April 29, 2026 • 43 mins
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Obeah has been called superstition, “black magic,” and even a crime but those labels have a history, and that history was built to serve colonial power. We sit down with historian Dr. Katharine Gerbner to trace how African-derived spiritual and healing traditions in Jamaica were deliberately stigmatized through slavery, missionary politics, and law.
We follow the chain from a rare 1755 archival reference to the shockwaves of 1760, when Tacky's Rebellion prompts British colonial authorities to outlaw Obeah as a threat to control. Along the way, we unpack why defining Obeah is so difficult when most surviving sources come from enslavers and missionaries, and how Gerbner’s microhistory method reads the archive for what it tries to hide. One of the most surprising turns is the Moravian missionary Zacharias George Caries being called an “Obeahman,” opening up a “space of correlation” where Afro-Jamaicans do not separate Christianity from Obeah in the rigid way many of us inherit today.
We also connect this history to the present: Obeah remains illegal in Jamaica, and the long arc of criminalization still shapes public stigma, community silence, and debates about decriminalization. If you care about Caribbean history, Jamaican culture, African diaspora religion, and the politics of the archive, this conversation offers a new way to see what we have been taught to fear and who benefits from that fear.
Katharine Gerbner is a historian of religion, race, and freedom. She examines religious practices that have been excluded from traditional definitions of religion and develops multilingual archival strategies to uncover stories that have been marginalized and forgotten. She is the author of Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2025) and Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). She is Associate Professor of History and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota.
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, Alexandra Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics, and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
SPEAKER_01 (00:21):
Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to
another episode of StrictlyFacts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, where weexplore the Caribbean's past and
present through the stories ofpeople and the cultural
traditions that have shaped usand who we are.
I'm your host, AlexandriaMiller, and today's episode
takes us into a topic that Ithink has long been
misunderstood, has beensensationalized, and really
(00:45):
unfairly stigmatized in a lot ofways across the region.
We're specifically talking aboutObia today in today's episode,
but this also, in a lot of ways,in terms of the stigma applied
to several other traditions andreligions across the region, and
also across the African diasporain general.
But getting back to our episodetoday, across the Caribbean,
(01:07):
African-derived spiritual andhealing traditions have often
been framed through a coloniallens.
They've been reduced tosuperstition, criminality, or
even fear.
These narratives were notaccidental, they were very
intentional and produced andmaintained through slavery,
colonial law, and Europeanreligious domination as a way to
(01:28):
undermine African culturalpower.
Also to disrupt communalknowledge and delegitimize the
spiritual practices that sustainenslaved and freed people.
Even after emancipation, thatstigma has remained shaping how
people today speak about Obia inpublic, how governments regulate
it, how communities internalizeshame around their ways of being
(01:53):
and definitely culturalinheritance.
But, you know, today'sconversation is to, in a sense,
to sort of unpack that a littlebit, especially given the new
work that we're going to discusswith our guests today.
But before we get into that, Ijust also want to mention that,
you know, in a lot of ways,African-derived religions and
spiritual systems are not simplyrelics of the past.
(02:16):
They are definitely traditionsliving today that are tied to
memory, identity, healing, andresistance.
And as part of recoveringCaribbean history, as we usually
do on strictly facts, that alsomeans being willing to revisit
what we've been taught to fearand to ask who has benefited
from those fears in the firstplace.
(02:36):
And so as I briefly alluded to,um, we are being joined today by
Dr.
Katherine Gerbner, AssociateProfessor in History and
Director of Religious Studies atthe University of Minnesota, and
the author of new book, ArchivalEruptions, Constructing Religion
and Criminalizing OBIA in 18thCentury Jamaica.
Gerbner's book brings forwardnewly uncovered archival
(02:58):
materials that allows us to seeOBIA in Jamaica from a different
perspective, one rooted in adeeper historical context, which
we'll unpack today.
And so, Dr.
Gerbner, thank you so much forjoining us for this episode.
Why don't you begin with sharingwith our listeners a little bit
more about yourself, yourconnection to the region, and
what inspired your interest inreligious studies, race, and
(03:21):
freedom?
SPEAKER_02 (03:22):
Thank you so much, Alexandria.
It's uh really a delight to behere today and to talk to you
about um Obia and this new book.
So, as your listeners haveheard, my name is Catherine
Gerbner and I'm a historian atthe University of Minnesota.
And my interest in the Caribbeanreally stemmed from my research.
So I grew up in Philadelphia.
(03:43):
And when I was initially doinghistorical research, I actually
wanted to study the history ofQuakers and slavery in
Pennsylvania, so where I grewup.
But what I very quickly realizedis as soon as I started digging
into the sources, is that I justkept being brought down to the
Caribbean.
Like all roads led to,especially um in the 17th
(04:03):
century, Barbados, uh, Jamaica.
Uh so the Caribbean was reallythe center of the English Empire
during that period.
And so I followed my sources andbegan studying Caribbean
history.
And this really uh justcaptivated me, you know, in
graduate school.
And then uh in my first book,and now in my second book, I
(04:27):
have focused on different areasof Caribbean history.
So Barbados, uh, this book isfocused on Jamaica, uh, but I
also have research on the the USVirgin Islands, what was the
Danish West Indies?
And so, yeah, in my first book,I looked at sort of the role of
Christianity in theestablishment of slavery and
(04:48):
white supremacy.
So looking at the formation ofrace and its uh relationship to
religion.
And in this book, I turned toJamaica and you know, found
these sources that nobody hadseen before that I thought shed
new light on the history ofObia.
And I felt like it was a reallyimportant story to tell.
And that's sort of how I gotinto this project.
SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
Thank you so much for being here.
Um, I think it was a veryinteresting read for me, as you
said, because it brings aboutnew archival information.
Um, but also in a way that, youknow, we're still very much
contending with Obia Fra from a,I don't want to say comical in a
jokey way, but it is, it issometimes used in that fashion,
(05:32):
depending on the context, right?
But it's also villainized, as Imentioned, it's also stigmatized
largely.
Um, and I don't even know fullyhow much of Caribbean society
understands that trajectory.
Um, and the fact that it evengoes so far back as you've
pointed us to um in this book, Ithink oftentimes people
(05:54):
immediately think of the 1898Act.
Um, but it goes much furtherthan that, as we're going to
talk about today, as far back as1760.
But I I definitely, for havingdone this research, I wanted to
first ask you before we sort ofjump into the book, given our
sort of um culturalunderstanding of Ubyah and
(06:15):
religious understanding of Ubiatoday, I think people would draw
certain, as I said, you know,certain conclusions about those
who are um practitioners ofUbia, um what they are doing,
because you know, oftentimesAfrican-derived religions are
associated with rich craft andspells and all of these things
that um obviously are casting aparticular shadow on the
(06:37):
practices and the people whoalso partake in these practices.
Um, but I've sort of wanted tohear from you.
How do you yourself, um, havingdone this research, define Ubia
and its historical importance tothe region and how that sort of
differs from the stigmas that wehave against it today?
SPEAKER_02 (06:55):
Yeah, thank you.
This is such an important andalso such a difficult question
when you are uh trying to definea practice that has sustained
literally centuries ofoppression.
So, you know, as you mentionedtoday, there's a lot of stigma
around obiyah, you know, as thissort of like scary black magic,
right?
That's sort of the normativeunderstanding of the practice.
(07:17):
And um, historically, however,this was not the case.
And this gets us into sort of amajor issue uh studying the
history of obia, right?
So as we mentioned earlier, obiawas criminalized in 1760, right?
So very, very long time ago.
And it was after Tati'srebellion.
(07:38):
So this is the largest slaverevolts in the 18th century
British Empire.
And it was in this context afteruh this rebellion that truly did
threaten the control of theislands, that colonial
authorities passed the new law.
And this was intended to preventfuture uprisings.
So there are a lot of differentcomponents to the law, but there
was a section specificallydevoted to obiyah because the
(08:01):
colonial authorities wereconvinced that rebels had used
Obia to support the rebellion.
So this is where you see Obiadefined as a wicked art.
It's compared to witchcraft.
There's actually a reallyinteresting history there that
they couldn't call it witchcraftbecause it was also, you know,
they weren't supposed to believein witchcraft, uh, but they they
sort of associated it withwitchcraft.
(08:23):
And what you see here is thatthey believe that Obia
practitioners had aided therebellion, um, and that's why
they made it illegal.
So what we have here is ananti-colonial practice.
That's the most important thing.
Um, that was seen as a threat tothe system of slavery and a
threat to colonial government.
And um the question then isclearly, you know, they are not
(08:46):
seeing obiy in the same way aspractitioners.
And how can we understand whatobium meant at that time and
also before it was actuallycriminalized?
And that's where sort of myresearch comes in because I
found this reference to Obiafrom 1755 that had never before
been found.
(09:06):
And it was um actually writtenby a newly arrived Moravian
missionary who sort of did notunderstand, he was sort of an
outsider in many ways, and hespent nearly all of his time
with Afro-Jamaicans.
