Culture Guardians: Caretaking Rivers of Memory on River-less Islands

• In Event: Performance and culture keeping

Description for Program

Arona Petersen (1908-1995) was a Griot and Weed Woman from the Virgin Islands of the United States. During the course of her life, she trained as an herbalist and writer, and used those combined skills, along with a sublime storytelling ability, to embody the role of culture guardian, safeguarding and disseminating history, folklore, and medicine using her repertoire of skills. Petersen’s work- protecting, preserving, and disseminating valuable knowledge drawn from the African diaspora experience through time to the present– was a macropractice that has long been the preserve of women, rather than men, in the Virgin Islands and their precedent, the Danish West Indies. Examining the multiple repertoires of culture guardians like Petersen as macropractices, rather than separate skillsets or repertoires, allows those learning from the African Diaspora to glimpse the powerful role of women who have been marginalized in the archives.

Author

• Greg Carter, Illinois State University