Improved Look to Nevisian Heritage Village; Ministry of Tourism and Kalinago People Applauded

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism Mr. Tyrone O’Flaherty

NIA-CHARLESTOWN, NEVIS (May 26TH, 2011) — Members of Dominica’s Kalinago Tribe were last Monday [May 23], publicly applauded for their restorative work at the Nevisian Heritage Village.

The four-member team spent three weeks on Nevis repairing huts at the Gingerland-based historical site.

While on Nevis, the Kalinago men and woman made a courtesy call to the island’s Premier and Minister of Tourism, the Honourable Joseph Parry, and later, participated in a brief appreciation ceremony.

Premier Parry, late last month at his office in Bath Plain, warmly welcomed the team to Nevis and commended the staff at the Ministry of Tourism for the initiative.

“I am very pleased that Mr. O’Flaherty and the Ministry are able to bring you back to Nevis so that we can have the original huts of the Caribs and that it would be able to enhance our tourism because that is what we are trying to do: promote the development of tourism,” Premier Parry said to the Kalinago group.

Minister Parry expressed hope that the link between his Ministry and the visiting group “would be kept together” so that Nevisians “would be able to learn more and more about the original peoples.”

“We cannot only educate our people as to the contributions they made but we can [also] promote them as part of our tourism industry,” Mr. Parry added.

Appreciation ceremony at the Nevisian Heritage Village

Having approved the work at the newly renovated site, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism Mr. Tyrone O’Flaherty expressed gratitude to the Dominican team, adding that the Nevisian Heritage Village “had always been an attraction for people passing through, not just the visitors but locals as well.”

“I would just like to add, from the Ministry’s standpoint, our sincerest thanks to the Caribs or Kalinago people from Dominica.

“We hear a lot in history about the Caribs [and] the Arawaks, and here you have a living testimony as to how they actually lived and perhaps still live in certain parts of the region,” Mr. O’Flaherty said.

The Nevisian Heritage Village, as the tourism official highlighted, “will be a heck of a lot better” as a result of the restorative work that was executed by the Kalinago men and woman.

The Nevisian Heritage Village once housed a Sugar Plantation Cotton Ginnery. It is located at Fothergills Estate in the St. George Parish.