Sir Milo Butler, first Governor-General of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas. Cast in green-tinged bronze, he is placed at such a level that one can look him in the face. Not only is his statue shorter in stature than the Queen’s; it also has a considerably shorter pedigree, and its associations are considerably less lofty. Erected during the 1980s, the bust of Sir Milo is located not far from the place where once stood a signpost indicating the distances and directions of major European and North American cities from Nassau.

If one were to “read” these artifacts in the manner suggested by Lewis, regarding them as representative of the way Bahamians think about nationhood, one would be tempted to conclude that Bahamian national identity is a poor thing. The overall effect is that of an ex-colony still tied to its imperial past. The independent governor, coloured, legless, set on the less auspicious, commercial side of the square, must gaze up at the white Empress, resplendent in her robes, enthroned in stony glory among the seats of government and justice.

But that is not my conclusion. In the Bahamas, which goes about the nationalist enterprise with a fervour that matches that of post-revolutionary America, the idea that there is no Bahamian national identity is somewhat absurd. On the contrary: the first thing one notices when beginning a study on identity or nation in the Bahamas is the centrality of such conceptions. Everywhere one turns there is reference to the “authentic” Bahamian experience. The Ministry of Tourism decorates its foyer with “native” Bahamian handicrafts, and indeed is located above the Straw Market, the advertised centre of the “authentic” Bahamian market experience. Shops on Bay Street gain vie to promote their merchandise as being “Bahamian-made”. Popular artists extol the virtues of “down home” and invite their listeners to eat, drink and dance in ways that are unashamedly Bahamian; politicians, preachers and radio talk show hosts ground all discussions of appropriate behaviour in the question of whether it is really “Bahamian” or not. People, places and things are singled out and judged according to their adherence to “Bahamian” sets of ideals — a code that incorporates (among other things) Christianity, community and a strong commitment to family.

The second thing one notices is that individuals know what “Bahamian” is when they are confronted with the foreign. Extremely clear demarcations are made between who is “Bahamian” and who is not. The same woman who compared Bahamians to Jamaicans in Miami also provided me with a fascinating list of the people who she considers most “Bahamian” in society, breaking it down in terms of birth, ethnicity and gender; according to that list, it is very clear who (or what) is Bahamian. Another woman, originally from England but now a Bahamian by marriage, told me that she has never felt accepted; while she has lived and worked in the country for years, borne children, taken up citizenship and voted, she has got no farther in her belonging to the Bahamas than being called a “paper” Bahamian. This reluctance to recognize outsiders is not remarkable in itself, but in a nation whose apparent lack of “national” symbols has caused many residents to deprecate it, it is certainly significant.

Again, despite the fact that Bahamians display a proclivity to travel, they are loath to leave the Bahamas forever. Many roam the world, but return home when they are done, unlike their Caribbean neighbours. This fact becomes all the more remarkable when one realises that until relatively recently, it has not been possible to complete a university degree here in the Bahamas. The vast majority of Bahamian professionals (lawyers, doctors, accountants, architects, and others), gained degrees in universities throughout the Caribbean, North America and Europe, and have returned home to work and live. Very few Bahamians who choose to begin careers abroad seem to contemplate living all their life in a foreign land; most of them plan, at some point, to come home. And that is the way they often describe it: not as “the Bahamas”, or “my country”, but as “home”. So where do we get the idea that Bahamian national identity does not exist?

Perhaps we stumble on the fact that the symbols we Bahamians favour are ambiguous at best. For example, the Bahamian flag, which consists of a horizontal band of gold sandwiched between two bands of aquamarine, with a black triangle against the left edge, is the object of fierce contention. The commonly-accepted explanation of its symbolism suggests that the gold represents the sun and sand, the aquamarine the sea, and the black triangle the Bahamian people. In the first place, it must be admitted that these representations are somewhat superficial; in a region whose flags symbolize more lofty ideals — blood, justice, fertility, wealth — the Bahamian version has a suspiciously commercial ring. In the second, the equating of the black triangle with the Bahamian people has engendered more conflict than unity. Bahamians of European descent form 15% of the population, a significant minority, and — as they themselves are quick to point out — they are explicitly left out of this explanation of the flag’s symbolism. The discussion becomes moot if one accepts the official explanation of the flag, which states that the black triangle represents the power or strength of the Bahamian people. However, that this explanation is never broadly discussed demonstrates its absence from the public imagination. Thus the flag, whose ostensible function is as a symbol to unite the nation, instead emphasizes existing divisions within the society.

