Independence Is a Practice: Cultural Resilience Beyond the Flag

A Caribalent reflection on the evolving meaning of independence in the Caribbean

Introduction

Independence in the Caribbean is often marked with parades, pageantry and patriotic celebration. Flags fly high, national colours sweep buildings and main roads and anthems rise with familiar pride. But beyond the symbolism, what does independence really mean, today and every day after?

For many artists and cultural workers across the region, independence is not just a date, it’s a daily act of reclaiming, remembering and resisting. It is the quiet labour of language preservation, the fierce defence of land and livelihood, the ongoing struggle to define identity outside of colonial frames.

As several Caribbean nations mark their independence this August, we reflect not only on the moment of political separation from Britain or France, but on the unfinished work of cultural sovereignty. What happens after the flag is raised? What survives? And who decides what freedom looks like?

Art as Nation Work

In the years immediately following independence, governments leaned on the arts to help build national identity. Writers were funded to tell local stories. Dancers trained in folk forms. Visual artists created portraits of “the people.” Yet, even then, the idea of a singular national identity was fraught. Caribbean societies are shaped by a complex mix of Indigenous erasure, African resilience, Asian migration, European control and more.

Today, artists continue this delicate work, building bridges across fractured histories while pushing for new definitions of belonging. Through clay, canvas, sound and text, they resist flattening narratives and instead embrace multiplicity.

Economic Realities and Creative Autonomy

While flags declare sovereignty, many Caribbean nations remain economically entangled with former colonial powers, international lenders and foreign investors. This dependency extends into the cultural sphere, where funding often comes from outside institutions, non-profit, embassies, biennales abroad.

The question of creative independence is, therefore, also about resource control: Who gets to tell the story? Who owns the archive? Who funds the future?

Beyond the Holiday: A Daily Practice

To be Caribbean and creative today is to navigate these tensions. It is to create with and in spite of. It is to remember ancestors not only on Emancipation Day, but in daily acts of making. It is to speak in patois, kweyol and rhythm. It is to hold space for grief, joy, contradiction and critique.

True independence - cultural, economic, spiritual, is a process, not a milestone. And in this ongoing struggle, the region’s artists remain among its most important architects of freedom.

So what does it mean to be independent, really and who gets to decide when we are?