Exploring Bahamian Culture through History with Sasha Wells

Exploring Bahamian History: From Indigenous Roots to Modern Identity

In this episode, Hema and Sasha Wells, a PhD student in Caribbean History at Florida International University, delve into the rich history of The Bahamas. The discussion spans multiple eras, from the indigenous Lucayan people, the effects of European colonization, the cultural and racial dynamics influenced by loyalist migration, and the eventual road to independence from the British Crown in 1973. 

Sasha highlights the ongoing social and cultural challenges, including the remnants of colonialism and the importance of preserving Bahamian history through both academic and public history projects. The episode provides a comprehensive look at how historical events have shaped Bahamian culture and identity.

Connect with Sasha
Instagram + Tiktok

Resources

Untold Stories of the Atlantic World

Runaways - Open Access Primary Source Dataset (prototype) 

What to Know About the History of Junkanoo, One of the Caribbean's Biggest Holiday Celebrations - Made By History, Time Magazine

Episodes referenced

Slave Voyages with Dr. Gregory O'Malley and Dr. Nafees M. Khan

Transcript

Sasha: It's interesting because a lot of people will take pride in Bahamian culture and what we do. And for example, Junkanoo, but that's a big part of Bahamian culture in particular, and that's something that also the government's really pushing right now. But people take pride in that and then don't stop to think about how Junkanoo has African roots from various African ethnicities that now have amalgamated together in The Bahamas to create our modern Junkanoo.

[music] This is The Moreish Podcast where Caribbean history meets culture and cuisine.

Hema: Hi, Sasha. Thank you so much for joining me today on The Moreish Podcast.

Sasha: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Hema: I am so excited to have this conversation with you. I've been spending a little bit of time diving into some of your work through social media and through other means. Before we even start, can you  introduce yourself?

Sasha: I'm Sasha Wells. I'm currently a PhD student in the history department at Florida International University. I am also a content creator and my content focuses around history, usually on the history of The Bahamas, and then I do a lot of book content, reading content, and also a little bit of like PhD lifestyle content.

I am originally from The Bahamas, but I've been living in Florida for about four years now. 

Hema: So you not only have personal experience from The Bahamas, but then also academic knowledge.

Sasha: Yeah, yeah. Both the lived experience and then the book learning experience as well.

Hema: I wanna start with the history of The Bahamas. And this is, this is an area that stumps me a little bit when I'm doing some research on the history of the different Caribbean nations, is the different publications have different starting points.

Sasha: Yeah.

Hema: And often times starting points and the beginning, I'm, I'm using air quotes, the beginning of history is the beginning of colonization,

Sasha: Mm-hmm.

Hema: But that's not the real beginning of the history of The Bahamas.

Sasha: Yeah. So it's funny that you say that 'cause I think I had just did a video talking about the indigenous people of The Bahamas, the Lucayans. So usually a lot of history for The Bahamas starts right at 1492 when Columbus first lands in the Americas. He's landing on one of the islands in The Bahamas, there he meets the indigenous people of The Bahamas and they're called Lucayans, and. they're called that because, well that's obviously what they're calling themselves, but also The Bahamas is a part of the Lucayan Archipelago, which is made up of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos.

And when Columbus meets these people, he describes them and talks about how friendly they are, how welcoming they are to him and his men and the rest of his ships. And he describes them as that they would make great servants. 

And a few sentences later in his journal, then he switches the word servants to slaves. And so that is the European first interaction with these people. Now, these people had been in The Bahamas for hundreds of years before Europeans come to the Americas, but with Columbus coming then there is a depopulation of the islands, of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, as well as obviously the rest of the Caribbean, as a lot of indigenous people are taken from The Bahamas to Hispaniola, to Cuba to work in basically plantations, but encomidas. And so the islands are depopulated not only through the forced migration of these people, but then also through illnesses that the Europeans bring.

Hema: You talked about The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. Can you tell us where the Bahamas are and  how many islands?

Sasha: So, The Bahamas is over 700 islands in 2000 keys, and it is located right off the coast of Florida, but also adjacent to The Bahamas is Cuba and Haiti. So The Bahamas spans a large part of, we're actually not in the Caribbean Sea, we're in the Atlantic, but large part of the Atlantic, 'cause the northernmost part of The Bahamas is about 60 nautical miles off the coast of Florida. And then the southernmost tip of The Bahamas is so close to Haiti that on a good day you can kind of see Haiti. So that's just to show like how close we are to some of the other countries, 'cause it's funny that you say that, asking where it is 'cause a lot of people don't really know exactly where The Bahamas is. And then when they see it on a map, they're like, oh, that's where it is. It's really close to the US and then also really close to other places in the Caribbean.

Hema: It is, and when you say 700 islands and keys, that also is news to a lot of people.

Sasha: Yeah. And it's funny because that I think is a part of one of our tourist slogans, but I will be honest and say that most of those islands aren't inhabited. I think we have about 15 to 20 main islands that are inhabited by people. And then we have a lot of keys that people may live on slash privately owned keys that superstars, mega rich people also own and have their private little house on.

Hema: So let's go back to the indigenous population.

Sasha: Mm-hmm.

Hema:  They, in my research it says that these people may have come from other Caribbean islands to The Bahamas. 

Sasha: Yeah, so the Lucayans are a subset of, um, Arawaks, which are Tainos, and so they are originally coming from other places in the Caribbean, and then they travelled through to The Bahamas, and then that's where some of them just settled and stayed.

Hema: And they were there for a very long time. You said hundreds of years before Europeans even  set eyes on The Bahamas.

Sasha: Yeah. So I wanna say about a thousand BC, 2000 plus years before any European people are arriving in the Americas. So they were there for a long time, and they have left a lot of archeological evidence for archeologists to find when they do come and do digs in The Bahamas, albeit there's not as much out there as there could be. You know, it costs money to come and do an archeological dig, and you gotta get permission from the government and then all those other things. But there's a whole bunch of stuff out there.