Or perhaps we trip over the fact that many of the things advertised as “authentically Bahamian” to tourists are in fact illusions. Take the Straw Market as an example. On the surface, it is appears to be a “genuine” instance of the Bahamian experience. Located on Bay Street at the foot of Market Street, on the site of the centuries-old city market, it is an open-air constellation of vendors of native handicrafts. Scratch that surface, however, and the authenticity disappears. The location of the Straw Market in this spot is a fiction of the 1980s, as is evident in its uneasy merger with the Ministry of Tourism. The spaces for vendors and stalls occupy the ground floor of the ministry building, a number of hallways set around a central plaza. The offices above are air-conditioned and locked away from the stalls below, accessible from a small glassed-in foyer on the eastern side of the building, half-concealed by concession stands. Moreover, the apparent “nativeness” of the market is illusory, as the majority of the merchandise offered for sale is in fact imported cheaply from elsewhere (Patullo 1996: 197), and adorned with the word “BAHAMAS” to provide local flavour. When locally-produced work is found, it is generally more expensive, and thus less favoured by vendors. Even more ironic, it seems recently to have become a trend for some vendors to hire non-Bahamians — Haitians or Jamaicans — to man their stalls for them! The market is frequented almost exclusively by tourists; Bahamians rarely shop there in any serious fashion, as the market sells very few objects considered to be of practical value to them. Its association with its predecessor, the city market, where for centuries Nassauvians bought their daily subsistence, is tenuous at best. The old market burned down during the early 1970s and all vendors were dispersed to numerous other locations throughout the capital for a good decade. The erection of the present Straw Market was a conscious attempt by a populist government to provide straw vendors (a large and vocal section of its constituency) with a prime place to sell their wares. At the same time, its exclusion of other sellers relegated the vendors of fish to wharfs on the outskirts of town, and of fruit and vegetable sellers to roadside stands throughout the capital. When we look again we see that these manifestations of identity are designed for the tourists. Being consumed primarily by foreigners, they bypass Bahamians.

Or perhaps our difficulty is the absence of any concrete manifestations of our Bahamianness. As soon as one moves in to document what exactly it is that makes up a Bahamian identity, the ground begins to shift under one’s feet. Beyond the lack of a critical Bahamian literary output, other markers of national identity which reveal themselves in songs, art, artifacts and the like are remarkably chameleon-like. Statues materialise, are placed in prominent places, and then disappear overnight. Buildings of great historical and social import are burned down or blown up, and offices or parking lots appear in their place. Our favorite national symbol, Junkanoo, celebrates this very impermanence, despite attempts to preserve its wonders. In the Bahamas, change occurs at a rate which is bewildering for the scholar, and which is certainly much faster than that of its Caribbean neighbours (Miller 1998); trying to get a handle on what is “Bahamian” is like trying to catch a fish with one’s bare hands. In the absence of fixed cultural icons (books, statues, museums, protected historical areas of town, and so on) the pinning-down of this pervasive sense of “Bahamianness” becomes exceptionally difficult.

But what is it about national identity that makes us believe that we have to pin it down? Why should we accept the idea that “authentic social existence is, or should be, centred in circumscribed places”? It is my contention that what is most Bahamian about all of this is the very fluidity of identity. We inhabit an archipelago, after all; movement is our life. We are seafarers, travellers from one harbour to the next. Perhaps a better reading of the situation is one which privileges the idea of travel and movement over that of staying still. Who is to say that the fluidity of the Bahamian character is not as natural as the “fixity” of other nationalities? Perhaps what we seek to call the Bahamian identity is in fact a set of many Bahamian identities. Just as the whole Bahamas is an archipelago of hundreds of islands joined together by the sea, being “Bahamian” may be a constellation of many possibilities through which individuals navigate.

Let me illustrate by taking something that we consider a quintessential symbol of Bahamianness, an immutable example of what lies at the heart of the nation, and setting it afloat.

The village of Fox Hill is located some five miles east of downtown Nassau. Nestled in a hollow between two low ridges, it is built around a village green, called the parade, which is remarkable for the silk cotton trees that surround it. This parade stands at the junction of the three roads which lead into Fox Hill — Bernard Road, Fox Hill Road north, and the continuation of Fox Hill Road, which runs south to the sea. This area is considered by most people to be Fox Hill proper, and is the historical centre of the village.

The parade itself is an oval of grass and trees around which the roads curve. Situated about the parade are a number of establishments, among them the compound housing the school, the clinic, the library and the post office. Also nearby are the National Insurance building; a launderette; the large silk cotton tree under which old men of the community meet; the food store; and a nightclub. South of the parade is the neighbourhood Freedom Park, surrounded by a low wall. This is where the young men congregate to watch the passers-by and to play ball. In the late afternoons and on weekends, they will be joined by older women who will set up stands and sell fruit and home-made goods. To the west are a church, the boutique and a barber shop.

