On Land

by Nicolette Bethel

Over ten years ago I attended a lecture being given at the College of The Bahamas by Eris Moncur. His topic was, not surprisingly (as it was the Quincentennial year), the site of Columbus’ landfall. Now I’m not going to debate that now; anyone who knows Mr Moncur even slightly knows what his view on the matter is. What I am going to raise is something he said, somewhat in passing, in that lecture. It was this: Bahamians are millionaires.

Now many of us are fond of thinking of ourselves as “poor”: “So-and-so like to take advantage of poor people,” we say, or “The government job is to help poor people get ahead”. I am not entirely sure what the cut-off point for wealth is; I suspect that poverty is something we own, while wealth belongs to the other guy. Be that as it may (and that’s certainly fodder for another column), I want to argue Mr Moncur’s case, because I agree with him. Many, if not most, Bahamians are extremely rich.

Now understand me: I don’t necessarily mean take-it-to-the-bank-and-deposit-it kind of rich. In fact, the kind of wealth Mr Moncur and I are thinking about here may leave a person cash-poor; we’re talking about land. And specifically, I’m talking about generation property, an imperfectly understood but extremely valuable Bahamian resource.

Now I understand that many people will disagree with me. Many people regard generation property as a trouble and a nuisance rather than a source of wealth; indeed, when I carried out fieldwork in Long Island, where the tradition of generation property is prevalent, that was the common refrain. How, people asked, could they get around the difficulties posed by generation property? Let’s look at the problems. First of all, it’s impossible to generate cash quickly from generation property. You may own half of Exuma, for instance, but you can’t use that ownership as collateral to get a bank loan. Part of the problem is that individuals are not outright owners of generation property, and another part of the problem is that the custom is extra-legal — it may be recognized by the courts, but is not covered in law, and so cannot be used to generate cash. So how, exactly, does generation property make you rich?

Well, the short answer is that cash is not the only form of wealth, or even the most important form of wealth that exists. The long answer is that generation property, for many of us, represents something even more basic than cash; it represents power. And it represents, for those of us who are lucky enough to be connected with it, the foundation of our identity, the core of what makes us Bahamian.

For those people who may not know what generation property is, it is the system of owning land communally. In most cases (though the system varies according to families and islands), anyone who is descended from the original owner of the land, or who carries his name, has the right to live on the land in question. This right is passed on to new generations at birth. The best-known example of Bahamian generation property is that of the former estate of Lord John Rolle in Exuma. Lord Rolle was a wealthy Loyalist who, when he left the American mainland, moved many of his slaves to the estate in Exuma awarded to him by the British crown. When the cotton plantations failed, rather than bear the expense of resettling the slaves, Rolle cut his losses and left the plantations to those slaves and their descendants. To this day, anyone who is named Rolle, or who is descended from the Rolles, has the right to go to Rolle land in Exuma and claim a piece.

Generation property is found throughout the Bahamas, but is most prevalent in the central and southern islands that were settled by the Loyalists during the American War of Independence. At that time, King George of Britain granted large tracts of land in the Bahamas to those people fleeing the conflict, those families who wished to remain loyal to the British crown. These estates were settled by these refugees, who brought their slaves with them, and were used initially to grow cotton. However, when cotton failed and Emancipation came, as it did within a generation or two, the landowners did one of two things. If they could afford it, they cut their losses and abandoned the plantations, moving to Nassau or even back to Britain or the USA. Others, who couldn’t afford it or who chose otherwise, remained on the land, and intermingled with the former slaves. In both cases the land was passed down from generation to generation, from parents to children, often as an undivided estate, the property of all of the descendants of the slaves, the slaveowners, or both.

The system of generation property explains why, when one visits many of the southern islands, one comes across settlements that bear the name of families, from which those families hail. The names of these settlements generally indicates the existence of generation property, and most of the people who live in these settlements, or who are descended from there, are likely to have rights to the land in the vicinity.

The custom sounds wonderful, and has been, as I have already stated, a source of our power and independence. People who have land will never starve and will never be homeless. This is recognized throughout the Caribbean, where, after Emancipation, freed slaves banded together and scraped up enough cash to purchase their own tracts of land, which became their own versions of generation property. However, in most cases, the best land in other Caribbean countries remained in the hands of European plantation owners. In the Bahamas, huge tracts of land are owned by Bahamian families.