Hema: And I think that's probably, people doing that work, the archeological digs, are uncovering more and more information, which is why now, we can say that they had political systems, they had religious beliefs, they had a whole society built that we don't know quite enough about yet.

Sasha: Yeah. So archeological evidence, also in conjunction with interpreting sources like Columbus's journal and other Europeans who came, 'cause Ponce de Leon came when he was searching for the Fountain of Youth, he thought that it might be in Bimini, which is the northern part of The Bahamas. And so he sailed through all The Bahamas and was remarking on flora, fauna and also trying to see if he could find more people.

And in his, in his journal, he remarks and says that I think he found not one person except an old woman. Not to say that there wasn't other people that were still alive in The Bahamas at this point. Obviously they were hiding. But it goes to show that the population of Lucayans by that point, which would have been 1513, had been so depleted from these Europeans depopulating the islands, the illnesses that they brought that the population itself wasn't sustainable.

And there is some archeological evidence, it's done on one island, but it shows that there may have been a population that persisted up until the 1530s on that island, which is San Salvador, but it just shows that the Europeans coming in really stripped the Lucayans of their people, and stripped the islands of its people by taking them away.

Hema: You said that Christopher Columbus spotted the island. Did he stake claim to any of the islands or any of the region or settle there, make any colonies?

Sasha: So, you know, as Europeans do, when they land in places, of course they're claiming it for King and for Crown, or for Queen and for Crown, but the Spaniards did not settle in any of the islands of The Bahamas. They pretty much would just take the indigenous people and go, partly because The Bahamas had no gold, it had no anything that would have been of great considerable value for them to want to stay and colonize The Bahamas.

So there's no Spanish colonization. The French do seem a little interested in The Bahamas in the 1500s, and they do attempt to colonize one island. Real colonization of the islands doesn't come until 1648, with what we term them as in Bahamian history, the elu. .Eleutheran Adventurers, and this is a group of Puritans coming from Bermuda to settle in The Bahamas because they want more religious freedom and just more space for themselves.

Hema: You said something that I wanted to just go back to really quickly, the the Spaniards didn't settle, but they took the people to other places. Can we talk about that for a moment?

Sasha: Yeah, so during this period of time on the Spanish, but also the Portuguese, are coming into the new world and they're just staking claims to where, 'cause the Pope had split the new world between the Spanish and the Portuguese to lay claim to these lands. And they need labour, so they're using indigenous labour to mine, to make food, to do basically all of the hard work, the grunt work for them.

And then they're taking all of those that gold, all that other stuff and taking it back to Europe. So because they need labour and because they view these indigenous people as being weak, particularly the Lucayans because they're so friendly and open to these people, they snatch them on their ships and they take them back.

In Columbus's first journey to the New World, when he lands in The Bahamas, he actually takes, I think it was seven or eight men, because he wants to take them back to Europe to show them off. And obviously he's not asking these people, he's just like, oh, okay, you're good. I'm gonna snatch you. And about two or three of them end up jumping off and making it back to their island. But the rest of them, he ends up taking with him to, I think he continues to sail on down and discover, discovers Hispaniola and those other places as well. And then obviously he meets the indigenous people there.

Hema: So the indigenous population was pretty much decimated, based, you said diseases, but also enslavement and hard labour. So the, the population that had been living there peacefully and doing their thing, were then stripped away.

Sasha: Yeah. And, as they're using indigenous labour, it's interesting 'cause I'm thinking of Bartolomé de las Casas, he never goes to The Bahamas, but he is a friar or he is a religious person, but he's located in Cuba and he had a few encomidas, which is basically plantations under his rule, under his thumb.

And so he begins to see indigenous labour as, or the way the indigenous are being treated in these places as harmful. And that's when he's like, we should switch to African labour instead of indigenous labour. And so he starts advocating for that more. And that's some of what triggers the beginning importation of Africans in the New World as well.

Hema: The Puritans, where were they coming from?

Sasha: Bermuda.

Hema: What were they escaping?

Sasha: So during this point in English history, I think this was partly during the Oliver Cromwell debacle going on in England, which is basically when they had killed the King, Oliver Cromwell took over as Lord protector, not as a king, but just as the overlord of England for like 20 years.

And there is a whole bunch of political turmoil. And through that political turmoil there's also religious turmoil as well. Bermuda, by that point, was already a British colony. The Puritans that lived in Bermuda were like, okay, well we don't wanna be under the thumb of our political overlords here in Bermuda, they aren't treating us right. And similar to, like, when you think of US history, you think of the pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower, it's very, very similar-esque story where they're like, we're coming to seek new religious freedom in a, in a open wide land for us. And so these Puritans from Bermuda, their leader, William Sayle, goes to England, requests that they have land in The Bahamas and that they can settle there.

The leaders in England are like, sure, you can settle there. And then he goes back to Bermuda and they take about, I think one to two ships. But it's no more than 150 people actually, think the total number was about 78 people, and they land on Eleuthra, or they land on an island which they then call Eleuthra in The Bahamas. And that is where the term Eleutheran Adventurers is come from.

Hema: You indicated something about Cromwell, and that era of Cromwell created so much destruction for the Irish people, which also has some connections to the Caribbean. And, and I've done an episode to talk about that Irish-Caribbean connection. But it's, it's interesting as we talk about that all of these little pieces fit together into this history of strife and destruction and the movement of people, the forced movement of people.

Sasha: Yeah, and that's one of my interests to be honest, the migration and immigration of people, whether forced or otherwise, has always been a fascination for me. And since I started in my undergrad degree, I've always been interested in that. And of course, the timelines and the people groups have shifted, but that has always been one of my major focuses.

Hema: During this, this time period, I was reading something about a connection between these Puritans and Harvard University?