The parade is an attractive plot of green in the centre of this. During the early 1990s improvements carried out by the Fox Hill Association enhanced its appeal. At that time, the public buildings were renovated, and an impressive stone wall topped with a wrought iron fence was built in front of their compound. The entrances to the compound were flanked by imposing pillars, and in the centre was placed a stone sign proclaiming it the Fox Hill Civic Centre. The road between the Civic Centre and the parade was widened on all sides to provide space for bus stops, and benches were erected in the shade of the cotton trees. The parade itself was enclosed with a low wall, and concrete paths were laid out crossing it. Flowering bushes were planted inside the wall and along the paths. At the western end of the parade, under the most ancient and massive of the cotton trees, a permanent roofed bandstand was built, equipped with lighting and power outlets. A paved concrete dance floor was laid out in front of this. The entire exercise gave Fox Hill a strong sense of community life. Indeed, at the edge of the dance floor was placed a monument declaring the settlement a “Bahamas Historical Site”, inscribed with the following “history”:

FOX HILL OR SANDILANDS VILLAGE

Known as New Guinea or Creek Village in 1750, the land on which it was situated was granted to Samuel Fox in 1801. A large tract of land in the area was granted to Assistant Justice Robert Sandilands in 1845. Four years later he subdivided the land and sold parcels. Following emancipation, the village was divided into several “towns”.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the renovation of the village centre or the enshrining of its history is its mutability. Take the information inscribed on the plaque. The available documentary evidence tells a different story, suggesting that Fox Hill, Sandilands Village and the Creek were not one, but three distinct settlements; moreover, the dates in the literature conflict with those on the plaque. On the north coast, spread out along the Eastern Road, was the small village of the Creek, which dates its existence back to the founding of St Anne’s Church in the 1730s. The wider reaches of Fox Hill were first settled around the beginning of the 19th century when a Mr Fox, a free man of colour, developed them as a plantation. That part of the town encompassing the parade and thereabouts were included in an extensive grant of land to Judge Robert Sandilands in 1840, who established the green and cut Fox Hill Road from the parade to the coast. He offered small allotments of land (about six acres apiece) to ex-slaves and Liberated Africans, which they paid for by working for him. In 1849 the settlement’s name was changed to Sandilands (Williams 1979).

The plaque’s presence suggests that Fox Hill has always been an important village in the Bahamian historical record. In fact, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Fox Hill was physically isolated from Nassau; the only roads that connected it with the town were tracks. It was a forgotten village, regarded by city residents as a primitive curiosity. Its separation from the city was symbolically maintained by various governmental practices, from the settlement of Liberated Africans in the area to the movement of the prison, the juvenile homes and the mental hospital to grounds just south of Fox Hill. Perhaps the most significant reminder of Fox Hill’s isolation from the city is the story Nassauvians tell to explain the existence of Fox Hill Day, which falls eight days after Emancipation Day. According to city legend, Fox Hill Day and Emancipation Day are the same; the slaves in Fox Hill were so isolated from the city that it took eight days for them to get the news from Nassau. Of course, this is fiction, as proven by the fact that Bahamians on islands far more remote from the capital celebrate Emancipation on August 1st.

On their side, the people of Fox Hill kept to themselves, travelling to town largely for trade. The area was known as the main fruit-producer of the island, and women also brought their livestock and their straw-work to sell in the market. Fox Hill people maintained their seclusion by viewing Nassauvians as “foreigners”, and by weaving a reputation as powerful practitioners of obeah to discourage penetration of their boundaries. This was a reputation which lasted well into the twentieth century, attested to by the following experience of a former headmaster of the Boys’ Industrial School. The episode in question took place during the 1940s. One night, after working later than usual, he found himself in Fox Hill after dark. Although he did not like to set out on the track back to town during the night-time, he was even more determined not to spend the night in Fox Hill, and so he began his long walk back. When he reached the boundary of the village, he had a vision of a fiery chariot, created, he assumed, by Fox Hill obeah to protect the area.

In recent decades, contact with the city has grown much easier, with the extension of paved roads and the creation of housing developments all over the island. Today, Fox Hill is surrounded by middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs, and, bar traffic, is ten driving minutes away from the limits of the capital. What is more, the immigration of various groups to the area has de-homogenized the population: in and around Fox Hill live white Bahamian businessmen, Long Islanders of mixed origins, Haitian immigrants, and miscellaneous members of the new middle classes. In Fox Hill proper, a sense of community remains, but it is no longer easy to draw lines around it.