This fact may be all well and good, but there is one major drawback for Bahamians of the twenty-first century, most of whom now live in Nassau and Freeport: we don’t live on our land, and our land can’t generate cash for us. There are many cash-poor, land-rich Bahamians in New Providence and Grand Bahama. And so for many of us, generation property is a burden, a source of strife, and not the valuable resource that our ancestors intended it to be.

I am going to argue that the failure here is not the institution of generation property. It is our own failure; it is a lack of imagination on our part. We have been schooled by years of living in a world that regards land as a resource to generate cash, and where any other use of it is seen as worthless. This attitude has led us to denigrate the custom of generation property, and to value private land, which we can buy and sell at will, far more. It has prohibited us from grappling seriously with the custom and writing it into our laws, and (perhaps not incidentally) it has also led many of us to divest ourselves of our generation property when we can — either through ignorance of the land’s value, as happened in New Providence in the early twentieth century with generation property, or through collusion, manipulation of the existing law, and greed. Today, as the government is promoting the Bahamas abroad as an excellent place to own a second home, the temptation to sell our birthright is strong. After all, a cool million in cash is worth far more than any number of acres of inaccessible land on some remote island, isn’t it?

I am not so sure. I happen to believe that land, not money, is true wealth. This is a conviction that is too deep in me to shake. And as Nassau grows more and more crowded, the prospect of having land on some distant island to which I can activate a claim at some point grows more and more attractive. What’s more, I don’t believe that this conviction of mine come out of thin air. After all, it is the way in which my ancestors administered their property for almost two hundred years; and I believe that it lies at the core of the independent spirit of the Bahamian.

Comments

[antoine cherenfant]

Nicolette Bethel is naughty. She is also an idiot.
The cherenfant family is composed of Lawyers ,Doctors, Pastors, Nurses, Ingineers etc etc in USA , Haiti, France, Honduras.Tell her to check the Internet and she will regret to mention a member of this family.Bahamas should be proud of us .....

[antoine cherenfant]

ENGINEERS , NOT Ingineers

typing error

[nicob]

Thanks for dropping by, and for the information.

However, I think you missed the point.

[Steve Mirsky]

Do you know of any books or articles which cover the history of generation land in the Bahamas?

Thanks

[helper]

A great book available only at the Library or certain Lawyers office written By previous Supreme Court Justice Leonard Knowles.

[keva]

Good job on article. Thanks for information.

Keep it up

[nicob]

Received in response:

7/22/2007

Dear Nicolette:

I enjoyed your article tremendously! I found myself exclaiming, "Amen!" at end. I was born in the Bahamas and raised in the US since 7 years old. As of December 2006, I am 42 years old.

I do not have grand dreams of prosperity or position. My dreams are of a simple life, a better quality of life, and of purging myself of Western learning embedded in my mind and manifested in my current lifestyle resulting in work, work, work, no land ownership, no homestead, and no home. My immediate family is here (2 children, my mother, my siblings born here, and other siblings born in the Bahamas). I have numerous uncles and aunts here and in the Bahamas as well.

In recent years, 7 or so ago, I found myself tired of the complexities of the Western lifestyle and unable to find my place in this world. I have felt lost and homeless. My heritage and culture beckons to me, but I have been afraid. I find that I have lived my entire life in fear of one thing or another. That’s a different story as fear is a stifling experience.

More and more everyday, I want to go home to a land in Andros from whence memories of the happiest time in my life were generated, a memory which haunts me daily and calls out to me, "Come home."

I shared my concern with my aunts of that retreat-like land being sold, going away, and my American born children never realizing its existence or the value of it thus never being privy to its beauty. It is unbearable to me to note mentally that my un-thought of unborn grandchildren will never have such a perceived plain yet incredibly poinient and happily embedded experience to recall. My heart breaks at the possibility of such a loss to future generations.

Because of my Andros experience as a child, today there is a place reserved in my mind as a happy retreat and I go there often. I speak of it out loud to who ever will listen. This place in my mind is untainted. My mind does not recall a single hardship there. Maybe it is the view of the world from a child’s eyes, but I clearly remember hardships and pain from my childhood. None of those occurrences took place in Andros. My memories of Andros are filled with beauty, happiness, adventure, and freedom.

