The Last Arawak Girl - documentary film project

Hello, my name is Sabantho Aderi Corrie-Edgehill, I am a newly married 22-year-old Early Childhood Teacher, and a proud member of the Eagle Clan of the Lokono-Arawak Tribal Nation of Guyana, South America, although I was born in the Caribbean island nation of Barbados, where myself and my Guyana tribal territory born siblings attended school, and where they still reside. My Swedish husband Niklas( who is of paternal Barbadian ancestry & is a Composite Technician by profession) - and I both agreed that it was important to create this campaign, in order to take the positive book response to a necessary logical evolution into visual media - for greater lasting social impact.

This next main project is important because - not only will it be a rare Caribbean Indigenous heroine, with actors who are actual Lokono-Arawaks, and the dialogue will be mainly in our ancient Lokono-Arawak language (with English and Spanish subtitling provided by the producer), and when completed thanks to you - this will be another historic first as no feature film yet exits that was done in our native language, and the first and only currently existing one - is the G-rated 22 minute TV Documentary Educational Film we just completed - which is being given freely to the Ministry of Culture in Barbados - for donation to every school in Barbados. 
The reason for all of this is to give a purely indigenous perspective on the experience of European colonization in the Caribbean, a perspective never expressed this authentically hitherto. Caribbean indigenous peoples in general, are subconsciously viewed as 'relics of history' or 'lingering curiosities of a bygone era' ..and most non-indigenous people have already mentally consigned 'Arawaks' to the dustbin of history, so it continues to be an uphill struggle to get our voices heard by the dominant non-indigenous society - that generally prefers to talk ABOUT us, but not WITH us to this very day, and so our stories are very much still unknown.
 
The published book that my father (himself a prominent indigenous rights activist & voice for the Lokono-Arawak people) wrote, generated so much interest as it revealed circumstantial evidence (from colonial English sources themselves) of our people's presence here long after European settlement in 1627 - despite an official settler declaration that 'the island was uninhabited, the same thing the English settlers in Australia said - and which we all know to be untrue.
The tremendous historical significance of bringing this long-suppressed truth to light goes far beyond righting a historical wrong, and finally letting the truth - see the light of day, this project once completed and aired on state-run TV (who have promised to show it) and private social media channels, is also going to become a powerful tool for a national spiritual awakening, consciousness-expanding, and long-overdue inter-ethnic reconciliation and a catalyst for a deeper national peaceful multi-cultural integration, for this cannot be achieved until the first inhabitants of a country who lived and loved this land for millennia before anyone else - are accorded the dignity of recognition and respect as being the foundation thread of the social and cultural fabric of our modern-day society.
 
A well known Indigenous Venezuelan Producer called Roberto Penuela (you can verify him on IMDb) - who has 17 films to his credit (including Miranda - that starred well-known Hollywood actor Danny Glover), has kindly offered to handle this project at a greatly discounted fee of only 10,000 Euros (total cost - including him flying to Barbados in person and staying there for 30 days to complete the filming), as Roberto was once a foreign student staying in my grandparents home in Barbados - where he came to learn English in the 1970s. The PG-13 Cinema quality finished feature film that this fundraiser is for - will be 90 minutes of running time.
 
Coincidentally, quite recently I was asked to contribute an article about the Power of Ritual on the path to womanhood for Cultural Survival magazine, you can google this and verify it also, as my younger sister Laliwa Hadali Corrie - was the first Arawak girl in recorded modern history, to undergo our traditional 9-day long Lokono-Arawak puberty ritual in Barbados (April 2020), and the native heroine of the book & film - is a young Lokono-Arawak girl who was the last to be born in Barbados, and who sadly died soon after her own puberty ritual in the late 1600s (so she would have been the same age then - as my sister now). This project gives a voice to an indigenous female from an era where few indigenous females were written about in any respectful manner, so you can just imagine - the importance of having an indigenous heroine to the generation of our female youth today who are by and large only now learning about - and asserting our women's rights! To see someone like you portrayed respectfully and intelligently on screen - will leave a lasting impression in the minds of Caribbean indigenous girls that mere words in a book could never achieve on their own.
 
We thank you again from the bottom of our hearts for taking the time to read this far into this appeal, and if you support us in spirit but cannot afford to donate financially, would you be so kind as to consider helping us to get the word out - by sharing this campaign on your own social media platforms? You can use the share tool on this platform for this purpose, thank you again.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Sabantho & Niklas Edghill
 
PS - Every donor (not their donated amount) will be publicly thanked and mentioned by name at the end of film credits, for helping to see this history-making Cinematic quality feature film endeavor come to fruition.