If its history is contested, Fox Hill as a village is equally difficult to define. To begin with, it is a composite of many smaller settlements. Each has its own “history” and its own symbolic meaning. These “towns” — Burnside Town, Nango Town, Joshua Town and Congo Town — were originally areas of segregated settlement in the early days of the village. Nango Town and Congo Town, as their names suggest, were where Liberated Yoruba and Central African peoples lived respectively. Burnside Town was populated by Bahamian-born Creoles and migrants from the Creek Village. It is unclear what the origin of the name “Joshua Town” is, and who inhabited it; all that seems to matter is that it existed, and from all accounts the inhabitants of these various towns kept themselves apart from the inhabitants of the others.

Even the “true” origin of Fox Hill is disputed. One legend favours the history of Mr Fox’s plantation. That story emphasizes Fox’s colour; he was a “black” man by some accounts, a “coloured” man — implying some European admixture — by others. However, the village owes its layout to Judge Sandilands, and for roughly a century it was known not as Fox Hill but as Sandilands Village. Although few people refer to Judge Sandilands today, it is arguable that many Liberated Africans owed their presence in Fox Hill at least in part to Sandilands. To add to the confusion, there is the settlement of The Creek, originally located along the Eastern Road, now subsumed among the houses of wealthy white Bahamians and expatriates, but still a site of deep significance for many Creek families today.

When you look too hard, the unity of Fox Hill dissolves. The “history” inscribed on the plaque at the parade is in fact a compilation of various histories — an archipelago of stories if you will. The one common thread that holds them together is the ownership of land — but even that takes on a symbolic, almost mythical form.

Take the Creek, for instance. The village, so long established, no longer exists; the communal rights to its land exist today only in memory. During the early twentieth century, sizeable portions of that land were appropriated, often illegitimately, by developers and the government, particularly if Creek families could produce no documents proving their ownership. When this happened, many Creek people moved to the border communities of Burnside Town and Johnson Road. Still, they maintained a “psychological boundary” between themselves and the people of Fox Hill. Using land ownership as a means of separating themselves from the people of Fox Hill, they pointed out that Fox Hill is the inheritance of slaves, the Creek the inheritance of free people. As one person insisted: “The people from the Creek never used to fool with the people from Fox Hill.”

What about the properties understood to have belonged to the inhabitants of Fox Hill itself? While most homes were built close to the centre of the village, farmlands stretched as far south as Yamacraw and South Beach in the early and middle parts of the twentieth century. The vastness of the terrain farmed by Fox Hill people until the post-war years suggests that they are in fact generation property.

In the Bahamas, many descendants of slaves collectively own sizeable pieces of land. This phenomenon is most common in the outlying islands of the archipelago, where conditions made successful cultivation of cash crops so difficult that landowners often cut their losses and abandoned their plantations. It was not unusual in these cases for them to leave their slaves in possession of their estates. Sometimes these transactions were formalized in wills; more often, however, they were accomplished by oral decree, or by the emigration or death of the Europeans. What is common to the system of generation property, no matter what its origin, is the fact that all members of a generation have equal right to the land.

In Fox Hill, the myth of Mr Fox’s plantation provided the oral legitimacy for the farming of large tracts of land. Certainly, many families who own land that is still attached to the settlement treat that land much as one might treat generation property; every family member has the right to live and work on it, and ideally it should not be sold. On the whole, however, the tradition of generation property in Fox Hill has been honoured more in imagination than in practice. The sprawling housing developments on property formerly considered Fox Hill land provides ample evidence that generation property can indeed be sold. Today, only the acreage in the immediate vicinity of Fox Hill and Bernard Roads remains in the hands of Fox Hill families, and most people I talked to were hazy about the extent of the land originally attached to Fox Hill.

If the question of whether Fox Hill is one village or three remains unresolved, another question arises. Is Fox Hill really a village at all? Many visual aspects that give the area its village-like appearance are in fact recent additions. Although the complex of public buildings gives the impression that the autonomy of the area has been recognized by the government for a long time, the school is the only government building of any antiquity. The rest — the library, the post office, the clinic — were established after Independence (1973), rewards for the community’s support of the PLP government, or recognition of Fox Hill’s Afro-Bahamian significance. The tale of Liberated African settlement is one whose official telling post-dates the election in 1967 of a majority black government in the Bahamas. Even the name — Fox Hill — is a reincarnation of the period of black pride; it was at this time that the story of the benevolent coloured planter, Fox, took official precedence over the tale of the philanthropic English judge.

