Reimagining Queen Nanny of the Maroons
Reimagining Queen Nanny of the Maroons
Drawing on African spiritualism in which nature itself is sacred, and West African cultures where women are traditional leaders and the female-form is commonly ecologically deified, the “Reimagining Nanny” Project retelling of the story of Queen Nanny, national heroine of Jamaica, as a shaman of the forests, healer, priestess and protector of the springs and watersheds, and commander of energies of the earth, creatures, mountains and valleys of the Blue and John Crow Mountains of Jamaica.
This work centers the untold herstories of this iconic African-born woman who emerges as a central 17th century anti-colonial abolitionist freedom fighter, and more importantly as protector of Jamaica’s globally significant native biodiversity, ecosystems and mountains. The project illuminates significant African eco-cultural retentions that are largely unrecognized by positioning Queen Nanny as one of the island’s first ecologists. The work further uses this retelling as an opportunity to situate the eco-cultural knowledge of the Caribbean’s formerly enslaved Afro-indigenous peoples as crucial to the support of sustainable forest management practices, given the growing concerns and interests in climate resilience, environmental protection, and more diverse voices and cultural interest within and for the tropical biodiversity conservation movement.
Year: 2023
Runtime: 32 minutes 8 seconds
Language: English
Country: Jamaica
Premiere: Grenada
Udemba Mclean
Director
Leo R Douglas
Director
Leo Ricardo Douglas
Writer
Marcia Douglas
Writer
Leo Ricardo Douglas
Producer
Director Biography - Udemba Mclean, Leo R Douglas
Udemba McLean is a Jamaican filmmaker who considers himself a Visual Storyteller. His journey into Visual Storytelling began as a photographer. Udemba has worked with the Kingston Creative and several Jamaican creatives seeking the power of documentary-making for social change. In this project Udemba and Leo Douglas (writer/producer/co-director) sees the Reimagining Nanny: Her Sword, A Seed project as a fresh and compelling retelling of Afro-Caribbean ancestral cultural preservation and as a fundamental means of deepening regional appreciation of the contribution of the Jamaican black women on whose shoulders we stand as social change activists and as members of the environmental movement.
Leo Douglas is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University (NYU). He is also the 2023-2024 Director of the Caribbean Initiative within NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). He received his Ph.D., a Masters of Ecology and Environmental Biology, and an Advanced Environmental Policy Certificate from Columbia University. He also holds a Masters of Philosophy degree in Zoology from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He is a past-president of BirdsCaribbean, the largest single international NGO focusing on the flora and fauna of the greater Caribbean region. He is a Government of Jamaica Millennium Scholar, Musgrave Medal Winner - for Distinguished Eminence in the Field of Science, a Partners in Flight (PIF) Leadership Award Winner - for Outstanding Contribution to Bird Conservation, a 2021 NYU Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award Recipient.