And so his description of whatObia was was as a prophetic
practice, right?
And he was actually called umobia by people who joined the
(09:30):
congregation, and he embracedthis term.
And so what we see here is acompletely different sort of
idea of what Obia was and whatit meant, um, that I think
actually encompasses, you know,religion, encompasses practices
of healing, encompassescommunity formation.
Um, in the book, I use the termuh religio-political or religio
(09:53):
nation to talk about sort of thesort of great significance of
obiyah as a practice thatbrought people together, that
bounds them together, that helpsto create a new sense of
community, a new sense of umunderstanding of the future.
And um, because of that, wouldbe used to bring people together
(10:14):
in rebellion.
And that is the reason it'scriminalized.
So, yes, there's a very longhistory there.
Um, but it's really important tounderstand that the impact of
criminalization has been reallydramatic and that the reason it
was criminalized was because itwas anti-colonial and
anti-slavery.
SPEAKER_01 (10:32):
Thank you for pointing us in that direction.
Because I think it alsounderscores a sort of central
element in this book that Ifound very interesting, um, that
it's written as a microhistory,right?
And for our listeners who aren'tfamiliar, depending on your
reads, or if you've heard me sayvarious titles of books on this
show, uh, you know, I might saysomething like the book title
(10:55):
from, you know, 1760 to 1960 orwhat may have you, right?
I think from my perspective andsome of the other texts that
I've read on Obia thinking,especially of like Diana Um
Patton's book and severalothers, they're kind of that
sort of more um large-scalemacro history, if I if I'll
frame it that way.
(11:16):
Um, but this is what written asa micro history, and as you can
all probably gather from the theword itself, it's focusing on
like a smaller subject orsmaller time period sort of
thing.
And archival eruptions reallysituates us in this five-year
period.
So 1755, when as you were uhmentioning, Zacharias George
(11:37):
Carey sends his first letter viathe Moravian church, and then
also this um 1760 moment whenObia is outlawed after Tacky's
rebellion.
And so for you, you know, whywas it important for you to tell
the story this way as amicrohistory, or what do we sort
of learn about Obia differentlyfrom having taken a very
(11:59):
specific look at this five-yearperiod?
And how does a microhistory alsohelp us to understand what you
call the space of correlation alittle bit that existed between
Obia and the Moravian church andChristianity at this time?
SPEAKER_02 (12:15):
Thanks for that question.
Um, because yes, I I decided togo really sort of narrow and
focused.
Um my first book was a macrohistory, you know, looking at
over a century of Christianityand slavery.
And this um I felt needed adifferent type of approach.
And that was for a number ofdifferent reasons.
(12:36):
I mean, first of all, as I kindof alluded to before, there are
very few archival references toobia before it was criminalized
in 1760.
And because I found this onefrom 1755 that no one had looked
at, I thought it was absolutelyimportant and that it sort of
offered a different window intothe meaning of OBIA.
(12:58):
Um, I thought that this wasreally important to dig into.
And I think the second reasonthat a microhistory is important
is because as we've sort ofdiscussed, and you know, I have
a lot to say about this, butarchival documents are
problematic, right?
Especially African diasporichistories, you know, the vast
(13:21):
majority of sources that we havethat survive from this period
are written by enslavers, bycolonists, by missionaries,
almost all European men, right?
Um, so that's a problem.
How can how can we possibly tella different history when this is
what we have?
So I really wanted to dig intothis problem specifically and
(13:45):
think about a methodology toread a missionary source for um
what I call sort of an eruption.
So, like this is the title ofthe book, archival eruptions.
And one of the primary questionsis trying to answer this sort of
problem of the archive and theproblem of silences in the
archive.
Is it even possible to tell astory that doesn't replicate and
(14:07):
reiterate sort of theperspective of the person who's
producing the archive?
And I thought that I could dothat, I could tell a different
history, but it meant reallygetting into the granular detail
of the production of the archiveand then reading widely in sort
of African diasporic history,literature, et cetera, in order
(14:27):
to interpret the archivaldocuments.
So especially this reference toOBIA.
So those were some of thereasons I wanted to do a micro
history.
I think a third reason, though,is that you can tell a much more
intimate history.
So one of the things that I cando with this Moravian archive, I
mean, we have this reference toOBIA, but we also have church
(14:50):
registers that denote theAfrican nations of members of
the congregation.
And we have diaries written bymultiple missionaries over
multiple years where I couldactually piece together the
names of different people andstart to tell different stories
of both enslaved African men andwomen and also maroon uh men and
(15:13):
women, and to sort of narrate ahistory that is not seen if we
just sort of read the sources asthe author wrote them, right?
You kind of have to break themapart and put them back together
and with sort of meticulous caretell new narratives.
So, you know, in one of mychapters, I talk about a maroon
(15:34):
woman named Marjorie, whoactually is never named in the
diaries of the missionary, but Ifound sort of one little
reference to her name.
Um, and then, you know, use thatto kind of tell this story about
the role that she was playing insort of trying to create
community and family um acrossthis divide between the Maroon
(15:54):
and enslaved people in the yearsbefore Takis revolt.
There are other examples where amicrohistorical lens offers an
opportunity to just telldifferent histories.
And I don't love the wordrecover, but I guess that is
sort of what it is, right?
Uh finding new people to telltheir story and think about what
their lives must have been like.
And I think that's important.
(16:16):
I realize you also asked aboutspace of correlation.
That was a very long answer tothe first half of your question.
Uh, but I think this is also akey term and part of my
argument.
So the space of correlation is aphrase that was coined by the
art historian Cecile Fromant,um, and she uses it to talk
about Catholic practice in theKingdom of Congo.
(16:37):
And basically what it means isthat uh, you know, we tend to
separate practices like obiafrom Christianity, right?
And um, the reality is that inthis period, Afro-Jamaicans
viewed Moravian Christianity asa form of obiyah, right?
They're not separate practices.
And so this is this um space ofcorrelation where, you know, a a
(17:00):
ritual, um, you know, amissionary interprets it in one
way, the same types of practicesmay be interpreted in multiple
ways by multiple individuals.
And so we should not kind ofseparate out obiyah from
Christianity during this period.
Uh, there was this veryimportant space of correlation
that you can see in the records.
SPEAKER_01 (17:22):
There are several things that you said that
brought to mind.
I think first off, again, sortof celebrate the work in a
sense, because I found theapproach given as a microhistory
to be very intuitive in terms ofthe archives.
I think depending on, you know,the subject or what is
available, right?
(17:43):
You might be discussing archivesfrom a wide perspective, right?
And you don't necessarily get tosit with them in the same way.
And I found, you know, and evenmaybe this is sort of like a me
having my own sort of, oh, thiscould maybe be a way I turned my
dissertation into a book sort ofmoment type of thing.
But I just, you know, echo whatyou said that being able to, you
(18:06):
know, situate how these peoplelived in what some would call
small time period um gives us asort of definitely like a
greater understanding of howAbia was understood, um, was a
daily part of people's lives,and was drastically different,
again, from the way that we'resort of conditioned to think
(18:29):
about it as a religiouspractice.
Also, another thing that Ithought of in terms of this book
is language, um, which I don'tthink we've we've talked about
yet.
Um, and so Carries is a Moravianmissionary from Germany, um
which I think adds another layerto how we understand not just
(18:52):
the archives themselves, becausethey were in um a sort of
archaic German language in asense, but also I think added to
the layers of our colonialhistories in several ways,
right?
I think while Jamaicaspecifically was a Spanish and
then British colony, I think weoftentimes pit those as sort of
(19:14):
like the major quote-unquotecolonial influences, or, you
know, though those may be theplaces that we turn to
immediately when we're thinkingof archives on Jamaica, or, you
know, it obviously worksdifferently for other islands,
but to sort of understand thealso German context that Carries
(19:34):
and other uh missionaries arecoming from, I think is also
something that I foundinteresting and maybe wanted to
understand how he saw himself inthis moment because as you
mentioned, you know, he's sayingthat the people that, you know,
the Afro-Jamaicans who becomepart of his church that he's
working with and seeing on adaily life call him an Obi-Aman,
(19:56):
they call him a seer or aprophet and sort of these
things.
And I wanted to know if youcould share a little bit about
what the archives, you know,that he's written sort of help
us to maybe understand today hisidentity as sort of being
described as an Obiaman.
Like what did that mean for himand his understanding?
(20:16):
Um, and what role did sort ofrace play in that identification
of himself as an Obiaman?
And also sort of what does thattell us about the depth of 18th
century Afro-Jamaicancommunities to also then, you
know, not limit theirunderstanding of power and
(20:36):
religion to their own blackness,in a sense.
SPEAKER_02 (20:40):
Um, yes, so much to talk about uh with language,
with sort of the weirdness ofthis archive being in Eastern
Germany and sort of the factthat that's why I think this
history has been overlooked forso long.