Boundaries and history are not the only things about Fox Hill that are fluid. When I asked people to describe what it meant to be a “Fox Hill” person, the answers varied as well. For some, it meant invoking a genealogy and bearing a “Fox Hill name” — though even here one might get into trouble, for some names belonged both to Fox Hill and to the Creek, and the two families were indisputably different. For others, it meant they had been born in the area, and that included those people who had settled in the subdivisions within and around Fox Hill over the past thirty years. Some descriptions of a “Fox Hill” identity pointed out that many people in the area, although for all intents and purposes Bahamian, are in fact of Haitian parentage. It was recognized by some of the people I talked to that it is virtually impossible to separate those Fox Hill inhabitants of Haitian descent from their Bahamian neighbours, as the Haitian presence in the area is almost forty years old. As one person observed, “You don’t know who is who! You think a fella walking down the street who you been dealing with for so long, are Bahamian, when you come to think of it, they actually Haitian.”

What grew more and more interesting was the way in which rhetorical concepts of “real” Bahamian identity and that of Fox Hill were intertwined. Once I recognized that the received image of Fox Hill could be viewed as part of a larger construction of the national character, I became more interested in the wider picture. The same dissolution of certainties in Fox Hill holds true for the broader Bahamas, as do the fluidity of identity and the malleability of the historical record. At the same time, however, the “authenticity” of the village, its communal spirit and its uniqueness, are crucial. Every Bahamian comes from a community, and Fox Hill symbolises the ideal community. Perhaps this explains why not one of my informants doubted the veracity of her answers; each believed herself to be giving me the “real” story, no matter how much it might conflict wither neighbour’s. No matter what, Fox Hill is seen to embody the ideal Bahamian character. Family life is stronger in Fox Hill than elsewhere. Fox Hill is more connected to the African past, and a greater knowledge of Bahamian culture imbues its “spirit”. For almost everyone I spoke to, the village had a mythical quality that was emblematic not only of a special culture all its own, but also of the ideal Bahamian identity.

Does it matter, then, that Fox Hill, the immutable symbol of Bahamianness, the quintessence of our national spirit, is ultimately, like the statues in the square or the straw market or the flag, a symbol whose meaning melts when you look at it too long? The questions remain. Is it one village, or three? By which name should we know it? Who really belongs there, and whose history is right? We do not have the answers. But do we need them?

Perhaps the truest answer embraces all possibilities. In the various stories about the area one may find different emphases which can provide each individual inhabitant with his own sense of belonging. For the great-grandchildren of slaves, there is the myth of Fox’s plantation; for people of predominantly African descent, the story of the Liberated Africans; and for people of mixed ancestry the tale of the Creek. In all these histories are found the common theme of extensive land ownership, independence from the city, and a strong sense of self. The shape may be different, but the themes remain the same. How interesting it becomes, then, that the history inscribed on the pillar on the parade proclaims the oneness of the three: The Creek, Fox Hill and Sandilands Village are one and the same.

And that brings me to my final thought. If travel and movement are natural activities in our archipelagic nation, then perhaps the migration of identities is natural as well. Perhaps what we need is an understanding of ourselves that is loosed from the idea that identity is a tree that stays fixed to one place and draws its strength through its roots. James Clifford provides just such an understanding: “Dwelling,” he says, “was [once] understood to be the local ground of collective life, travel a supplement; roots always precede[d] routes. But what would happen,” he goes on, “… if travel were untethered, seen as a complex and pervasive spectrum of human experiences?” (Clifford, 1997: 2-3)

What would happen, indeed, is what happens in the Bahamas. When travel is untethered, collective life is recognised to be made up of many different routes. Identity can freely be regarded not as a garden planted with trees, but as a sea spotted with islands, and one’s own reality as a series of migrations among them. If we take that view, we are able to accept much more easily the fluid, ever-changing nature of our own Bahamianness. If touchstones change, so what? Landmarks look different when seen from the ocean. Our physical archipelago is mirrored by a cognitive one, an archipelago in the minds of Bahamians that allows us to accept our multiple realities as easily as we accept the idea of many islands, one nation. We know not one identity but several, and we navigate among them, landing now here, now there, as it suits us. We prefer to emphasise flux over fixity, change over stagnation, the reshaping of the present in spite of, or perhaps to spite, the past. If we seek to imagine our national identity as some sort of cultural botany, therefore, we are bound to be disappointed. If we see ourselves instead as migrants, we sail closer to the truth. Our roots are our routes; let us be happy with that.

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