This collection of five works (commissioned in 2022), depicting Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons of Jamaica, celebrates the self-determination, Afro-Indigenous retentions and the rich bio-cultural relationship histories of the descendants of the formerly enslaved peoples of Jamaica and the diaspora.

Together, these works question and present a compelling reexamination of the lived experiences of early Afro-Caribbean people within the context of historical African eco-spirituality and folklore. The works simultaneously acknowledges relationships to the indigenous first peoples of the region, and past and present Pan-African struggles for land, liberation and the survival of ancestral bio-cultural ways of being and knowing.

From the Ceiba Silk Cotton Trees and Cacoon (Entada rheedii) seed-pods to the endemic Caribbean Coccyzus Cuckoos, these works both depict and suggest how early Africans projected their knowledge and rememberings of Africa onto and into the “New World.”  These African continuations still enrich the lives of Afro-descendant peoples today. Here we celebrate them, we center them, and we call on all to join in this collective decolonial remembering, while raising questions about race, gender, sexuality and religion in relation to what full membership within the nature conservation movement means for present-day Afro-descendant people.