Sasha: I think it's like in 1666 or something, we send wood. And I can't remember what type of wood it is, but we send wood to Harvard to help build their buildings, their schools. And so Bahamians kind of love to brag a little bit that we helped to build Harvard because they're harvesting this wood, I think it's in Abaco, which is another one of the islands of The Bahamas, and then they ship it off, I think a whole shipload off to Harvard. Bahamians love to take pride in things, and that's like a spot of pride for a lot of people when they do know about it.

Hema: It is an interesting little tidbit of information that also then infuses some US history merging with the Bahamian history during this time period.

Sasha: Yeah. Due to our proximity to the US, or what would become the US, Bahamian history is very much intermelded with US history, even though a lot of people from the US don't realize it. During the American Revolution, a whole bunch of British loyalists leaving the colonies come over to The Bahamas, and that is a huge era in The Bahamas for us.

And then Bahamians are also involved with, during the American Civil War, with smuggling and during the American era of prohibition, we're doing rum running. So, uh, we're doing all these things during major points in US history that a lot of people, I don't think, realize.

Hema: Let's talk about the loyalists, who then moved from the US to The Bahamas. Who were the loyalists?

Sasha: The British loyalists are, well, when people say British loyalists, I think they usually just think of the white people. And it was actually a, a very different group than what you might think of.

We had white loyalists and these were people who were loyal to the crown. They did not want the US as it was at the time, it was 13 colonies, 13 British colonies to be separated from Great Britain. And so in the American Revolutionary War, you know that there's one side that wants to be independent and there's another side that wants to stay loyal to the crown. British loyalists are part of the side that wanna stay loyal to the crown, as we well know, they lost.

And so, um, number of these people migrated elsewhere after that. Some of them went down to Florida, but later they would leave Florida and go to places like The Bahamas or Jamaica. Canada was also a big place, and then some people went back to Great Britain, and then I think some people actually ended up going all the way to Australia, from some other literature I've seen, but the main places are those four places that I talked about.

But along with these white loyalists who had strong political feelings, we have free black people who are termed black loyalists by some, and they helped fight in the American Revolutionary War on the side of the British, against these American colonists, and in fighting they gain their freedom. So they're also leaving the US because if they stay there, they'll probably be re-enslaved. A number of them come to The Bahamas. And then, of course, white loyalists are bringing their enslaved people with them as well. So you have white and black loyalists and then enslaved people coming to The Bahamas, for a duration of about two years, from 1783 to 1785. And that is really triggered by Great Britain, Spain, and France signing the set of treaties. The Peace of Paris and the Treaty of Versailles, in which Spain is getting Florida and the British are getting The Bahamas, amongst a few other places.

So they're kind of saying, okay, it's official, you could have these islands and we won't touch them. Because up until that point, Spain and France were terrorizing some of the British settlements in The Bahamas, you know, little squabbles here and there. And so they're like, okay, like you can officially have these islands and we'll take Florida.

So the loyalists who had settled in Florida needed to be moved and quite quickly, so they went to one of the closest places they could go, which was The Bahamas. Some of them didn't expect there to be that long, but ended up settling there forever because their, their family lines are still in running in Bahamian blood. 

nd with this migration of people, the number of islands that are settled expand from three to five to about 15. And the population also doubles in size, and with that doubling in size the demographics shift as well. So white people end up being about one-third of the total population instead of almost half to half. And then free and enslaved black people end up being about two-thirds of the entire population.

Hema: At this point, were there any indigenous people left?

Sasha: I tend to lean more the side of no, just because I think if there were, they would show up in the records at all. Not saying that there might not be any Lucayans left that had gotten moved to Hispaniola or Cuba or other places like that, but to be existing in The Bahamas as a sustainable population is just highly unlikely, 'cause they would've then appeared in at least some primary sources.

Hema: Let's talk about the timeframe some of these things happened. The Peace of Paris, when was that signed?

Sasha: I think it was signed in 1783, right at the beginning of the year. And then the loyalists in Florida hear about it, and by the end of 1873, some of them are already moving over to The Bahamas. And then this is a very long, protracted period because these people have gathered all their stuff into one place and now they need ships to move them from Florida to another place, and it's a very messy, chaotic situation that leaves a lot of people unhappy on both sides. The loyalists migrating, continually complain, especially when they arrive in The Bahamas, because it is a very underdeveloped place. The capital, which is Nassau, was a town and in 1784, it's described as having only one tolerable road and a few public buildings.So less than I think about five public buildings. 

So for them, some of them coming from the Carolinas and Georgia, where they're in, as we think of the Antebellum South, but that would've been a little bit later period. But thinking about the south and its grandeur and the cities that they would've been encountering to go to, basically what is a backwater, in their minds.

Hema: So I guess then they were the first Europeans, first colonizers to really settle and start to develop the islands?

Sasha: In terms of how we know The Bahamas today? Yes. There had been a British presence since 1648, but the developing it into a beautiful town or a sustainable population, the British weren't as interested in developing The Bahamas, and The Bahamas doesn't become a crown colony until 1718.

It was under the care of the Lord Proprietors, a group of rich English people who have claimed um, The Bahamas, but then also parts of the Carolinas. And it's for them to develop and do whatever they want and they can allow people to settle there and they get paid taxes.

And ultimately they are reporting to the Crown, but it's kind of their land. But they don't really do much with it, to be honest. And that leaves The Bahamas ripe for piracy. And during the golden age of pirates, Nassau in particular, and The Bahamas as a whole, was a very ripe place for pirates to go to and to settle and to hide, just because The Bahamas has a lot of islands, but also it's very shallow water.

So, if you're unfamiliar with the territory, then your ship might get wrecked, grounded all these other things. And so Nassau becomes a pirate hub, and then the Crown leaves their lump…then they rec… they're like, Hey, wait, we can't have all this destruction going on in our claimed territory. And also you're interfering with some of our ships now. So we have to send, they send, um, Woodes Rogers over in 1718 or 1719 to deal with piracy in The Bahamas. 

And so from there they take The Bahamas away from the Lower Proprietors and okay, we'll we'll take it from here. 