Um, but yeah, I'll sort of focuson the part of your question
about Carries, who is this, youknow, the first Moravian
missionary to arrive on Jamaica.
(21:01):
And it was sort of his letter inwhich he describes that he is
called Obia that really got mestarted on this project.
And so, you know, when I thoughtabout what do I do with this
weird reference, because Obia,throughout pretty much all other
references and archives, is seenas like distinctly African
practice, right?
Um, or you know, Afro-Caribbeanpractice and not something that
(21:24):
would be associated with, youknow, a European Christian
missionary.
It's strange.
I I think that that tells ussomething, right?
And so one of the ways that Iwent about thinking about this
was, you know, Carrie's he had adaily diary, so he just writes
about what he did every singleday.
He writes about the interactionsthat he had.
And so I looked at all of themonths leading up to this
(21:45):
reference to him being called anobiaman.
So the way I kind ofreconstructed, I guess you could
call it the semantic field ofobia was by looking at um sort
of the the dynamic of thosemonths.
So what you see is that, youknow, he's someone who Presented
himself as a healer and someonewho was sort of a spiritual
practitioner for sure.
(22:06):
But someone who actually went topeople's homes and sort of aided
the sick and the ailing, talkedabout, he called Jesus the great
physician.
That's a direct quote from hisdiaries.
And he also sort of supportedthe creation of a community,
advocated and supported membersof his community and their sort
(22:27):
of relations with overseers andother white people, you know,
white attorneys, et cetera.
And then critically, he'sperforming really powerful
rituals such as baptism.
And I think, you know, I have awhole section on baptism.
Baptisms are practiced in manydifferent, you know, religious
traditions.
It's not just Christianity.
Christianity, they don't controlall water rituals.
(22:48):
You know, try to reinterpretthis entire archive through the
lens of obia rather than what Ithink we normally do, which is
to sort of think about itthrough the lens of what is
Christian and what's not.
And I think that that offers uskind of a more complex, richer
sense of Afro-Jamaican sort ofintellectual, theological,
(23:10):
cultural worldviews that isn'tso confined, right?
So, you know, if we think aboutChristianity as sort of a subset
of OBIA instead of, you know,trying to fit obia into our
categories of what is religionand what is medicine and what is
witchcraft, et cetera, I justsort of systematically tried to
kind of move to the side ofthose European categories and
(23:32):
then think more broadly aboutthe sort of complicated meaning
of Obia during this time.
So that that was another sort ofmethodological approach that I
think was uh a bit different andimportant to do in a in sort of
a micro-historical context sothat we could see the texture of
everyday conversations andrelationship building, families
who sort of make decisionstogether, et cetera.
(23:54):
Like these little intimatethings that actually I think are
so important to the way weunderstand religion and and
politics and um and all of this.
SPEAKER_01 (24:03):
Certainly.
I I agree.
I think, you know, getting backto the kind of like cultural
framing of Obia is something forus to fear and you know, stay
away from it.
It oftentimes feels like, andI'm this is not to disparage any
parish or anything in Jamaica,but there is oftentimes this
rhetoric of, you know, it being,you know, as you said, black
(24:26):
magic, you know, but there's aobiyamana, obiyah woman in Saint
Mary or wherever we may haveyou, and you know, you're going
to them because you wantsomething done to somebody,
whatever.
But I think to your credit, youbreak it down for us in these
very lived ways that, you know,breaks down this sort of marker,
(24:47):
not only for it as something tobe feared, but just for us to
understand that, you know,especially for enslaved people,
you know, forcibly coming toJamaica at this time and to the
rest of the new world at thistime, they're coming with their
own practices, um, whatever thatmay have been, and whatever that
sort of evolved into, becauseeverybody was not from the same
(25:08):
place in the continent, um, ofcourse, right?
And so whatever that sort ofamalgamation of these practices
come to be known as in the newworld, or, you know, on the side
of the Atlantic, what thenbecomes the rhetoric around
them, you know, and as you younoted, are things that
colonizers have placed upon umthese traditions, right?
(25:33):
Not necessarily the lived andeveryday experience.
And so I really appreciated sortof that breakdown for us and
helping us understand that like,you know, you can't call a
baptism, for instance, right,that's being done quote unquote
by people practicing obia.
It it just helped, I think, moregenerally, to sort of underscore
(25:54):
um the way that these practicesdefinitely developed as opposed
to things to be feared.
And I think that definitely alsosort of like brings me to
another question that I had foryou because as we're talking
about the sort of legal aspectof Obia in Jamaica, so we have
this 1760 law where, you know,it's framed as, and this is a
(26:17):
quote, guys, for those tuningin, um, it's an act to remedy
the evils arising from irregularassemblies of the slaves, right?
And so as you had pointed toearlier, um, that's a direct
sort of using Ubia as somethingto be feared, quote unquote,
because Ubia was thought of tohelp gain those that were
(26:38):
participants in Taki'sRebellion, um, you know, the
power, the courage, thesolidarity to fight their
enslavers.
You know, these laws are stillon the books.
It's definitely gone throughvarious iterations.
So, as I mentioned, there's an1898 version and so on and so
forth.
And it's something that I saw onsocial media.
(27:00):
There were some, there was somework being done from people
trying to sort of encourage thegovernment.
This needs to be something thatwe change.
There is not necessarily theneed for it, or not, I don't
want to say need in that way.
How about um we need to sort ofreorient what we understand Ubia
to be one, and then from sort ofa legal aspect, like why is this
(27:25):
still on the books?
And I I mean that question istrue for a lot of things in the
region, um, but why is thisstill on the books?
And also how can we sort ofreorient um ourselves as a
nation to sort of understand whythese things even came into
practice and how we should bemoving towards understanding
them better culturally.
(27:47):
And so um, you know, OBIA stillbeing criminalized, I think, is
something that we still need tounderstand.
And your book, again, also umtackles this criminalization as
sort of a tool of violence.
And um, that's also veryimportant, I think, um, the
shift from understanding ofreligion as being, you know,
(28:09):
used to depict race and alsopolice religion in Jamaica and
maintain societal hierarchies.
Um, so these are things thatlike we're still contending with
today.
How do you think both, you know,the transition and
criminalization of Obia affectAfro-Jamaicans, both then and,
(28:29):
you know, even today, especiallythose who were particularly part
of the Moravian communities, asthere is this change between
understanding that Christianitywas formerly described as like a
Protestant thing to more sowhite people's religion.
SPEAKER_02 (28:48):
So, okay, I'm gonna begin with the sort of effects
of criminalization and sort ofthe fact that phobia is still
illegal, right?
Which is um, you know, reallyinteresting facts.
And um, I mean, hopefully itwill not be so for long, but you
know, the resistance is stillthere.
And I think that resistance doescome from kind of um, it's a
(29:08):
long-term effect of of what wasset in motion hundreds of years
ago.
And I think, you know, my bookfocuses on the years before
Taki's revolt and then looks atsort of the process of
criminalization, but there'sreally great research that I
also sort of draw on thatactually analyzes how obiar as a
crime has changed over time.
(29:30):
Um, you mentioned Diana Payton'swork earlier, and you know, her
book on the cultural politics ofOBIA really delves into this.
And I think one of the importantthings to recognize about the
impact and the changes to thecriminalization of OBIA is that,
you know, at first, the the lawthat you mentioned from 1760, it
talks about irregularassemblies.
(29:52):
And I think that this isactually a really important
phrase because it alerts us tothe fact that what was
dangerous, considered to bedangerous about OBIA was the
fact that it brought peopletogether and that they were
being bound together and thencreating community, strong
community through OBIA, right?
That this is a communalpractice.
(30:12):
And one of the things that thatfirst law does is it tries to
individualize and materializethe practice of obia.
So there's actually a list ofall of these different objects
that are associated with thepractice of obia, you know, from
gravedirt to parrot's beaks, youknow, the alligator's teeth,
like all of these differentactual materials that make it
(30:34):
more possible to police thepractice of obia.
And um over time, sort of this,I would say the the laws about
obiar continue to sort ofindividualize it, um, make it
into a practice that's abouteventually about fraud, right?
That you are fraudulentlyproviding services and offering
(30:55):
things to somebody, then thatyou are lying to them, right?
So this is that's sort of whatobia becomes uh later on in sort
of the 19th, 20th century.
This is sort of intentionallytrying to erase the history of
obia as a communal project.
And that is the purpose of thelaws.
And, you know, we've seen themthat they've been sort of
(31:16):
successful, right, in thislong-term stigma that that obia
retains.
Now I will say that I thinkthat, you know, Afro-Jamaicans
also, you know, it's not likethey just stopped practicing
obia.
People changed the the name oftheir practices.
You know, there's a interestingresearch on sort of the the rise
of the term science is insteadof obia.
(31:36):
It's not like these go away, butthen this term kind of gets
ostracized and and criminalizedand stigmatized.
And that's that is the historythat we see today.
You know, one thing that I thinkis very also important is that
it becomes from this periodwhere you have a European
missionary who's sort ofembracing the term to the impact
(31:57):
of criminalization, it does getincreasingly racialized, right?
