 I'm Marcia Joiner, and we are going on a journey today. So, hush child, Aunt Young Chanton, my mother told me years ago that my grandfather was Igbo, and there's a place in the Gullah Islands that is called Igbo Landing, and the reason it is Igbo Landing is hush, hush child, listen. When the slave ship came into the sea islands and the slaves understood what was happening, they would chain together and they walked down the gang plane and turned back to the ocean, and one after one after one of the chains went back to the ocean. They would rather bring a plan to go back to the motherland. So, their bodies left, but their souls stayed, and so she said on any given night, if you're real quiet, hush, hush, you can hear them chant. So, today we are going to visit the Gullah Islands, the Gullah Dichy Islands, and it chained the island along the Atlantic coast. From south of Cape Hatteras, for a thousand miles along the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, the Atlantic Ocean moves quietly along the stream of more than a thousand low flat islands, twisting up tidal creek in the Martian farmland and green swamps, forests of angel oaks draped with Spanish moss, and rivers of gray and black and brownish board. The sea islands, as they are named, have been home for more than 500 years of Indigenous Native Americans and blacks imported from Africa. Both groups of people became slaves to toil the land, while the white planters, plantation owners, many of the planters, were slaves moved through these islands from the Bahamas where slavery was abolished in the West Indies. So, today we are going to take a look at these communities and what makes them unique and above all the people here in Hawaii, you want to see their struggle to save their land, their language, their culture just as the Hawaiians are trying to save theirs. So, let's venture on into the Gullah Dichy Islands. We need the land in order to hold on to who we are, the pride, the culture, the history, everything goes together. We must keep people away whose interest is not the survival of the culture, but whose interest is purely financial. The Will to Survive, the story of the Gullah Dichy Nation, is the story of the survival and struggle of a little-known piece of American history. But who are the Gullah and Dichy people? Where do they come from? And why is so little known about them? Join me as we go inside the society that has survived in almost total obscurity for more than 300 years. From the Gullahs of the Carolinas to the Georgia and Florida Dichies, we'll explore the history, the present, and the fight for the future for what has been called the most authentically African community in the United States. This African-American woman was born and raised in South Carolina, yet she's speaking in her native tongue. The language is called Gullah, or Gichy, and it is the language and the lifestyle of more than 500,000 African Americans living along the southeastern seaboard of the United States. We've got taken from West Africa because of our skills in growing rice. Many people desired rice growers, and so Gullah people came as a result of their skills in growing rice. Emery Campbell was born on Hilton Head Island, where he still lives today. Gullah, which we spelled today G-U-L-L-A-H, was actually from the Gullah people, G-O-L-A, which came from the rice coastal, Wynwood Coast region of West Africa, as we once called it, Alkebula. And they were some of the rice cultivators that were brought in, the harvest Carolina gold rice. Marquetta Goodwine, born on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, founded the Gullah-Gichi Sea Island Coalition in 1996. In July of 2000, she was elected chiefess of the Gullah-Gichi Nation by Council of Elders, and in the African tradition assumed the name Queen Quet. And then you had from the same region the Gidzee people, G-I-D-Z-I, which Gichi, which we spelled now G-E-E-C-H-E-E, came out of. Along with their knowledge of agriculture, the Africans also brought a unique sense of architecture. Tabby itself is a unique architectural unit to use to build any kind of structure because it's made of oyster shells, lime and sand and water. Saplux in Helena Island and Hilton Head, we consider them Ellis Island because that's where freedom first came. That's where folks had the first opportunity to buy land and live on their own land. That's where people became educated for the first time, had their own schools and reinforcing their own education from Africa as well as learning new things about a new life. During the Civil War, many Gullah-Gichi's bought land. It wasn't all just given to us, and almost everybody I speak to, I can ask them if they ever heard of 40 acres in a mule. And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, well, what is it? And you get all kinds of answers. But normally I don't get the answer. Special feel order number 15. And special feel order number 15 was issued during the Civil War by a general named William Tecumseh Sherman. And a lot of people know about Sherman's march that came through the South and burnt down everything, but they didn't know about him actually looking around him and going, well, wait a minute, there are thousands and tens of thousands of, as they called us, Negroes at that time here that were in ragged clothing that were on all of these plantations because everything from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida and 30 to 35 miles inland that people called the Gullah-Gichi Nation was all plantations. But now we were the only ones on those plantations. So it was like, well, what are we going to do with all of these folks? And so he felt like if all of it from Charleston and all the abandoned rights fields southward to Ferdinand, which is down in Florida, the southernmost tip of the Gullah-Gichi Nation, if they could split up the land in 40-acre parcels and issue it to each one of us, then each family would have a place to remain on themselves. Well, that feel order got rescinded. And when that happened, there was a lot of turmoil. Those who had the feel order issued and land issued and granted, they were fought to get the land back, ran off in some places. But fortunately, many of our ancestors had their mother with so they didn't go for somebody giving them something. They went to auctions and they bid on their land and they took ownership of the land. So see when people come here now to this land that we call the Gullah-Gichi Nation, a lot of times they don't ask us what we're doing, how we do it, why we do what we're doing or anything like that. And so they don't have an understanding of what