Hema: This era of piracy, as I was reading a little bit about their history, they talk about pirates and privateers and a couple of women who were pirates who were disguised as men. And the lore around this makes it seem so, I'm using the word romantic because that is the generalization and feeling that seems to be in the writing. Where were these pirates coming from and, and rum running and all of that. What was that all about?

Sasha: So I think a lot of people romanticize pirates because when they think of pirate ships, they happen to think of like, oh, you know, no matter what colour you could potentially rise to the top. And there was the some kind of kumbaya racial unity slash gender unity going on on these ships.

And a lot of pirates are, I mean obviously there's enslaved people who then become pirates 'cause they get captured by pirates or they run away and they join a pirate ship and things like that. But a lot of pirates are white sailors or sometimes even rich white elite men who are like, I no longer wanna live this life, I'm gonna go be a pirate kind of thing.

A lot of pirates are white people, and some of them are sailors who have been pressed into military duty from the British, from the French, from whatever. So pressed means sometimes these men in England were literally walking the street, they'd get snatched up, taken by the navy, put on a ship to work, and so they don't wanna be there. When they have the chance they might bail. Or if pirates come and attack the ships, then okay, well I'd rather work for you than die. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they were living a good life.

Of course, when you get a lot of gold and a lot of pirate booty you might live it up and drink and do all these other things for a little bit, but a lot of the pirate life was hard. 

So, after a while pirates are seen as a nuisance to privateers to these other people. And privateers are basically a legal form of piracy. Different empires would grant the privateers licenses to basically harass other ships. So the British would give license to privateers to harass the Spanish or harass the French. And it's legal for them.

Pirates and privateers are slightly different 'cause one is legal and one is illegal. And I think a little bit of what makes pirates more interested in The Bahamas during this period is, obviously Jamaica and other places in the Caribbean had pirates as well, but Jamaica in 16, I think 93 or 1692 had a huge earthquake and Port Royal, which was a huge pirate town, basically slipped into the sea during that earthquake, and so that pirate haven was gone. And so the pirates are looking elsewhere. Where else can we go, and Where else is a safe harbor and safe space for us? And so that's when Nassau is kind of seen as that place.

Hema: Rumour is that many treasures were buried in and around The Bahamas, and there may still be treasures. Now, you, you grew up there. Did you guys hear about this? Did you talk about it or is it just stories that non-Bahamian people talk about?

Sasha: You know, I think growing up when people talk about pirates, they usually are talking about the end of the period when Woodes Rogers comes and like he's the motto he sets, which is slipping my mind right now, was our motto all the way up until independence in 1973. So from 1718 to 1973 we had the same motto, which was expel pirates and restore commerce.

And so like we don't even have pirates after 20 years of his, of his governorship, but we still have that motto all the way up until the 20th century. And we do have a pirate museum, which you can walk through in downtown Nassau, and I think that's, in a lot of people's minds, what comes up when they think of pirates.

It highlights the two most famous female pirates, Mary Read and Annie Bonny, and then obviously Black Beard. And it just talks a little bit about their life, but it doesn't really highlight what life in Nassau would've looked like. It's more just oh, we have pirates here, and here's some famous pirates. And so I think that's what's in a lot of people's minds. 

Now, there is a Bahamian historian, Michael Payton. He has been doing a lot of work in, well, I'm not sure if that's how you say his last name, but that's how I said his last name. He is still doing a lot of work in Grand Bahama looking at shipwrecks, and not just pirate shipwrecks, but also like Spanish shipwrecks, and they've recovered a lot of different artifacts off of these shipwrecks around Grand Bahama, which is in the northern most part of The Bahamas. And currently they are trying to fund a project around the age of piracy.

Hema: In the history of The Bahamas when people from different European nations came to the islands or the, the Loyalists from the US, did they ever develop plantation culture, plantation life, as they did in other parts of the Caribbean?

Sasha: Yeah, particularly the loyalists when they came, they got a number of land grants. So then they set about establishing plantations, particularly those who had brought in larger amounts of enslaved people. And for a lot of these plantations when they first come, they try and grow cotton, which doesn't really thrive with the type of soil The Bahamas has. And after a while it gets infected with this thing they call a red bug. And so cotton crops are unable to grow and thrive to sustain the economy. And then that's when they start switching to other things like salt raking, stock raising, and they try and, try and grow some other crops like sisal and things like that. But the amount of growth needed to export stuff, it never gets to that point like it does in Jamaica. And so that's why a lot of historians call The Bahamas a society with plantations and not a plantation society, as in our economy wasn't based around sustaining these plantations. And the plantations did not sustain the economy.

Hema: When the Loyalists fled to The Bahamas, some people were bringing enslaved people with them. Was there any more activity around bringing enslaved people to The Bahamas?

Sasha: Yeah. So there's always been free and enslaved black people in The Bahamas since the Elutherian Adventurers came, because, just to bring it back just a tiny bit, when the Adventurers came, they brought some enslaved people with them, but also Bermuda then started to send their undesirable, quote unquote, people to The Bahamas, which was mostly free blacks, we don't want free black people in Bermuda. And so they like shipped them all to that colony in The Bahamas to try and get rid of them. And then obviously with piracy, there are enslaved and free black people coming into the colony as well.

Michael Crichton and Gail Saunders, two of the foundations of Bahamian literature, they say that the first substantial cargo of enslaved people were brought in in 1721 which then triggers the first real set of slave laws that happened in 1723.

And so from then on, you see enslaved people being brought to The Bahamas, sometimes for sale. But obviously with the loyalists, then that's when there's a huge boom in population. And from then on you can see, especially if you're looking at primary source material in the newspapers, there's always ships being advertised as coming into The Bahamas to sell enslaved people. And one of the British loyalists that came over had a company, they were based in The Bahamas, but also in Florida. And they are a huge company of basically slave sellers.