So this is that's why sort ofthis, even finding this source
was surprising to me, becausethen you have um, you know, this
this sort of racialization ofreligious traditions, and umia
is marked as sort of uhsuperstitious and and also kind
of African.
(32:18):
There is sort of that racialcomponent that is a part of the
criminalization process.
SPEAKER_01 (32:23):
I wanted very briefly to get back to the point
on language, um, just as we'resort of unpacking the importance
of archives here, because youknow, if these uh archives were
written in standard German,quote unquote, if I can say
that, there may have would havebeen a potential for uh these
(32:45):
things to sort of have come outa little bit earlier.
Maybe, maybe not.
We can hypothesize on that.
Um, but having um been writtenby the Moravian missionaries, as
I mentioned, an archaic Germanscript, um, how do you think
that this contributed to thesilencing of the archives of
(33:06):
these stories for so long?
And sort of what was yourpersonal experience working with
this archaic language and havingto, you know, transcribe and
translate all of these pages?
SPEAKER_02 (33:18):
Yeah, you know, the history of the archive itself is
sort of central to the storythat I'm trying to tell about
phobia.
And um, there's a lot of ways inwhich knowledge is silenced and
you know, forgotten, and umhistory is sort of we inherit
only certain things.
And the Moravian archive is anvery unusual archive.
(33:38):
As you mentioned earlier, youknow, most people, if they're
studying the history of Jamaica,for example, you need English
and Spanish would be good, andbut like they're maybe if you're
gonna study other languages, itcould be Portuguese or French,
right?
Like these are the dominantEuropean empires of the
Caribbean.
And German is not on that list.
(34:00):
And so when I first sort ofdiscovered this archive that
there were even sources thatbarely anyone had looked at that
are talk about Caribbean historyin the 18th century and they're
in German and in this sort ofstrange script.
Um, to me, it felt like, oh,this is actually a place where I
can make a contribution.
(34:20):
Because I just happened to be aperson who knows German.
I have taken orthography classesto learn how to read this German
script.
Um, for those who don't know,which is most people almost no
one knows this, but the Germanlanguage was uh sort of the
alphabet, the way each of theletters was written, is not the
same as the other Europeanlanguages.
(34:41):
And so you have to kind of learnthese different symbols that
represent A, B, C, et cetera,and then to, in order to read
anything that was written byhand before 1940, it was
actually not until World War IIthat Romans, that sort of the
Romanized script was used byGermans.
Um, and so I thought this can bea place where, with my sort of
(35:04):
uh set of skills and interestsand expertise, kind of offer
something different to theconversation about uh Jamaican
history, about Obia.
So that was what I did.
So for you know, many years Iwas reading through this, very
difficult to read, you know,these manuscript pages and
(35:24):
transcribing them.
And one of the things I actuallyalso did as part of my research
was to uh make those allavailable online.
For those who really want to getdeep into the Moravian archive
from the 1750s, uh, those arenow transcribed into modern
German.
And also uh most of them I haveactually translated.
I actually think there are moreof these kinds of documents,
(35:45):
more of these kinds of archives.
You know, I can talk all daylong about the problems of the
Anglophone archive and the waythings are recorded.
Um, but I think that history isvery surprising and there are
things hidden in places that wewould never think to look.
And I hope that people keeplooking and then sort of when
they find these um sort ofoff-the-beaten path archives uh
(36:08):
to sort of do the work to makethem accessible.
Because, you know, I think we wecan tell different histories,
and that that is what I thinkthis archive offers us for the
history of OBIA.
I think it's really important tothink critically about how we
read archives, but also lookliterally in other new places
for archival records to telldifferent stories about the
Caribbean and uh and otherplaces.
SPEAKER_01 (36:31):
Definitely, definitely.
I fully agree.
I think that point on languageis definitely one I wanted to
underscore, as we've said,completely different place out
of probably most people's mindsto to seek, you know, archival
information on Jamaica.
Um, but also there's thisobviously added layer of sort of
how we come to unpack thesearchives.
(36:54):
And so I thank you for um thatwork of helping to unpack this.
And I'll be sure to add it onour strictly facts syllabus for
those wanting to check out thearchives a little bit more
intuitively.
Um, I have to ask this questionbecause it is my favorite
question of all um in terms ofstrictly facts, but I think this
one I found very interesting asI was thinking about it before
(37:17):
recording because I can name aslew of songs that are obia
related or, you know, LeeScratch Perry, like Beanie Man
has what I can the list can go,and it's not necessarily even,
you know, just relegated toJamaica.
Like I can think regionally ofsongs that are showing us that
(37:40):
Obia is definitely a centralpart of Caribbean life in many
ways, in terms of how many timesit shows up in our music.
Um, but also to the point thatwe're sort of talking about in
this episode, they areoftentimes following this sort
of stigmatized um direction,right?
That, you know, no obiyaminecan't bother me because I've got
(38:04):
God on my side.
And I'll put them in our shownotes for those who want to
check them out.
But I definitely want to hearfrom you, having done this
research.
Um, what is sort of yourfavorite example of obia or even
just general Caribbeanreligiosity as it shows up in
Caribbean popular culture?
SPEAKER_02 (38:22):
Yeah, um, well, I was thinking about this
question, and I I decided to gowith a novel that um I was
reading sort of before and thenuh while I was doing this
research um that talks aboutobia, but it's also about
rebellion and history and how,you know, the the histories from
the archives are incomplete andsort of trying to imagine a
(38:44):
different history, and that's umMarlon James's The Book of Night
Women, um, which I just think issuch a brilliant novel.
I've actually taught it before.
Um, and you know, again, Obia isin that book and it is an evil
practice.
But I actually kind of feel likeif Marlon James read this book
and then rewrote that, it wouldit would play a different role.
(39:07):
Um, but I think that what is soimportant about that is I I
think especially when it when wecome to thinking about gender
and religion, um, and gender andrebellion, oftentimes, you know,
these are very like maleauthority is emphasized in
archives and in sort of thestories that we tell.
And he's sort of telling adifferent story uh that sort of
(39:29):
reimagines the role of women,especially um in rebellion and
and and in religion.
And so that was one kind of uhmore, yeah, the the novel that
first came to mind when I when Iread your question.
But yeah, you're so right aboutthe ubiquitous sort of presence
of obiar um in music, etc.
I love that question too.
(39:50):
Thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (39:50):
Yeah, there are I was like, if I try to list them,
then I'm going to to run myselfragged.
Um so I will I will add them umon our strictly fact syllabus,
as I said, you guys, but Book ofNight women also came to mind.
So I will add that as well forthose who haven't read it.
Um but to close out, Dr.
Gerbner, I think, you know, ourconversation alone, but um
(40:14):
archival eruptions helps us, inmy view, to really understand
that like there is has beencreated this long-standing
binary, right, betweenChristianity and Abia and other,
you know, African-derivedpractices and you know,
spiritual practices.
How do you hope that umCaribbean societies at large
(40:35):
sort of will benefit fromunderstandings that many of
these practices that have beencriminalized, that have been
demonized, that have um, youknow, there have been these
hierarchies drawn compared to umthe colonial authority.
How can we sort of, you know,through understandings like that
(40:56):
in archival eruptions, help usto sort of draw more
similarities or, you know, helpus to reorient what we've been
taught from a culturalperspective?
SPEAKER_02 (41:08):
Yeah, I think that this is um it's so important to
realize that, you know,Afro-Jamaicans in the mid-18th
century were not dividing Obiafrom Christianity the way that
we do today.
And I think that we haveinherited kind of a definition
of religion that is reallycolonial.
And it's um, we are still sortof living in the uh the impacts
(41:31):
of this the 1760 law that thatcriminalized obia.
And, you know, if we canrecognize that obiy is
anti-colonial and anti-slavery,and it's not anti-Christianity,
and it wasn't anti-Christianityin the records from before the
the rebellion, then hopefully,you know, people today can kind
(41:54):
of reassess their perceptions ofthe stigma of Obia and you know,
and sort of embrace sort of thislonger history and tell a
different story about itbecause, you know, it definitely
is noticeable to me kind of inthe you know, the current debate
about whether OBIA should bedecriminalized or not.
You know, there's a contingentof Christians who are really
(42:16):
saying, no, you have to keep itas a it it is illegal and we
should not decriminalize it.
Um, and so I think this historyespecially maybe can speak to,
you know, that community andsort of uh maybe have them
rethink this longer history ofObia and its relation to
Christianity, uh, because theywere not oppositional.
And I don't think they have tobe oppositional.
SPEAKER_01 (42:39):
Beautifully said.
Thank you so much for joiningme, Dr.
Governor, for this episode.
I think one that is not onlytimely, right?
But I certainly learned a lotfrom reading your book.
And so for our listeners tuningin, it is linked in our show
notes.
Be sure to check out your copyof Archival Eruptions
Constructing Religion andCriminalizing OBIA in 18th
(43:01):
century Jamaica.