this land really means to us and that it's not just about walking around with the sweetgrass basket on your head. It's not just about seeing someone still picking cotton or having their hands blue with indigo, but it's about what is still existing here now. And for us, land is our family and the waterways are a bloodline. And so a lot of times people will come in and want to buy it from us and they don't understand. That's like asking us to resell our entire family on an auction block all over again. In an effort to communicate with each other, the enslaved people combined the many dialects and customs of their African roots with those of their American captors. What resulted was a hybrid language and culture which proved to be not only an exclusionary means of communication, but also a critical key to their very survival. We're geetches. We're saltwater geetches. Cornelia Bailey, author of the autobiographical book, God, Dr. Buzzard and the Bolido Man, is a lifelong resident of Sappalo Island, Georgia. And we were those fast-talking geetches and people from the mainland said these new-talking saltwater geetches, we can understand a thing the same because it's speaking too fast. From island to island with the Gullah language, you will find variations of that language, just like any other language in the world. And geetchi is just one of the dialects that grew out of the Gullah language or as linguists would call it, it is a pigeon or a bridge language because what it does is it still has our same structure, but it has more loan words from English in it than Gullah does. You know the origin of the word geetchi was not necessarily a proud connection because it turned into something that became a put-down. Ron Johnson is president of Psycars, Sappalo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society Incorporated, which sponsors Cultural Day, held annually on Sappalo Island, Georgia. The slaves that were settled here on these islands had constantly connected with their culture and they kept their language and they spoke broken English and the English didn't develop as fast. When the slave masters would bring slaves with him from the interior, say from Atlanta or someplace, to buy slaves or to visit the plantations down here and the slaves would interact. Well you had one slave that was speaking formal English and another slave was still speaking a real broken language which became geetchi. Now the guy that spoke formal English would go back to Atlanta and say man you should hear those geetchi speaking down there. We listened for the speech, we listened for the words, we listened for huna which means you, we listened for da which is the verb form to be and however that's connected. We listened for some cultural expression like you know it teed the diggy grave meaning you're eating too much. We listened for the missing t-h's and the words that they when they pronounced teeth or teeth. So if I was saying look you're well out of the grind right now look at you huna better come you know who I juxt you okay that would be completely in Gullah. Now if I changed over and I said well we are a grind boy you need for come you know you even want me for juxt you any okay then that's more geetchi because I'm trying to now convey to this person who didn't get it the first time what I actually had to say. We've got terms that I use almost regularly. Juke is a Gullah word meaning disorderly and that that word is now used to describe a place where we go and dance we call it a juke joint but juke box came out of that that same word. We had a word tote often tote we have tote bags you know that you find you buy you buy and you it's very expensive but it's carry it's to carry you tote it on your head and Africans tote things on their head. When African Americans visit the islands they they're first of all struck by the speech and the accents and we always have to explain that the accent is nothing more than African accent. They sometimes want to relate it to West Indies to the West Indies accent and I we usually have to convince them that no some of us came straight here from Africa but even settlers of the West Indies also can relate their language and their accent to West Africa and so the G whiz always come from you know wow you talk funny you sound like an African and we usually respond and say we are. When people come from other parts of the country that doesn't have that that connection to the culture as strong as we are that is it may be different but we all are branches from the same culture. We have our own language we have our own heritage we have our own culture that the rest of what people call African American that's just a big umbrella over a multiplicity of cultures that are in North America particularly in the United States but we're not monolithic as people of African descent many of the people who are considered African American today can trace their roots back to the Galician nation but they no longer hold the legacy because they don't have the language they don't have the African traditions they don't know how to work the land or live out of the waterways and and that's the lesson that people can learn once they before they go to Africa they need to visit these islands and hear the accents and get used to the rice dishes too because there are some rice dishes that are used sometimes now in mainstream America that African Americans don't know where they came from and why they like rice why they like sweet potatoes so why they even like watermelon although some of us have denied that we do those can be traced back to West Africa the foodways growing up on these islands in isolation of other cultures and and other people and still in us a sense that we know who we are and we never had to compete with others to to give us value and so our values came straight from our ancestry as recently as the 1960s the Gala and the Giji people practiced their religion in the tradition of their ancestors we traditionally seek and we seek through through the woods we seek god by going into the woods three times a day morning we call it four day which means before daybreak uh midday and evening and you meditate alone and in the thickest woods you can find faring nothing no snakes you know fair snakes or mosquitoes or anything because we found out later that that's what West Africans did and West Africans went into the woods because they said that's where God is and some and some plantations Christianity was imposed and some plantations we found out that some people resisted Christianity what a journey we are delighted and excited that Queen Quinn was not able to join us live so we