So, a number of different slave traders are coming and bringing in the ships in. In The Bahamas, it comes down to a few companies that broker not only enslaved people, but obviously they're doing other work as well. Alex Bain and Company, the Leslie Payton Company, and then there's two or three other major companies that are bringing these ships into The Bahamas and brokering most of the sales, most of which happen at New Providence or in Nassau at Vendue House, which is the open air marketplace, and also the open air marketplace, not only for enslaved people, but then also other goods that were being sold during this time.

Hema: It, it really just, as we sit here today in 2025 and think about the history and think about these companies whose sole reason for being was the trading of people.

Sasha: It's honestly, it's it's hard, I think for most people to conceptually imagine that this is what some people made their living in, and what some people made their fortunes off of. I think what a lot of times when we talk about the slave of trade, it's kind of just abstract thinking and less so oh, these were actual people, not only who were being brought over, but also who were running the ships, who were taking the people off the boats who were running the sails.

And when you look at databases like Slave Voyages, which is this huge database that historians have been working on since the 1990s to show the amount of enslaved people being brought over from Africa to the Americas, they have a whole bunch of videos and things on there that is shocking when I show students. It's still hard for them to grasp, but for example, they have a time lapse of when the first recorded slave ship came over, all the way up until almost the end of the 19th century. And seeing all these ships come over you, you start to see it go slow and there starts to speed up and it's just it's crazy to conceptualize 'cause the ships are all dots and these dots are all moving super fast. And each dot is a ship with at least a hundred people on it, probably.

Hema: We did an episode with a couple of the people from the Operational Committee of Slave Voyages to talk about the work and they also mentioned that these maps that you were just referencing is one of the tools that they often use in schools and education, because it gives people that real visual of what was happening.

Sasha: I think most people are visual learners, and so when it comes to seeing maps, or like something that the eye can really see and attach itself to, not just words, but putting the words together with the visuals allows them to get a greater understanding and grasp. Oh, this wasn't just a few ships coming over. This was a huge enterprise that a bunch of people have made money off of. Even up until this day, they're still surviving off of the money they made from these things, and that's also why, to me, I, I get so frustrated sometimes when people say the slave trade didn't happen or that these things were fabricated.

Who is spending their time fabricating these records? And I think that just goes to show the ignorance of people because they don't grasp how many records are actually out there. Nobody's doing this for free to fabricate these handwritten records in various languages from various empires.

Hema: It's funny that you bring that up because when I put out a couple of clips from that episode of the podcast with the Slave Voyages Operational Committee, I had so many comments coming back of people saying slavery didn't exist, nobody can tell us anything about these, these ships, and that all of the black people in the Caribbean are indigenous and they're not people from Africa.

And it boggles my mind when I, when I hear people talk about that, because the records exist, right? And out of the nine collabourating universities who, who contribute to Slave Voyages, are you telling me that all of these academics are just making it up?

Sasha: Yeah. And it honestly blows my mind too. And so I follow Know Your Caribbean on Instagram, and one of the posts that she made within the last two months had to do with slavery and the slave trade. And yes, a number of people under her comments were like, this is not real. This did not exist. And seeing that for me, which I do know one or two people like that in my own life, but seeing people that for me, just in large numbers, I'm like, I just need to sit down and we need to have a serious talk and like you show me the evidence for why you think it's not real and I will show you the evidence for why it is real. And we could have a real discussion.

Because a lot of these people, when they're saying these things, they're just pulling sources off the internet that don't make sense. I could pull you physical sources that exist and have existed for 2, 3, 400 years to show you why it does exist and it is real.

Hema: It, boggles my mind. And, and I try not to engage too much with people like that because, I'm not gonna get into an argument with somebody who's not interested in having a real conversation.

Sasha: Yeah. And I mean a lot of that also has to do with internalized anti-blackness and all of the things and wanting to say that they belong somewhere and that they were the original people. And I just want people to realize that it's okay to recognize that you come from people who were forcibly brought over to a place and enslaved, because your ancestors survived. Your ancestral line survived to have you. And that takes a lot of strength in and of itself. 

So I think a lot of people feel shame or some type of, um., some type of shame around wanting to claim being African descent and there's not literally nothing wrong with being of African descent in the Americas, so there's a lot, a lot to unpack there, which we can't get into.

Hema: I know there really is a lot to unpack and human beings are, are complex and why they believe things that they wanna believe, but, through this podcast, I'm hoping that what, what we highlight is as we look at the history of what what happened to our people, who made it to the Caribbean in various ways.

There was strife and there was violence, and there was terrifying situations, and there was forced movement, and there was voluntary movement. But out of it came our beautiful culture.

And every, every Caribbean country has a slightly different culture, but we've, we've built something that 

Sasha: Yeah

Hema: out of strife came what I think is, is a wonderful region of the world.

Sasha: It's interesting because a lot of people will take pride in Bahamian culture and what we do. And for example, Junkanoo, but that's a big part of Bahamian culture in particular, and that's something that also the government's really pushing right now. But people take pride in that and then don't stop to think about how Junkanoo has African roots from various African ethnicities that now have amalgamated together in The Bahamas to create our modern Junkanoo.

Hema: The history of things like Junkanoo or the history of things like Carnival has very strong African roots and, and historical roots that a lot of people don't know or understand.

Sasha: Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Hema:  I wanna get back to history for a second because we haven't even gotten to the part of history of emancipation, because it was the British who abolished slavery.

Sasha: Mm-hmm.

Hema: Tell me what happened during that timeframe when they abolished slavery before emancipation, that that ended up bringing a lot more enslaved people to Bahamas.

Sasha: Yeah, so the British abolished the, the slave trade in 1807, and then so that triggers what we know or call liberated Africans to start coming into different places, especially in The Bahamas as one of them. So when the British Naval people would see other slave ships, like Spanish or Portuguese in their waters, they would snatch them, free the people and then put them in these colonies.