It I think is not only a greatread.
Oh, so I definitely wanted tosay to say that having had you
on the show, but one that Ithink um, you know, we're still
contending with as a society,and we have definitely learned a
lot from, not just in Jamaica,but in the region as a whole.
So thank you again for uhjoining you, Dr.
(43:24):
Garbner, for our listenerstuning in.
We hope you enjoyed thisepisode.
Again, be sure to check out yourown copy.
And till next time, look formore.
SPEAKER_00 (43:35):
Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts.
Visit strictlyfactspodcast.comfor more information from each
episode.
Follow us at Strictly Facts Podon Instagram and Facebook and at
StrictlyFacts P on Twitter.
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, Alexandra Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics, and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
SPEAKER_01 (00:21):
Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to
another episode of StrictlyFacts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, where weexplore the Caribbean's past and
present through the stories ofpeople and the cultural
traditions that have shaped usand who we are.
I'm your host, AlexandriaMiller, and today's episode
takes us into a topic that Ithink has long been
misunderstood, has beensensationalized, and really
(00:45):
unfairly stigmatized in a lot ofways across the region.
We're specifically talking aboutObia today in today's episode,
but this also, in a lot of ways,in terms of the stigma applied
to several other traditions andreligions across the region, and
also across the African diasporain general.
But getting back to our episodetoday, across the Caribbean,
(01:07):
African-derived spiritual andhealing traditions have often
been framed through a coloniallens.
They've been reduced tosuperstition, criminality, or
even fear.
These narratives were notaccidental, they were very
intentional and produced andmaintained through slavery,
colonial law, and Europeanreligious domination as a way to
(01:28):
undermine African culturalpower.
Also to disrupt communalknowledge and delegitimize the
spiritual practices that sustainenslaved and freed people.
Even after emancipation, thatstigma has remained shaping how
people today speak about Obia inpublic, how governments regulate
it, how communities internalizeshame around their ways of being
(01:53):
and definitely culturalinheritance.
But, you know, today'sconversation is to, in a sense,
to sort of unpack that a littlebit, especially given the new
work that we're going to discusswith our guests today.
But before we get into that, Ijust also want to mention that,
you know, in a lot of ways,African-derived religions and
spiritual systems are not simplyrelics of the past.
(02:16):
They are definitely traditionsliving today that are tied to
memory, identity, healing, andresistance.
And as part of recoveringCaribbean history, as we usually
do on strictly facts, that alsomeans being willing to revisit
what we've been taught to fearand to ask who has benefited
from those fears in the firstplace.
(02:36):
And so as I briefly alluded to,um, we are being joined today by
Dr.
Katherine Gerbner, AssociateProfessor in History and
Director of Religious Studies atthe University of Minnesota, and
the author of new book, ArchivalEruptions, Constructing Religion
and Criminalizing OBIA in 18thCentury Jamaica.
Gerbner's book brings forwardnewly uncovered archival
(02:58):
materials that allows us to seeOBIA in Jamaica from a different
perspective, one rooted in adeeper historical context, which
we'll unpack today.
And so, Dr.
Gerbner, thank you so much forjoining us for this episode.
Why don't you begin with sharingwith our listeners a little bit
more about yourself, yourconnection to the region, and
what inspired your interest inreligious studies, race, and
(03:21):
freedom?
SPEAKER_02 (03:22):
Thank you so much, Alexandria.
It's uh really a delight to behere today and to talk to you
about um Obia and this new book.
So, as your listeners haveheard, my name is Catherine
Gerbner and I'm a historian atthe University of Minnesota.
And my interest in the Caribbeanreally stemmed from my research.
So I grew up in Philadelphia.
(03:43):
And when I was initially doinghistorical research, I actually
wanted to study the history ofQuakers and slavery in
Pennsylvania, so where I grewup.
But what I very quickly realizedis as soon as I started digging
into the sources, is that I justkept being brought down to the
Caribbean.
Like all roads led to,especially um in the 17th
(04:03):
century, Barbados, uh, Jamaica.
Uh so the Caribbean was reallythe center of the English Empire
during that period.
And so I followed my sources andbegan studying Caribbean
history.
And this really uh justcaptivated me, you know, in
graduate school.
And then uh in my first book,and now in my second book, I
(04:27):
have focused on different areasof Caribbean history.
So Barbados, uh, this book isfocused on Jamaica, uh, but I
also have research on the the USVirgin Islands, what was the
Danish West Indies?
And so, yeah, in my first book,I looked at sort of the role of
Christianity in theestablishment of slavery and
(04:48):
white supremacy.
So looking at the formation ofrace and its uh relationship to
religion.
And in this book, I turned toJamaica and you know, found
these sources that nobody hadseen before that I thought shed
new light on the history ofObia.
And I felt like it was a reallyimportant story to tell.
And that's sort of how I gotinto this project.
SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
Thank you so much for being here.
Um, I think it was a veryinteresting read for me, as you
said, because it brings aboutnew archival information.
Um, but also in a way that, youknow, we're still very much
contending with Obia Fra from a,I don't want to say comical in a
jokey way, but it is, it issometimes used in that fashion,
(05:32):
depending on the context, right?
But it's also villainized, as Imentioned, it's also stigmatized
largely.
Um, and I don't even know fullyhow much of Caribbean society
understands that trajectory.
Um, and the fact that it evengoes so far back as you've
pointed us to um in this book, Ithink oftentimes people
(05:54):
immediately think of the 1898Act.
Um, but it goes much furtherthan that, as we're going to
talk about today, as far back as1760.
But I I definitely, for havingdone this research, I wanted to
first ask you before we sort ofjump into the book, given our
sort of um culturalunderstanding of Ubyah and
(06:15):
religious understanding of Ubiatoday, I think people would draw
certain, as I said, you know,certain conclusions about those
who are um practitioners ofUbia, um what they are doing,
because you know, oftentimesAfrican-derived religions are
associated with rich craft andspells and all of these things
that um obviously are casting aparticular shadow on the
(06:37):
practices and the people whoalso partake in these practices.
Um, but I've sort of wanted tohear from you.
How do you yourself, um, havingdone this research, define Ubia
and its historical importance tothe region and how that sort of
differs from the stigmas that wehave against it today?
SPEAKER_02 (06:55):
Yeah, thank you.
This is such an important andalso such a difficult question
when you are uh trying to definea practice that has sustained
literally centuries ofoppression.
So, you know, as you mentionedtoday, there's a lot of stigma
around obiyah, you know, as thissort of like scary black magic,
right?
That's sort of the normativeunderstanding of the practice.
(07:17):
And um, historically, however,this was not the case.
And this gets us into sort of amajor issue uh studying the
history of obia, right?
So as we mentioned earlier, obiawas criminalized in 1760, right?
So very, very long time ago.
And it was after Tati'srebellion.
(07:38):
So this is the largest slaverevolts in the 18th century
British Empire.
And it was in this context afteruh this rebellion that truly did
threaten the control of theislands, that colonial
authorities passed the new law.
And this was intended to preventfuture uprisings.
So there are a lot of differentcomponents to the law, but there
was a section specificallydevoted to obiyah because the
(08:01):
colonial authorities wereconvinced that rebels had used
Obia to support the rebellion.
So this is where you see Obiadefined as a wicked art.
It's compared to witchcraft.
There's actually a reallyinteresting history there that
they couldn't call it witchcraftbecause it was also, you know,
they weren't supposed to believein witchcraft, uh, but they they
sort of associated it withwitchcraft.
(08:23):
And what you see here is thatthey believe that Obia
practitioners had aided therebellion, um, and that's why
they made it illegal.
So what we have here is ananti-colonial practice.
That's the most important thing.
Um, that was seen as a threat tothe system of slavery and a
threat to colonial government.
And um the question then isclearly, you know, they are not
(08:46):
seeing obiy in the same way aspractitioners.
And how can we understand whatobium meant at that time and
also before it was actuallycriminalized?
And that's where sort of myresearch comes in because I
found this reference to Obiafrom 1755 that had never before
been found.
(09:06):
And it was um actually writtenby a newly arrived Moravian
missionary who sort of did notunderstand, he was sort of an
outsider in many ways, and hespent nearly all of his time
with Afro-Jamaicans.
And so his description of whatObia was was as a prophetic
practice, right?
And he was actually called umobia by people who joined the
(09:30):
congregation, and he embracedthis term.
And so what we see here is acompletely different sort of
idea of what Obia was and whatit meant, um, that I think
actually encompasses, you know,religion, encompasses practices
of healing, encompassescommunity formation.
Um, in the book, I use the termuh religio-political or religio
(09:53):
nation to talk about sort of thesort of great significance of
obiyah as a practice thatbrought people together, that
bounds them together, that helpsto create a new sense of
community, a new sense of umunderstanding of the future.
And um, because of that, wouldbe used to bring people together
(10:14):
in rebellion.
And that is the reason it'scriminalized.
