A leading expert on the effort to seek reparations for slavery is to give a lecture in Bermuda next week.

Professor Verene Shepherd, one of the vice chairs of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), is coming to the Island to discuss the group’s work and the progress made.

The professor of social history at the University of the West Indies will give a public talk, Reparation, Psychological Rehabilitation and Pedagogical Strategies, as part of the annual Dr Kenneth E Robinson/Cyril Outerbridge Packwood Memorial Lecture series.

“The lecture will pay tribute to the honorees, Packwood and Robinson, and use evidence from their work to show the legitimacy of the Caribbean Reparatory Justice Programme (CRJP),” Prof Shepherd said. “I will rehearse the genealogy of the reparation movement, pay tribute to enslaved Africans who started it and lament the support even in the midst of continuing justification for it.

“The lecture will introduce those unfamiliar with the CRJP to it, zero in on one of the points — psychological rehabilitation — and suggest how educators and the general public can find ways to raise awareness and address it.

“Bermudians will be brought up-to-date on the CARICOM action plan.”

Prof Shepherd, a fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society, said this would be her first visit to Bermuda and that she was “delighted to have been invited and honoured to have been asked to deliver this distinguished lecture”.

“Bermuda is an associate member of CARICOM and has the right to join the rest of the CARICOM states in their reparation struggle,” she said. “But Bermudians will have to decide for themselves whether they join the movement or not. It is in your hands.

“The aims, plans and progress of the CRC will be explained at the lecture. The CRC has managed to increase public awareness locally, regionally and internationally on the right to reparation, and is being supported by all the national committees.”

Prof Shepherd declined to comment on calls for a Commission of Inquiry into historical land grabs in Bermuda, and possible reparations.

“I have not studied the issue sufficiently to give an informed opinion,” she said. “But obviously the issue of land distribution in the post-slavery period is of interest all over the Caribbean and will no doubt be a subject for discussion at the upcoming reparation conference in Antigua/Barbuda in October.

“Perhaps Bermuda should send a representative to that conference and educate us all on the issue.”

Prof Shepherd said there was no limit on how far back people could go in terms of seeking reparations.

“The human trafficking of Africans in which Europeans were engaged for centuries were crimes against humanity,” she said. “As far as I have been told by legal experts, there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.

“The evidence of the crimes are well researched, even though there are those who have not familiarised themselves with the historical records.

“The perpetrators are known, the victims are known, and the route to repair the damage done has been suggested in the CRJP.

“Those who attend the lecture will leave knowing that a financial package is not the only route to reparation.”

Prof Shepherd is an advocate of compulsory history classes in schools and believes education is vital in the quest for reparations.

“I am passionate because I am guided by what [political leader] Marcus Garvey said and by what I have gained by studying history,” she said.

“Garvey said that ‘history is the landmark by which we are directed into the true course of life’ and that ‘a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots’.

“History education fosters pride and a sense of identity and keeps our people rooted in their past, which is much greater than the period of enslavement.”

Prof Shepherd said history teaching was no longer as focused on Europe thanks to people such as Bermudian historian Packwood.

“The Eurocentrism is slowly disappearing because Caribbean people like Packwood have written our own history,” she said.

“But if history is not mandatory in our schools, such work will remain hidden.

“Caribbean policymakers have the power to change this situation but civil society is also a stakeholder.”

Also an expert on women and slavery, Prof Shepherd has highlighted the important role of females in the fight for emancipation — and praised Bermuda for honouring Mary Prince.

“Women bore the brunt of the slave system and therefore had a stake in the enlightenment project of emancipation,” she said. “They may not have all worked on sugar plantations or be prominent as leaders of armed revolt, but their day-to-day strategies to undermine the economic efficiency of the slave system — whether in house or field — were effective.

“Rebel women are there in the historical records. We just have to fight for their recognition, and Bermudians have started the process by honouring Mary Prince.

“We will get there — gender equality among those we select as heroes and heroines.”

A member of the United Nation’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, Prof Shepherd was part of a UN collective who hit the headlines last year for writing to the government of the Netherlands over the traditional portrayal of a servant in a Christmas parade that perpetuated a negative stereotype of Africans.

Amsterdam’s mayor has since said the controversial character would be changed.

“Cultural practices deemed offensive, and racism, exist in many countries and whatever the generation, we will have to engage in intercultural dialogue to effect change and bring about understanding among all people,” Prof Shepherd said.