Ancestral Voices

Afraid of My Voice

October 17, 2025
Founder’s Reflection #1

Dedicated to all who have ever been silenced, yet still believe in truth, dignity, and renewal — may you find your voice, your peace, and let your light shine.

For many years, I carried a truth in my heart and was afraid to speak it.
Not because I doubted its validity, but because I understood the cost of speaking openly about slavery, race, and identity in Barbados.

From an early age, I learned that these were subjects best left untouched. Those who raised questions about the legacies of slavery or the inequalities shaping our lives soon learned that these were not conversations to be had — not if you wanted to remain acceptable, employable, or undisturbed. You could be labelled divisive, even accused of racism yourself, simply for naming Black history or calling for moral and economic justice.

I name this carefully, not to catalogue grievances, but to describe the climate in which silence was learned and sustained.

To speak too plainly was to risk being branded a troublemaker, or worse, to be quietly sidelined. The ruling class — the old plantocracy and their descendants — preferred silence, and much of the political class followed that lead. The message was rarely spoken outright, but it was widely understood: that was a long time ago; let it rest; move on.

Quiet was offered as harmony — a reassurance that if we kept still, everything would remain orderly, manageable, and acceptable.
Silence was presented as peace.
In truth, it was paralysis.

Look at the violence among our young Black men — sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys now being accused of robbery and murder. This did not come from nowhere. It is a direct byproduct of our silence, our refusal to confront the legacies of plantation slavery, and our failure to build any structured programme for national healing.

Our young men are not bad. They hurt. They are broken. They are bleeding. This is the chickens coming home to roost. And if we do not act with honesty and courage, the haemorrhage will continue.

Yet even in that paralysis, many of us in the arts — in dance, drama, music, and folk performance — kept the culture alive through rhythm, movement, and story. Long before there was language for trauma or public space for reckoning, culture carried what could not be spoken. It preserved memory where institutions failed, and dignity where history had been denied.

Yet there was no sustained or organized effort to address the psychological wounds of plantation slavery, nor to confront the systems that allowed those wounds to persist. Calls to teach African history in our schools surfaced from time to time, but they were routinely deferred, diluted, or dismissed. The story of our ancestors was treated as optional — as though it were an elective, and not the foundation of who we are.

That silence shaped me. Over time, it taught me to question the worth of my own voice — especially because I was not a doctor, a lawyer, or an academic. In our society, authority is often conferred by titles and credentials, while artists are expected to justify their presence, their insight, and even their right to speak. Unless they achieve international recognition, they are frequently dismissed as dreamers — visible, perhaps, but not substantive.

I absorbed that message quietly. It made me hesitate, second-guess, and measure my words against standards shaped by someone else’s idea of who I was meant to be.

Rihanna’s success is often held up as proof of what is possible — and rightly so. She has brought pride and visibility to Barbados on a global stage. But not every path is paved with international access, corporate backing, or global platforms. For many of us, the struggle has never been for fame, but for legitimacy — for the simple right to speak, to be heard, and to be taken seriously in our own country.

That is why Ancestral Voices exists. Not as a campaign or a slogan, but as a commitment — to reclaim memory, to affirm dignity, and to create space for truths that were long discouraged or denied. It is my refusal to continue mistaking silence for stability, or quiet for consent. It is the moment I chose to stop measuring my voice against systems that never intended to hear it.

When I say we must let go, I am not speaking of forgetting. I am speaking of release. Letting go is not dismissal; it is liberation. It is the choice to face our history honestly, to grieve what was lost, and then to refuse to let unhealed pain govern our future.

I may not carry a title, but I carry a voice — one shaped by history, silence, and resilience. And that voice now speaks not in anger, but in conviction. It says that we can remember without remaining bound, acknowledge without being consumed, and move forward without erasing who we are.

We must come together. We must let go. We must heal. And from that healing, we must rebuild.

This is not the end of silence — it is the beginning of voice.

— Douglas Newton