So, yes, there's a very longhistory there.
Um, but it's really important tounderstand that the impact of
criminalization has been reallydramatic and that the reason it
was criminalized was because itwas anti-colonial and
anti-slavery.
SPEAKER_01 (10:32):
Thank you for pointing us in that direction.
Because I think it alsounderscores a sort of central
element in this book that Ifound very interesting, um, that
it's written as a microhistory,right?
And for our listeners who aren'tfamiliar, depending on your
reads, or if you've heard me sayvarious titles of books on this
show, uh, you know, I might saysomething like the book title
(10:55):
from, you know, 1760 to 1960 orwhat may have you, right?
I think from my perspective andsome of the other texts that
I've read on Obia thinking,especially of like Diana Um
Patton's book and severalothers, they're kind of that
sort of more um large-scalemacro history, if I if I'll
frame it that way.
(11:16):
Um, but this is what written asa micro history, and as you can
all probably gather from the theword itself, it's focusing on
like a smaller subject orsmaller time period sort of
thing.
And archival eruptions reallysituates us in this five-year
period.
So 1755, when as you were uhmentioning, Zacharias George
(11:37):
Carey sends his first letter viathe Moravian church, and then
also this um 1760 moment whenObia is outlawed after Tacky's
rebellion.
And so for you, you know, whywas it important for you to tell
the story this way as amicrohistory, or what do we sort
of learn about Obia differentlyfrom having taken a very
(11:59):
specific look at this five-yearperiod?
And how does a microhistory alsohelp us to understand what you
call the space of correlation alittle bit that existed between
Obia and the Moravian church andChristianity at this time?
SPEAKER_02 (12:15):
Thanks for that question.
Um, because yes, I I decided togo really sort of narrow and
focused.
Um my first book was a macrohistory, you know, looking at
over a century of Christianityand slavery.
And this um I felt needed adifferent type of approach.
And that was for a number ofdifferent reasons.
(12:36):
I mean, first of all, as I kindof alluded to before, there are
very few archival references toobia before it was criminalized
in 1760.
And because I found this onefrom 1755 that no one had looked
at, I thought it was absolutelyimportant and that it sort of
offered a different window intothe meaning of OBIA.
(12:58):
Um, I thought that this wasreally important to dig into.
And I think the second reasonthat a microhistory is important
is because as we've sort ofdiscussed, and you know, I have
a lot to say about this, butarchival documents are
problematic, right?
Especially African diasporichistories, you know, the vast
(13:21):
majority of sources that we havethat survive from this period
are written by enslavers, bycolonists, by missionaries,
almost all European men, right?
Um, so that's a problem.
How can how can we possibly tella different history when this is
what we have?
So I really wanted to dig intothis problem specifically and
(13:45):
think about a methodology toread a missionary source for um
what I call sort of an eruption.
So, like this is the title ofthe book, archival eruptions.
And one of the primary questionsis trying to answer this sort of
problem of the archive and theproblem of silences in the
archive.
Is it even possible to tell astory that doesn't replicate and
(14:07):
reiterate sort of theperspective of the person who's
producing the archive?
And I thought that I could dothat, I could tell a different
history, but it meant reallygetting into the granular detail
of the production of the archiveand then reading widely in sort
of African diasporic history,literature, et cetera, in order
(14:27):
to interpret the archivaldocuments.
So especially this reference toOBIA.
So those were some of thereasons I wanted to do a micro
history.
I think a third reason, though,is that you can tell a much more
intimate history.
So one of the things that I cando with this Moravian archive, I
mean, we have this reference toOBIA, but we also have church
(14:50):
registers that denote theAfrican nations of members of
the congregation.
And we have diaries written bymultiple missionaries over
multiple years where I couldactually piece together the
names of different people andstart to tell different stories
of both enslaved African men andwomen and also maroon uh men and
(15:13):
women, and to sort of narrate ahistory that is not seen if we
just sort of read the sources asthe author wrote them, right?
You kind of have to break themapart and put them back together
and with sort of meticulous caretell new narratives.
So, you know, in one of mychapters, I talk about a maroon
(15:34):
woman named Marjorie, whoactually is never named in the
diaries of the missionary, but Ifound sort of one little
reference to her name.
Um, and then, you know, use thatto kind of tell this story about
the role that she was playing insort of trying to create
community and family um acrossthis divide between the Maroon
(15:54):
and enslaved people in the yearsbefore Takis revolt.
There are other examples where amicrohistorical lens offers an
opportunity to just telldifferent histories.
And I don't love the wordrecover, but I guess that is
sort of what it is, right?
Uh finding new people to telltheir story and think about what
their lives must have been like.
And I think that's important.
(16:16):
I realize you also asked aboutspace of correlation.
That was a very long answer tothe first half of your question.
Uh, but I think this is also akey term and part of my
argument.
So the space of correlation is aphrase that was coined by the
art historian Cecile Fromant,um, and she uses it to talk
about Catholic practice in theKingdom of Congo.
(16:37):
And basically what it means isthat uh, you know, we tend to
separate practices like obiafrom Christianity, right?
And um, the reality is that inthis period, Afro-Jamaicans
viewed Moravian Christianity asa form of obiyah, right?
They're not separate practices.
And so this is this um space ofcorrelation where, you know, a a
(17:00):
ritual, um, you know, amissionary interprets it in one
way, the same types of practicesmay be interpreted in multiple
ways by multiple individuals.
And so we should not kind ofseparate out obiyah from
Christianity during this period.
Uh, there was this veryimportant space of correlation
that you can see in the records.
SPEAKER_01 (17:22):
There are several things that you said that
brought to mind.
I think first off, again, sortof celebrate the work in a
sense, because I found theapproach given as a microhistory
to be very intuitive in terms ofthe archives.
I think depending on, you know,the subject or what is
available, right?
(17:43):
You might be discussing archivesfrom a wide perspective, right?
And you don't necessarily get tosit with them in the same way.
And I found, you know, and evenmaybe this is sort of like a me
having my own sort of, oh, thiscould maybe be a way I turned my
dissertation into a book sort ofmoment type of thing.
But I just, you know, echo whatyou said that being able to, you
(18:06):
know, situate how these peoplelived in what some would call
small time period um gives us asort of definitely like a
greater understanding of howAbia was understood, um, was a
daily part of people's lives,and was drastically different,
again, from the way that we'resort of conditioned to think
(18:29):
about it as a religiouspractice.
Also, another thing that Ithought of in terms of this book
is language, um, which I don'tthink we've we've talked about
yet.
Um, and so Carries is a Moravianmissionary from Germany, um
which I think adds another layerto how we understand not just
(18:52):
the archives themselves, becausethey were in um a sort of
archaic German language in asense, but also I think added to
the layers of our colonialhistories in several ways,
right?
I think while Jamaicaspecifically was a Spanish and
then British colony, I think weoftentimes pit those as sort of
(19:14):
like the major quote-unquotecolonial influences, or, you
know, though those may be theplaces that we turn to
immediately when we're thinkingof archives on Jamaica, or, you
know, it obviously worksdifferently for other islands,
but to sort of understand thealso German context that Carries
(19:34):
and other uh missionaries arecoming from, I think is also
something that I foundinteresting and maybe wanted to
understand how he saw himself inthis moment because as you
mentioned, you know, he's sayingthat the people that, you know,
the Afro-Jamaicans who becomepart of his church that he's
working with and seeing on adaily life call him an Obi-Aman,
(19:56):
they call him a seer or aprophet and sort of these
things.
And I wanted to know if youcould share a little bit about
what the archives, you know,that he's written sort of help
us to maybe understand today hisidentity as sort of being
described as an Obiaman.
Like what did that mean for himand his understanding?
(20:16):
Um, and what role did sort ofrace play in that identification
of himself as an Obiaman?
And also sort of what does thattell us about the depth of 18th
century Afro-Jamaicancommunities to also then, you
know, not limit theirunderstanding of power and
(20:36):
religion to their own blackness,in a sense.
SPEAKER_02 (20:40):
Um, yes, so much to talk about uh with language,
with sort of the weirdness ofthis archive being in Eastern
Germany and sort of the factthat that's why I think this
history has been overlooked forso long.
Um, but yeah, I'll sort of focuson the part of your question
about Carries, who is this, youknow, the first Moravian
missionary to arrive on Jamaica.
(21:01):
And it was sort of his letter inwhich he describes that he is
called Obia that really got mestarted on this project.
And so, you know, when I thoughtabout what do I do with this
weird reference, because Obia,throughout pretty much all other
references and archives, is seenas like distinctly African
practice, right?
Um, or you know, Afro-Caribbeanpractice and not something that
(21:24):
would be associated with, youknow, a European Christian
missionary.
It's strange.
I I think that that tells ussomething, right?
And so one of the ways that Iwent about thinking about this
was, you know, Carrie's he had adaily diary, so he just writes
about what he did every singleday.
He writes about the interactionsthat he had.