And so about from 1811 up until, I can't remember if it's the 1860s or the 1880s, a number of liberated Africans are coming into The Bahamas and being settled in largely New Providence, but also in other places, in on other islands in The Bahamas when creating these liberated African colonies.

But when they're brought into a the Bahamas, they're not just left to their own devices and to be free. A lot of them are put into apprenticeships so that they can quote unquote transition into being freed people. And so they're put into apprenticeships and then forced to do labour basically.

And that also happens with emancipation in the British Caribbean as well. When the end of slavery has happening in the British Caribbean in 1833, it's ruled and then it's officially done in 1834. All enslaved people um, are put into, are supposed to be put into it for six years but it ends up just being four years. 

So for this four year period, everyone who's over the age of six at 1834 is then put to work and still put, to basically do what they were doing before just under the guise of an apprenticeship.

So for four years these people are doing the same thing, and this is to help them supposedly transition to being free and to being able to manage their own money and manage their own lives and do whatever else. And so in 1838, these people are then freed from their apprenticeship contracts and supposedly left to do whatever to their own devices, but most of them still end up working the same things they were doing before, just under the guise of freedom. 

And so in The Bahamas there comes a few different, similar to I think when a lot of people think of in US history labour tenancy and like, um, sharecropping. That's exactly what happens in The Bahamas as well. Sharecropping, labour tenancy, and we have this thing called the truck system. And basically those are all different forms of either I'm labouring and I get to stay on the land and keep a portion of the crops, or I'm labouring and a portion of the crops is I will sell a portion of the crops and get to keep some of that money. And then the rest of the crops goes to you. So some form of I work and keep a little bit and you, then you get the rest.

Hema: There came a time where there was a fight for independence from the Crown.

Sasha: Mm-hmm. 

Hema: What happened during that time, and when did independence happen?

Sasha: So The Bahamas is one of the later British colonies to become independent. We get our independence in 1973 under a black majority government. But some people will usually date our, which some people won't, but I'mma date it to 1842, as kind of the start of a political awakening. And 1842 is a special year because that is when the Burma Road Riot happens. Sorry, 1942.

And the Burma Road Riot is a uprising of workers. 1942 is when World War II was happening and the Americans and British together are like, let's build a air base in The Bahamas.

And so this American company comes over to build the air base. They bring in some American workers, but they hire a lot of Bahamian workers to help stimulate the economy, but they don't pay the Bahamian workers as much as the American workers, partly because the British government officials don't want the Bahamians to get paid as much.

They're like, then they'll be unhappy after this construction is over and we'll have to raise wages, and we don't really wanna do that. So when these workers find out that they're not being paid as much and that they're also not receiving as many benefits as these white American workers, they first peacefully come we want this.

And then it spirals into like, a, a larger thing that then other people who weren't working on that contract also joined into uprise as most uprisings do. They spiral. And so the city of Nassau, some of the stores and other things are storefronts are destroyed.

But that's like, in most people's minds in forms of labour, when people are realizing, oh, we really need to stand up for ourselves and we really need to come together against the supposed force. So for a lot of people, and for me in particular as well, I kind of date that as when people are starting to, when black Bahamians in particular, are starting to think about agitating more for their rights and freedoms, then of course we have a few other dates.

So there's this general strike in 1958, and this is occurring because tourism is already popping off in The Bahamas at this point, and we have a number of people who drive taxis and buses. And the hotels that we did have in The Bahamas, at that point, wanted to hire their own workers and own staff and cut out these Bahamian middlemen, these Bahamian taxi workers.

So these taxis and these buses block the road to the airport for about two, three days in protest to this, cutting out. The government bends to their will and allows them to go back to doing what they were doing. 

These two labour instances show that people's minds are starting to move towards agitating more for their rights and what they're trying to do.

Also in the 1950s you see the formation of the Progressive Liberal Party, which will eventually become what most people know in today's minds a party that is for the people and ends up being a majority black party. In the 1950s all these political thoughts are going on in the colony with you, as you can see with the formation of an official political party, 'cause at this point, The Bahamas is being ruled by a white oligarchy. So white Bahamians who have money and control and power.

And so with the formation of the PLP, then this white oligarchy known as the Bay Street Boys was like, we should form a political party too. And they formed the Free National Movement. And so then we have two political parties that are vying for power. 

Going into the 1960s women still don't have the right to vote, in The Bahamas, there's not universal suffrage, and women in the 1950s as well as are agitating our parliament for the right to vote, they're consistently sending petitions to our parliament, but the white oligarchy is slightly afraid that if they give women the right to vote, that then the PLP will start to win seats in the house of assembly, and then they'll slowly come into power.

So women gain the right to vote in 1962, and then the election of 1962 is held. The PLP does not win that election, and they do not gain as much seats as they thought they would've. The FNM are…they win that election.

And then also in the 1960s The Bahamas gained internal self rule, Great Britain is dealing with us as externally to other countries or other colonies, but we're allowed to deal with what, what's going on inside the colony.

And so that is also the first spark for us to move to independence. And I'm not sure if the, the white oligarchy who were ruling the country at the time realized that that would be the first step to independence for us as a country, but that it was under their government that that first step happened.

Then in 1968 we get majority rule, we have another election and majority rule is a holiday that we celebrate in The Bahamas. And basically it just means that the majority of people in Parliament were black people. And so we get a PLP government and the PLP is a majority black party.

And under a PLP government, they start agitating for independence. They keep saying, okay, we're gonna become independent. This is what we're gonna try and do. And there's some pushback.

In fact, one of the islands in The Bahamas tries to petition to stay with Great Britain and leave The Bahamas. And they actually are sending these petitions to the British Parliament. And British Parliament is like, we're not gonna hear these petitions because this isn't coming from your government and we're not gonna listen to outside dissenting factions. If your government wants to get rid of you, then maybe.

And I will say that's partly because the racial demographics of, of different islands within The Bahamas are slightly different. Some islands tend to be more white or have more white slash mixed populations, while some islands are more black slash black slash mixed populations.

