The Pinnacle Land dispute and Rastafari’s claimBy Percival Christie 07/02/2014 The ongoing dispute over the Pinnacle site, has many of our Rastafari brethren espousing their personal views. However, there needs to be a cerebral and conscious reasoning on the matter that will lead to a just settlement and the Government has a vital role to play in this.
From a legal standpoint, it is clear that the present owners have all legal rights to the property, as proved by their legally binding registered title. From a cultural standpoint, Pinnacle has great significance to Rastafari and the Jamaican Nation on a whole, which may be termed as indigenous people’s rights which should be preserved as a showpiece, as the first attempt at having a community that was being built as a self-help stand-alone community.
There exists therefore, an obligation and a duty for us to preserve this site as the first home of the first Rastafari in Jamaica, that promoted the ideals of peace and love, hard work, discipline, self help and a true community spirit of cooperation among its inhabitants.
The government of the day should through the National Heritage Trust, purchase at least 10 acres of the land to include the site of the former settlement and permit Rastafari to occupy the site, farm the land and establish a Rastafarian community, under the control of the Rastafari Millenium Council.
This has the potential to assist in improving and promoting Kingston as a Tourist Destination, where tourists would visit to see the first indigenous Rastafari community in the world.
RASTAFARI HAS CONTRIBUTED TO JAMAICARastafari has contributed immensely to Brand Jamaica, through music and art and this cannot be denied. The present owners of the property could perhaps be willing to assist, by gifting to the Rastafari Millennium Council five acres of the property, to include the site of the original settlement.
This in effect, could be a win-win situation, as the developers could eventually profit from the closeness of this National Monument that would be an active Tourism Heritage Site where Rastafari’s way of Livity, Art, Music and Cultural Practices, such as Nyahbinghi, Celebrations of His Imperial Majesty’s and Empress Menen’s Earthday, Victory Day, and other Ethiopian and Rastafari celebrations would take place each year.
This could very well form the basis for a new day in Rastafari/State cooperation, in that each could begin to view each other not as enemies, but as mutually respected allies. Why should Rastafari 52 years after our so-called Independence from Colonial rule, still have to fight the Establishment of our own Government, as was the case with the colonial powers, to be recognized and facilitated as citizens of the land of our birth? Rastafari has done so much for this country that our place in history is assured, never to be erased.
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