And so I looked at all of themonths leading up to this
(21:45):
reference to him being called anobiaman.
So the way I kind ofreconstructed, I guess you could
call it the semantic field ofobia was by looking at um sort
of the the dynamic of thosemonths.
So what you see is that, youknow, he's someone who Presented
himself as a healer and someonewho was sort of a spiritual
practitioner for sure.
(22:06):
But someone who actually went topeople's homes and sort of aided
the sick and the ailing, talkedabout, he called Jesus the great
physician.
That's a direct quote from hisdiaries.
And he also sort of supportedthe creation of a community,
advocated and supported membersof his community and their sort
(22:27):
of relations with overseers andother white people, you know,
white attorneys, et cetera.
And then critically, he'sperforming really powerful
rituals such as baptism.
And I think, you know, I have awhole section on baptism.
Baptisms are practiced in manydifferent, you know, religious
traditions.
It's not just Christianity.
Christianity, they don't controlall water rituals.
(22:48):
You know, try to reinterpretthis entire archive through the
lens of obia rather than what Ithink we normally do, which is
to sort of think about itthrough the lens of what is
Christian and what's not.
And I think that that offers uskind of a more complex, richer
sense of Afro-Jamaican sort ofintellectual, theological,
(23:10):
cultural worldviews that isn'tso confined, right?
So, you know, if we think aboutChristianity as sort of a subset
of OBIA instead of, you know,trying to fit obia into our
categories of what is religionand what is medicine and what is
witchcraft, et cetera, I justsort of systematically tried to
kind of move to the side ofthose European categories and
(23:32):
then think more broadly aboutthe sort of complicated meaning
of Obia during this time.
So that that was another sort ofmethodological approach that I
think was uh a bit different andimportant to do in a in sort of
a micro-historical context sothat we could see the texture of
everyday conversations andrelationship building, families
who sort of make decisionstogether, et cetera.
(23:54):
Like these little intimatethings that actually I think are
so important to the way weunderstand religion and and
politics and um and all of this.
SPEAKER_01 (24:03):
Certainly.
I I agree.
I think, you know, getting backto the kind of like cultural
framing of Obia is something forus to fear and you know, stay
away from it.
It oftentimes feels like, andI'm this is not to disparage any
parish or anything in Jamaica,but there is oftentimes this
rhetoric of, you know, it being,you know, as you said, black
(24:26):
magic, you know, but there's aobiyamana, obiyah woman in Saint
Mary or wherever we may haveyou, and you know, you're going
to them because you wantsomething done to somebody,
whatever.
But I think to your credit, youbreak it down for us in these
very lived ways that, you know,breaks down this sort of marker,
(24:47):
not only for it as something tobe feared, but just for us to
understand that, you know,especially for enslaved people,
you know, forcibly coming toJamaica at this time and to the
rest of the new world at thistime, they're coming with their
own practices, um, whatever thatmay have been, and whatever that
sort of evolved into, becauseeverybody was not from the same
(25:08):
place in the continent, um, ofcourse, right?
And so whatever that sort ofamalgamation of these practices
come to be known as in the newworld, or, you know, on the side
of the Atlantic, what thenbecomes the rhetoric around
them, you know, and as you younoted, are things that
colonizers have placed upon umthese traditions, right?
(25:33):
Not necessarily the lived andeveryday experience.
And so I really appreciated sortof that breakdown for us and
helping us understand that like,you know, you can't call a
baptism, for instance, right,that's being done quote unquote
by people practicing obia.
It it just helped, I think, moregenerally, to sort of underscore
(25:54):
um the way that these practicesdefinitely developed as opposed
to things to be feared.
And I think that definitely alsosort of like brings me to
another question that I had foryou because as we're talking
about the sort of legal aspectof Obia in Jamaica, so we have
this 1760 law where, you know,it's framed as, and this is a
(26:17):
quote, guys, for those tuningin, um, it's an act to remedy
the evils arising from irregularassemblies of the slaves, right?
And so as you had pointed toearlier, um, that's a direct
sort of using Ubia as somethingto be feared, quote unquote,
because Ubia was thought of tohelp gain those that were
(26:38):
participants in Taki'sRebellion, um, you know, the
power, the courage, thesolidarity to fight their
enslavers.
You know, these laws are stillon the books.
It's definitely gone throughvarious iterations.
So, as I mentioned, there's an1898 version and so on and so
forth.
And it's something that I saw onsocial media.
(27:00):
There were some, there was somework being done from people
trying to sort of encourage thegovernment.
This needs to be something thatwe change.
There is not necessarily theneed for it, or not, I don't
want to say need in that way.
How about um we need to sort ofreorient what we understand Ubia
to be one, and then from sort ofa legal aspect, like why is this
(27:25):
still on the books?
And I I mean that question istrue for a lot of things in the
region, um, but why is thisstill on the books?
And also how can we sort ofreorient um ourselves as a
nation to sort of understand whythese things even came into
practice and how we should bemoving towards understanding
them better culturally.
(27:47):
And so um, you know, OBIA stillbeing criminalized, I think, is
something that we still need tounderstand.
And your book, again, also umtackles this criminalization as
sort of a tool of violence.
And um, that's also veryimportant, I think, um, the
shift from understanding ofreligion as being, you know,
(28:09):
used to depict race and alsopolice religion in Jamaica and
maintain societal hierarchies.
Um, so these are things thatlike we're still contending with
today.
How do you think both, you know,the transition and
criminalization of Obia affectAfro-Jamaicans, both then and,
(28:29):
you know, even today, especiallythose who were particularly part
of the Moravian communities, asthere is this change between
understanding that Christianitywas formerly described as like a
Protestant thing to more sowhite people's religion.
SPEAKER_02 (28:48):
So, okay, I'm gonna begin with the sort of effects
of criminalization and sort ofthe fact that phobia is still
illegal, right?
Which is um, you know, reallyinteresting facts.
And um, I mean, hopefully itwill not be so for long, but you
know, the resistance is stillthere.
And I think that resistance doescome from kind of um, it's a
(29:08):
long-term effect of of what wasset in motion hundreds of years
ago.
And I think, you know, my bookfocuses on the years before
Taki's revolt and then looks atsort of the process of
criminalization, but there'sreally great research that I
also sort of draw on thatactually analyzes how obiar as a
crime has changed over time.
(29:30):
Um, you mentioned Diana Payton'swork earlier, and you know, her
book on the cultural politics ofOBIA really delves into this.
And I think one of the importantthings to recognize about the
impact and the changes to thecriminalization of OBIA is that,
you know, at first, the the lawthat you mentioned from 1760, it
talks about irregularassemblies.
(29:52):
And I think that this isactually a really important
phrase because it alerts us tothe fact that what was
dangerous, considered to bedangerous about OBIA was the
fact that it brought peopletogether and that they were
being bound together and thencreating community, strong
community through OBIA, right?
That this is a communalpractice.
(30:12):
And one of the things that thatfirst law does is it tries to
individualize and materializethe practice of obia.
So there's actually a list ofall of these different objects
that are associated with thepractice of obia, you know, from
gravedirt to parrot's beaks, youknow, the alligator's teeth,
like all of these differentactual materials that make it
(30:34):
more possible to police thepractice of obia.
And um over time, sort of this,I would say the the laws about
obiar continue to sort ofindividualize it, um, make it
into a practice that's abouteventually about fraud, right?
That you are fraudulentlyproviding services and offering
(30:55):
things to somebody, then thatyou are lying to them, right?
So this is that's sort of whatobia becomes uh later on in sort
of the 19th, 20th century.
This is sort of intentionallytrying to erase the history of
obia as a communal project.
And that is the purpose of thelaws.
And, you know, we've seen themthat they've been sort of
(31:16):
successful, right, in thislong-term stigma that that obia
retains.
Now I will say that I thinkthat, you know, Afro-Jamaicans
also, you know, it's not likethey just stopped practicing
obia.
People changed the the name oftheir practices.
You know, there's a interestingresearch on sort of the the rise
of the term science is insteadof obia.
(31:36):
It's not like these go away, butthen this term kind of gets
ostracized and and criminalizedand stigmatized.
And that's that is the historythat we see today.
You know, one thing that I thinkis very also important is that
it becomes from this periodwhere you have a European
missionary who's sort ofembracing the term to the impact
(31:57):
of criminalization, it does getincreasingly racialized, right?
So this is that's why sort ofthis, even finding this source
was surprising to me, becausethen you have um, you know, this
this sort of racialization ofreligious traditions, and umia
is marked as sort of uhsuperstitious and and also kind
of African.
(32:18):
There is sort of that racialcomponent that is a part of the
criminalization process.
SPEAKER_01 (32:23):
I wanted very briefly to get back to the point
on language, um, just as we'resort of unpacking the importance
of archives here, because youknow, if these uh archives were
written in standard German,quote unquote, if I can say
that, there may have would havebeen a potential for uh these
(32:45):
things to sort of have come outa little bit earlier.
Maybe, maybe not.