That island in particular had a strong white heritage and a strong white lineage that dates back to the British loyalists. And they have, even up until this day, if you go and visit that island, which is Abaco, if you go there, they have their own museums and a lot of them can trace their lineage back to like a few British loyalists, and they're very proud of their British heritage, which I don't think that there's anything wrong with in particular. But I will also say that part of the reason they didn't want independence, independence is they were afraid of what a black majority government would do to them as white people. So there's a little bit of racial biases going on there.

But the election, there's an election in 1972, and with that election, they, the PLP government says, okay, well, if you vote us back in, then we're gonna go forward with independence. And basically a vote for the PLP is a vote for independence, and a vote for the FNM is a vote to stay a British colony. The PLP wins again, and then we move forward to independence in 1973.

It's a lot that happens in a 20 year period and it's so fascinating to talk about. 

The period I study, for my work is more in the 17th and 18th century, but focusing on the 20th century is so interesting to me, but it's also a little messy because some of these people are still alive and well and you know, in a small country there's so much you could say without, offending somebody.

Hema: The, the culture now, the population makeup in The Bahamas now, you mentioned that the different islands may have a little bit of a different population.

Sasha: Yeah, if you're a Bahamian then you know slash will joke which islands are whiter than others. So for example, like Abaco is known as a white island, of course all island have black people on them for the most part, but you, the Abaco just happens to have a higher percentage of white Bahamians or white people that live on those islands.

Whereas places like Long Island for example is joked as being a very mixed island. So you might have a lot of people who are white presenting, but usually have mixed blood in them.

There are places that are, or have been sundown islands, like sundown towns. I'm not exactly sure how accurate that is in this modern day, but definitely in the 20th century. For example, one of the islands, Spanish Wells, which is, um, right off the, it's very close to Eleuthra, and that is, or was a sundown town, sundown island, basically sundown town. So black Bahamians could go and work for the people who live there. But then when the sun was going down, they had to get on the ferry and go back to Eluthera, the main island. So I'm not exactly sure if it's like that in today's Bahamas, but it was like that probably 50, 60 years ago.

So keeping that in mind when you go to different places is, I think, important still because I think a lot of people believe that we as a country have such good racial unity.

The majority of the population is black or people of colour. Uh, but there's still biases that the majority of the population had to overcome. And that also plays obviously into cultural and social tensions here and there. Um, Bahamas has a lot of issues due to colonialism and racism.

It's just recently that one school on Grand Bahama finally allowed their students to have, you could have your hair in braids for the boys, you could have your hair and braids or something, if it's neat and orderly instead of having a little school boy cut. So we're kind of starting to move in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.

Hema: You know, when people comment and say things to me about this podcast about, oh, those things happened so far in history and make disparaging comments, they don't realize what you've just said is the effects still remain today.

Sasha: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hema: Some of the people still remain, and some of those attitudes still remain because it really wasn't that long ago.

Sasha: Mm-hmm. I was in a class about two weeks ago, it was an American history class, but one of my classmates, he is a high school teacher, so he was explaining how he talks to his students about African-American oppression. And he was saying he uses numbers. 

So for the US the first substantial amount of slaves that were brought in was in 1619. And the US doesn't abolish slavery until, um, until the 1860s. So he uses that as a number and he says that's 200 years of whatever. And also 1619 is also when the US is first starting, people come over, establish themselves. So he uses that as the base for when the US is starting.

So you have that the beginning of the US is, is rooted in oppression all the way up until the 1880s. Then he goes to segregation, which is up until the 1960s. So he uses that to say about 80% of US history is, African Americans are being oppressed.

So for people to ask and say why are black people in the US so upset? Why are black people in the US so angry that happened so long ago? You don't just get rid of 80% of your history. People who were alive and well in those periods are still here.

My grandpa who, so my mom is a white American. My grandpa was born in the 1940s. He lived as a white man through segregated America. He lived in the northern part of the US but still wondering about these attitudes and things that he saw other people present that he might've presented to people of colour in the US. My grandpa's only 78 and he was a teenager in, um, segregated Amer… up until America ended segregation.

And so you're still interacting with people who were oppressed slash oppressing. And it's the same in The Bahamas. It's the same in the Caribbean as well. 

We might not have had laws that racially segregated us, but in The Bahamas we did. I   t's just not as talked about because why are we trying to stir up the pot? Why are we trying to do these things?

My, on my dad's side, and he's a black Bahamian, I was interviewing one of my grandma's brothers 'cause my grandma's the youngest of 12 kids, and so two of her older brothers are in their 90s and 80s. And so I was talking with them about what it was like when they were living in Nassau, because they're from one of the family islands, and then they later moved to New Providence as a lot of people did in the 20th century. They kind of migrated to the urban centre. And he was talking about how you couldn't walk down Bay Street, which is the main road in the city, after a certain period you couldn't go in the Savoy Theater.

People talk about how in The Bahamas there was a, a wall that they actually broke down that segregated parts of the eastern Bahamas from black people, that black people had to either go around the wall or some people climbed over the wall to get to work in the city.

You can still see parts of the wall when you drive along places in eastern New Providence, but the only reason they got rid of the wall is because a pregnant black woman climbed over the wall, fell off the wall and lost her baby. And then they're like, ah, okay, I guess we'll get rid of the wall. And that was in the 1940s and 50s.

So of course our grandparents are gonna have memories of this is just, they don't wanna talk about it as much. And obviously people have their own reasons for why they wanna talk and don't want to address certain things. But to say that it happened so long ago and we are still quite clearly feeling the effects of it right now.

Hema: There's, there's so much to talk about and unpack and, and people sometimes don't wanna hear it, but generational trauma is real, and it has its effects years and years later. Even if you didn't, you individually didn't experience something, all of those fears and cautions were passed down, right? Because your elders are going to pass things down, even though they're not gonna tell you what they're afraid of. It's just, they're gonna tell you some parts of it.