When I told my mother and her sisters that I am afraid of Granddad's land where I played as a child going away (knowing what I know of Western and human greed) or becoming spoiled, they said, "That will not happen because the land is ours." I did not understand. It frustrated me and made no sense. I asked of deeds, some legally binding document showing my family’s legal ownership of this land. They said all you have to do is stake your land and build on it.

How could that make sense to me a Western raised Bahamian? It was not until I attempted to narrow the distance between my family in different states and in the Bahamas by creating a family web site that I spoke with a cousin in the Bahamas who made reference to Crown Property in conversation. I replied, "As opposed to what?" He replied, "Generational Property." My eyes felt somewhat opened!

For me personally, there is much research to do. An aggressive plan will be devised to live far under my means by spending less and saving much more. I intend to live in as extreme poverty as I can bear for the next 2-3 years because Nicolette, I fully intend to go home!

For the poverty bestowed upon my family in the US, I feel refreshed to know that I have an option such as generation land. What makes that even more exciting and sensible to me is that my family truly was blessed to have birth right to a land and a sea rich with provisional rations. Jesus fed a multitude from the sea and the land.

I wholeheartedly agree with you Nicolette, "I am rich." Your article has strengthened my resolve, empowered me, and has offered me a solid foundation on which to PLAN to go home. The sheer knowledge is enough encouragement and has generated excitement in me.

I have no unrealistic expectations of a rosy transition from Western lifestyle to the out island lifestyle of Andros. I imagine I will definitely feel the differences and will have some instinctive resistance based upon the lifestyle I have become accustomed to in the US with systems of comfort in place such as the highway systems, domestic dwelling developments, water and sewage systems, power and energy systems, a viewed as failed, yet readily available healthcare system, etc. I have lived the better part of my existence in a developed society (depending on one’s view of which stages of a human life is the better part, in this instance, “better part” means half of my life if I shall live another 40 or so years). Its conveniences have been costly to me in many ways.

Rather, I see myself cultivating the land I stake and build on, but no more than necessary for comfort, yet preserving its natural ecological state. I will work like everyone else once there. I have time, as I execute my plan to live under my means and work and save, to research the nuances of and options for integrating into the settlement culture of Andros with respect to lifestyle and work.

But I tell you Nicollete, I smile as I recall the journey of walking to school in the morning when I was a child in Andros clearly remembering the wonder and adventure of it. I want my grandchildren to experience that unspoiled land and all its natural resources and beauty. And, I look forward to going ahead of them and preparing and preserving their heritage. This I will do not only for them Nicolette, but for me. I feel I owe it to myself to seek out my heritage and live the other half of my life in my country in which I have so much pride. My mother often says of me, “She loves her country.”

My commonwealth beckons me. I do not know what the future holds. I can only plan for my departure from this country and re-integration into my own as much as possible, but I do feel an overwhelming sense that it is to my benefit and the benefit of future generations of my family that I return home to the Bahamas. I must seek out that which beckons me, my homestead in Andros. It beckons me in no uncertain terms. It calls out to me as the answer to my head spinning and uncertainty. It tells me I do not have to continue to suffer. It tells me that I am not poor Nicolette. Andros has called out to me in a loud resounding voice, to “Come home!”

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your well-written article in reference to a statement made just in passing over 10 years ago by Mr. Eris Moncur during his lecture at the College of the Bahamas.

I thank you further for realizing the magnitude of that passing statement, writing this article in reference, submitting this article for publication bringing me the fortune of having it reach me many miles away over the internet, and for your educational statement within your article of true value not being monetary in nature. I am in full agreement. I understand that value is a very personal perception in this case. I relish in the knowledge that I am a cash-poor, land-rich Bahamian and embrace my fortune.

Thank you, Nicolette.

Respectfully,

Monique Mason

PS. I enjoy the Bahamian connections this publication brings to me many, many, miles away from home. I have felt isolated from my country.

Thank you, Bahama Pundit!

[Dwayne Deveaux]

Madam, your article was very informative and on point, continude the great work, and Monique we await your arrival, your loving cousin.