We can hypothesize on that.
Um, but having um been writtenby the Moravian missionaries, as
I mentioned, an archaic Germanscript, um, how do you think
that this contributed to thesilencing of the archives of
(33:06):
these stories for so long?
And sort of what was yourpersonal experience working with
this archaic language and havingto, you know, transcribe and
translate all of these pages?
SPEAKER_02 (33:18):
Yeah, you know, the history of the archive itself is
sort of central to the storythat I'm trying to tell about
phobia.
And um, there's a lot of ways inwhich knowledge is silenced and
you know, forgotten, and umhistory is sort of we inherit
only certain things.
And the Moravian archive is anvery unusual archive.
(33:38):
As you mentioned earlier, youknow, most people, if they're
studying the history of Jamaica,for example, you need English
and Spanish would be good, andbut like they're maybe if you're
gonna study other languages, itcould be Portuguese or French,
right?
Like these are the dominantEuropean empires of the
Caribbean.
And German is not on that list.
(34:00):
And so when I first sort ofdiscovered this archive that
there were even sources thatbarely anyone had looked at that
are talk about Caribbean historyin the 18th century and they're
in German and in this sort ofstrange script.
Um, to me, it felt like, oh,this is actually a place where I
can make a contribution.
(34:20):
Because I just happened to be aperson who knows German.
I have taken orthography classesto learn how to read this German
script.
Um, for those who don't know,which is most people almost no
one knows this, but the Germanlanguage was uh sort of the
alphabet, the way each of theletters was written, is not the
same as the other Europeanlanguages.
(34:41):
And so you have to kind of learnthese different symbols that
represent A, B, C, et cetera,and then to, in order to read
anything that was written byhand before 1940, it was
actually not until World War IIthat Romans, that sort of the
Romanized script was used byGermans.
Um, and so I thought this can bea place where, with my sort of
(35:04):
uh set of skills and interestsand expertise, kind of offer
something different to theconversation about uh Jamaican
history, about Obia.
So that was what I did.
So for you know, many years Iwas reading through this, very
difficult to read, you know,these manuscript pages and
(35:24):
transcribing them.
And one of the things I actuallyalso did as part of my research
was to uh make those allavailable online.
For those who really want to getdeep into the Moravian archive
from the 1750s, uh, those arenow transcribed into modern
German.
And also uh most of them I haveactually translated.
I actually think there are moreof these kinds of documents,
(35:45):
more of these kinds of archives.
You know, I can talk all daylong about the problems of the
Anglophone archive and the waythings are recorded.
Um, but I think that history isvery surprising and there are
things hidden in places that wewould never think to look.
And I hope that people keeplooking and then sort of when
they find these um sort ofoff-the-beaten path archives uh
(36:08):
to sort of do the work to makethem accessible.
Because, you know, I think we wecan tell different histories,
and that that is what I thinkthis archive offers us for the
history of OBIA.
I think it's really important tothink critically about how we
read archives, but also lookliterally in other new places
for archival records to telldifferent stories about the
Caribbean and uh and otherplaces.
SPEAKER_01 (36:31):
Definitely, definitely.
I fully agree.
I think that point on languageis definitely one I wanted to
underscore, as we've said,completely different place out
of probably most people's mindsto to seek, you know, archival
information on Jamaica.
Um, but also there's thisobviously added layer of sort of
how we come to unpack thesearchives.
(36:54):
And so I thank you for um thatwork of helping to unpack this.
And I'll be sure to add it onour strictly facts syllabus for
those wanting to check out thearchives a little bit more
intuitively.
Um, I have to ask this questionbecause it is my favorite
question of all um in terms ofstrictly facts, but I think this
one I found very interesting asI was thinking about it before
(37:17):
recording because I can name aslew of songs that are obia
related or, you know, LeeScratch Perry, like Beanie Man
has what I can the list can go,and it's not necessarily even,
you know, just relegated toJamaica.
Like I can think regionally ofsongs that are showing us that
(37:40):
Obia is definitely a centralpart of Caribbean life in many
ways, in terms of how many timesit shows up in our music.
Um, but also to the point thatwe're sort of talking about in
this episode, they areoftentimes following this sort
of stigmatized um direction,right?
That, you know, no obiyaminecan't bother me because I've got
(38:04):
God on my side.
And I'll put them in our shownotes for those who want to
check them out.
But I definitely want to hearfrom you, having done this
research.
Um, what is sort of yourfavorite example of obia or even
just general Caribbeanreligiosity as it shows up in
Caribbean popular culture?
SPEAKER_02 (38:22):
Yeah, um, well, I was thinking about this
question, and I I decided to gowith a novel that um I was
reading sort of before and thenuh while I was doing this
research um that talks aboutobia, but it's also about
rebellion and history and how,you know, the the histories from
the archives are incomplete andsort of trying to imagine a
(38:44):
different history, and that's umMarlon James's The Book of Night
Women, um, which I just think issuch a brilliant novel.
I've actually taught it before.
Um, and you know, again, Obia isin that book and it is an evil
practice.
But I actually kind of feel likeif Marlon James read this book
and then rewrote that, it wouldit would play a different role.
(39:07):
Um, but I think that what is soimportant about that is I I
think especially when it when wecome to thinking about gender
and religion, um, and gender andrebellion, oftentimes, you know,
these are very like maleauthority is emphasized in
archives and in sort of thestories that we tell.
And he's sort of telling adifferent story uh that sort of
(39:29):
reimagines the role of women,especially um in rebellion and
and and in religion.
And so that was one kind of uhmore, yeah, the the novel that
first came to mind when I when Iread your question.
But yeah, you're so right aboutthe ubiquitous sort of presence
of obiar um in music, etc.
I love that question too.
(39:50):
Thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (39:50):
Yeah, there are I was like, if I try to list them,
then I'm going to to run myselfragged.
Um so I will I will add them umon our strictly fact syllabus,
as I said, you guys, but Book ofNight women also came to mind.
So I will add that as well forthose who haven't read it.
Um but to close out, Dr.
Gerbner, I think, you know, ourconversation alone, but um
(40:14):
archival eruptions helps us, inmy view, to really understand
that like there is has beencreated this long-standing
binary, right, betweenChristianity and Abia and other,
you know, African-derivedpractices and you know,
spiritual practices.
How do you hope that umCaribbean societies at large
(40:35):
sort of will benefit fromunderstandings that many of
these practices that have beencriminalized, that have been
demonized, that have um, youknow, there have been these
hierarchies drawn compared to umthe colonial authority.
How can we sort of, you know,through understandings like that
(40:56):
in archival eruptions, help usto sort of draw more
similarities or, you know, helpus to reorient what we've been
taught from a culturalperspective?
SPEAKER_02 (41:08):
Yeah, I think that this is um it's so important to
realize that, you know,Afro-Jamaicans in the mid-18th
century were not dividing Obiafrom Christianity the way that
we do today.
And I think that we haveinherited kind of a definition
of religion that is reallycolonial.
And it's um, we are still sortof living in the uh the impacts
(41:31):
of this the 1760 law that thatcriminalized obia.
And, you know, if we canrecognize that obiy is
anti-colonial and anti-slavery,and it's not anti-Christianity,
and it wasn't anti-Christianityin the records from before the
the rebellion, then hopefully,you know, people today can kind
(41:54):
of reassess their perceptions ofthe stigma of Obia and you know,
and sort of embrace sort of thislonger history and tell a
different story about itbecause, you know, it definitely
is noticeable to me kind of inthe you know, the current debate
about whether OBIA should bedecriminalized or not.
You know, there's a contingentof Christians who are really
(42:16):
saying, no, you have to keep itas a it it is illegal and we
should not decriminalize it.
Um, and so I think this historyespecially maybe can speak to,
you know, that community andsort of uh maybe have them
rethink this longer history ofObia and its relation to
Christianity, uh, because theywere not oppositional.
And I don't think they have tobe oppositional.
SPEAKER_01 (42:39):
Beautifully said.
Thank you so much for joiningme, Dr.
Governor, for this episode.
I think one that is not onlytimely, right?
But I certainly learned a lotfrom reading your book.
And so for our listeners tuningin, it is linked in our show
notes.
Be sure to check out your copyof Archival Eruptions
Constructing Religion andCriminalizing OBIA in 18th
(43:01):
century Jamaica.
It I think is not only a greatread.
Oh, so I definitely wanted tosay to say that having had you
on the show, but one that Ithink um, you know, we're still
contending with as a society,and we have definitely learned a
lot from, not just in Jamaica,but in the region as a whole.
So thank you again for uhjoining you, Dr.
(43:24):
Garbner, for our listenerstuning in.
We hope you enjoyed thisepisode.
Again, be sure to check out yourown copy.
And till next time, look formore.
SPEAKER_00 (43:35):
Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts.
Visit strictlyfactspodcast.comfor more information from each
episode.
Follow us at Strictly Facts Podon Instagram and Facebook and at
StrictlyFacts P on Twitter.
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