are going to go back to the video and visit some more of the Gala items here most of us still have our deeds and today we have to fight issues in court under situations that we call heirs property because we've got to pay for what they show who we've been and so we are still the heirs to this land and this is our legacy this is our family their blood their bones their sweat the placenta even from the babies that were birthed here it's in this soil and so for someone that just want to buy it or tell us well you could live somewhere else but you're right we could live somewhere else but what quality of life would we have you take away the land you take away the culture you take away the history and it's not going to work so hence goes everything so we need the land in order to hold on to who we are the pride the culture the history of everything goes together land values going up and people are using it now as a commodity because cash is needed and we have less time now with with our family because everybody is out trying to get enough cash to get the things we want instead of what we need we must have control of what occur in the community several efforts to preserve the gala gucci culture are being made both individually this is a tradition that came from africa because they used to make these basket much bigger basket for working in the fields and taking stuff to the market when my son was in high school and my daughter both was in high school and they like to go buy those seventy eighty dollar pair shoes make a basket to buy your shoes and and also i want them to learn how to do this also and collectively organizations like psycars on sappolo island and the south carolina coastal community development corporation on saint helenna island are just two such organizations well i think part of what we do is we look at the culture of food in the community we look at how we can come together as a community and help more people create businesses around food and come up with a central label that will represent the gala gucci nation and use that as a marketing niche we practice working with the baskets we still cast nets we still build boats and the things that the early slaves brought to this country the same traditions and things we did for survival then we still practice those things as part of a way of life take everything old and make it new again my thing is you have to go back in order to go forward so we have to take all the resources from our generations back and then bring it forward and make it an economic base so what we need to do is take everything that we learn syrup making dried fish cast making cast net by hand making row boats making toys for our children the way we cook those are the things that we introduce to the outside world and make a living from it and so we're still holding on to your integrity your pride your history your culture and you're making some money and you can stay there's still some semblance of that value here in these islands because people still have that kinship and they have the respect of the elders and as long as the elders can continuously gain that respect and maintain that respect we'll probably we probably have the semblance of survival still the fate of the gala guichi nation is still unknown but what is known is that the history and contributions of this culture provide a living link to the past day would have come and we would have worn all of this shop but we would have lived together once again he hadn't been going to be no more madaba daddy or nothing but come on nothing like that because this you know i'm gonna ask god let me live 100 years a friend said you are 100 she said yes so she went to bed that night she got respite she got home we have people that live other places and they can't wait to come back home as soon as they come back home for instance they take off the shoes they want to go climbing they want to go fishing they want some peas and rice they want some smoke mullet so even though they're in the city as soon as they come back it reverts and we don't want to lose that and they know that they come back there's land for them to put their feet on that belongs to them i think there are lessons here there are lessons where people value family and kinship as well as caring about one another and and and that was necessary because of the fact that we were isolated and we had to rely on what we knew uh traditional traditions from west africa customs from west africa even food ways and and we we passed that along and we shared that with uh with whomever needed it and so we met the needs together uh that's one lesson secondly the lesson of economic development maintain land ownership uh produce their own foods produced all of the things that they needed for life how we use it to uh together in terms of a cooperative cooperatively together and nobody owned the land people shared land and uh the new economy has caused us to change that but uh most of the time land was used as people needed it i think the other lesson is is education how we learn and who we learn from uh everybody who can teach taught and everybody try to learn what they needed to learn in order to to make progress to lose this culture would be to lose a piece of american history and as many believe to dishonor people for a second time so even now when people come into the gulligicci nation and they try to figure out how come we seem like we're so joyful how come we seem like we're so happy all the time and they're like oh y'all still sing all them old songs well those old songs are new songs in our soul and in our spirit because they always do the same thing they did for our ancestors who created the spirituals that are now South Carolina state music they help to revive you they help to keep you in that continuum because nothing is about justice moment everything is about what happened before and what is coming in the future even now the gulligicci nation tree is bodies intertwined because we know we can never survive without that interconnection we are that fruit that grows off that tree so we know the roots are ailing and we want more fruit in the future then we have to dig into the past we have to know our story and who better to tell our own story than our own people and so that we know through all the work that we're doing who we are down y'all and we know we don't deal y'all we don't bend y'all and we're not going nowhere this marvelous that we have this magic of all these wonderful things that we can visit these lands far away that we have no concept of so i thank you for joining me on this visit to the sea islands and we'll see you next time