It is a long, fraught history that continues to have its effects and many people deny that. 

Sasha: Mm-hmm.

Hema: But, we can only do what we can do in, hopefully, the work that you're doing, hopefully through this podcast and some other guests, is bring light to some of these historical moments and why people are feeling the way they're feeling, to help others understand. Some people will listen, some people won't, and, and you can't force them if they're not interested.

Sasha: Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And I think for me, also, education and educating people is important. So that's why I've started to move more into doing a lot of history content just to show people, or particularly Bahamians in general, 'cause that is my main focus, is to show Bahamians their own history and how that has kind of influenced the way that we are living in The Bahamas right now, and that influences our culture, our society, our thinking. And for me it's important to not only use history to educate, but then also to then empower these people once you have this information to go forth and use it.

Hema: Education and knowledge is so important. And this is why one of the reasons I started this podcast was to share the education and the history. There are so many people who are from the Caribbean or have, um, family from there and, and live abroad who don't know and understand why things are the way they are.

And there’s people outside who just go to different places in the Caribbean for a vacation who also don't understand. And hopefully, we are reaching people sharing some knowledge and information that they find useful.

Sasha: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it also, even people who are a part of the diaspora, it's sometimes there's a difference between, I think, living in a place and visiting a place every so often. So I think it's hard for some people to fully grasp the, how deep some of these roots are within society, and might not realize some of the things that, like why people act the way they act.

For example, it's really hard to do more modern history in The Bahamas because some of these people are still alive. And so, and you might offend somebody and then in turn they're gonna blacklist you from something and then all of a sudden you can't do X, Y, Z no more. That's why a lot of people I think, tend to focus on colonial history.

That's not the reason I focused on colonial history, but that's just one of the issues that comes into play when you do these things. And then I think also coming to a new culture and a new society and being unfamiliar with it, even though, for example, you might have the same skin tone, I found that to be an issue as well.

Um, 'cause I've gone to the states for all of my higher ed degrees, so from my undergraduate degree now to my PhD. And I used to be a student athlete when I first came over for my undergrad and then the first year of my Masters.

And so a lot of people in track and field, which was the sport that I did, are black or people of colour. And so I was dealing with a lot of African American people, but they thought that I thought like them and that we had the same experiences. And we had to, like, some of my close friends were African American. We, after a while after conversations and talking and realizing different things, I realized okay, I, I actually understand more why African Americans act the way they do living in the US. And then I think it allowed them to understand more that not everyone has the same black experiences that they do.

Hema: It's, there's, there's so much to talk about, and you are doing so much work and you've put out so much work. I found you through social media and through some of your videos, I think it was on TikTok, and I'm gonna leave links to your social media down below, but there is more work that you've put out that you are sharing with the world that we sort of talked about very briefly before I hit record. Let's talk about what you are doing and where people can find some of the, the work that you're putting out.

Sasha: Yeah. So besides my social medias, which I know you're gonna link down below, but I also just state here. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, at BahaReads, and it sound, and it's spelled exactly how it sound, B A H A reads. Those were primarily book pages. Of course they still are book pages, but now I also do a lot of history content on there as well.

In my more academic life, I've had an op-ed published in, um, Made by History section of Time Magazine in last December, and that had to do with the history of Junkanoo. Junkanoo in The Bahamas is celebrated particularly on Boxing Day, which is the day after Christmas and then New Year's Day. And so it came out around that time, and you can access that if you type in Junkanoo Made by History, Sasha Wells, it should pop up.

And then I know you mentioned GitHub. So if you found my GitHub thing, which is it is a open access primary source database set that I am currently working on that will have all the runaway advertisements in The Bahamas in one place for people to sort through.

What you saw was a prototype that I had made. I, talking with the creator of that particular format, which is called facets, he is actually upgrading to add more things to it. So I'm kind of waiting till he's done with that, which he's supposed to finish um, sometime next year. And then I will probably switch all my stuff over to his new updated version and then continue to put more things into that.

If you're in academia, I am studying for my comprehensive exams right now, which is taking me from being a PhD student to a PhD candidate.

But for personal things, I also am currently working on a oral history project related to Bahamian independence for people who lived through Bahamian independence. So I wanna see their pre and post independent thoughts, now that The Bahamas has been a country, a nation for over 50 years and see more of what the everyday Bahamian was thinking and less what the great men were thinking in The Bahamas, which that's what tends to be what's in the current narratives of when we look at Bahamain independence.

So I wanna see if everyday people were actually thinking about independence, if they had any particularly strong feelings towards it. 

And then also I am currently working on an article related to, which then I would like to turn into something that's more digestible for the general public, related to the removal of a Christopher Columbus statue in front of Government House in The Bahamas. And then the history of that statue in relation to the British governor who brought that statue in. So it's a public history article that I'm currently working on.

Hema: So, so much information and so many things that you're putting out there, and I love that a lot of your work is digestible for the everyday person, because that's how, how we're going to be able to get the knowledge across, get the history across, and then continue to preserve. Because, some of these people that you're talking about who live, have these lived experiences. are not going to be with us for very much longer. So

Sasha: Yeah.

Hema: getting their stories, saving their stories, and preserving them, to me, is so important. And I love of the work that you're doing. I'll share everything that I can in the show notes, and then I encourage people to follow you on social media because then they can keep up with all of the information that you're putting out and all of the projects that you're working on.

Sasha: Yes, thank you. That is particularly in the oral history thing, that is what's driving me. My granddaddy passed away a few years ago and he was a everyday person, but he was very much into political life and I, unfortunately, I wasn't really able to ever touch on those subjects with him. So preserving other people's history and just through that, the general history of The Bahamas is extremely important to me.

Hema: Sasha, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your wealth of knowledge. I look forward to seeing what else you work on in the future.

Sasha: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This has been very fun for me.

[music] Thanks for joining me for today’s episode. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast. It really does help getting the podcast and our Caribbean stories in front of more people. See you for the next episode.