Peggy King Jorde, Consulting Producer, A Story of Bones
Dr. Deborah Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
A film screening presented by the Center for Experimental Ethnography. In-person attendance at the Penn Museum, advance registration required. Screening followed by discussion and kumina performance.
Abstract
“A Story of Bones, featured at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and PBS TV’s POV, documents the reburial of approximately 9,000 formerly enslaved persons on St. Helena, a British Overseas Territory about 1,000 miles off the coast of South Africa. The film features the efforts by Annina van Neel (Chief Environmental Officer for St. Helena’s airport project) and African American preservationist Peggy King Jorde, along with community members, to fight for the memorialization and protection of the burial site, unearthing a lesser-known story about the United Kingdom’s colonial empire.
A moderated discussion with the film’s consulting producer Peggy King Jorde follows the screening. Dr. Deborah Thomas will also briefly discuss the connections between St. Helena and St. Thomas, Jamaica. The ritual practice of kumina emerged in the parish of St. Thomas, Jamaica, when indentured laborers were brought from the Kongo region of Central Africa after the abolition of slavery in 1838. For practitioners, kumina is born in you; it is an inheritance, and it defines a lineage. Within a kumina ceremony, the counterclockwise dancing, driven by the drums and marked by the singing, is meant to invite myal, a complex of being and knowing that heralds the return of ancestors and a surrender to spirit.
The evening will conclude with a kumina performance by the St. Thomas Kumina Collective, a living, breathing testament to the resilience and vibrancy of Jamaican culture.”