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COLUMN ONE
A Spat Over a Spit

The sequel to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' has Johnny Depp roasting over a
fire. The imagery gets the film in hot water with a local tribal chief.

By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer

April 25, 2005

BATAKA, Dominica — Sabers rattled and epithets rang across this lush
tropical island long before the first crew arrived this month to film the
"Pirates of the Caribbean" sequel.

Somewhere in the middle of the movie, natives are supposed to capture
Johnny Depp's character, Captain Jack Sparrow, and spit-roast the
swashbuckling pirate with fruits and vegetables "like a shish kebab," said
Bruce Hendricks, the Walt Disney Pictures executive in charge of
production.

"It's a funny, almost campy sequence," he said of a film also populated by
ghost pirates and zombies. "There are a lot of silly moments in it."

But some of Dominica's Carib inhabitants are offended by what they consider
an insinuation that their forebears were cannibals. They've called on the
3,500-strong population that is the last surviving indigenous group in the
Caribbean to choose between fleeting fame and tribal honor. Chief Charles
Williams asked his community to boycott the project, but most have welcomed
the financial infusion.

To those Dominicans who see the economic benefits of the film shoot, it is
a frivolous spat over a fantasy story. To others such as Williams, it is a
blotch on the image of the Caribs. The group is a minority on Dominica,
whose 70,000 people are mostly of African descent.

Disney argues that the film is fiction, but Williams says it draws on
history.

"Pirates did come to the Caribbean in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries,"
he said. "Our ancestors were labeled cannibals. This is being filmed in the
Caribbean."

History books still cast the Caribs as cannibals during the time of the
European settlement of the Caribbean that began in the 15th century but
didn't reach Dominica, a tiny island in the eastern Caribbean, until 200
years later. But the indigenous people, the chief argues, were simply
defending themselves.

"Today, that myth, that stigma is still alive," Williams said, denying that
the Caribs ever ate those they vanquished. "Today, Disney wants to
popularize that stigma one more time, this time through film, and film is a
powerful tool of propaganda."

He recalls watching Western films as a boy in the 1960s and cheering for
the embattled white settlers rather than the displaced indigenous people.
"They were the stars of the film," Williams said. "They were the ones being
attacked."

As newly elected chief of the Carib Territorial Council, Williams was
approached by a delegation of Disney executives in October to discuss Carib
collaboration on the film, for which about 400 locals have been hired as
grips, caterers, drivers and extras. When the chief learned of the scene
depicting Depp's character on the barbecue spit, he said the Caribs would
boycott the production.

"For me, a good name is better than riches," Williams said. "Shame on us
that for a few dollars we are betraying our flesh and blood."

Other Caribs say the chief is taking offense where none was intended.

"He didn't have the right to make that decision for the entire community,"
said Christabelle Auguiste, the only woman on the seven-member tribal
council. She regards the filming of a potential blockbuster in her homeland
as an opportunity to show off the island's stunning natural attractions and
to raise international consciousness about the Caribs and their traditions.
The first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie grossed more than $650 million
worldwide.

"Throughout the years, there's been this picture painted of us as
cannibals. The fact that some people might have had an arm or a leg in
their homes didn't mean they ate people. They were kept as tokens of war,"
Auguiste said of her ancestors and their clashes with European invaders.

Like the majority of Dominica's Caribs, Auguiste is of mixed heritage, her
family having intermarried with the island's Afro-Caribbeans. The Caribs
migrated from South America a millennium ago and share the mahogany skin
and facial features of the indigenous peoples of that continent.

The six-week filming will not only provide short-term employment for Caribs
and a boost in service-industry revenue, but it "will also clear the air,"
said Auguiste, a tour guide who has been offered a minor role in the
sequel.

"It took 250 years for Dominica to be colonized after the arrival of
Christopher Columbus," she said. "Dominica is the only country Columbus
would recognize now if he revisited. This is something the Carib people
should be proud of."

The Carib Territory in the northeast of the country is an enclave of
poverty belied by the bounty of banana, breadfruit and guava trees along
the road. Lush fern groves are abloom with ginger lilies, birds of paradise
and orchids. The thickly forested parks and mountains rustle with monkeys,
iguanas and brightly plumed parrots.

From thatched huts that have changed little over centuries, Carib women
weave mats and baskets from reeds and men carve canoes from tree trunks.
Those crafts, along with fishing and farming, are their main source of
income.

Auguiste said her community would only lose by being uncooperative because
Disney executives had made clear that they would film the sequel on St.
Vincent, the location for the original, if they were thwarted on Dominica.
Some scenes of the sequel were shot on St. Vincent in early April.

At the urging of Caribs who wanted to work with the moviemakers, the
council convened in January to debate the Disney project and voted 6-0 to
overrule Williams' unilateral decision. The chief abstained from the vote
but has continued to denounce the project. He won't allow any of the
production crew that began arriving in mid-April stay at the seven-room
hotel he operates in the territory.

Tourism Minister Charles Savarin said the film, due in cinemas in summer
2006, could put Dominica on the international map.

"We've been seeking to create tourism to diversify our economy from its
total dependence on agriculture," Savarin said, noting that the market for
Dominican bananas has been shrinking drastically. "This film provides us
with an opportunity to showcase the island in a film that millions of
people around the world will see. The island is not well known now. It's
often confused with the Dominican Republic. This will expose us to the
international community in a way we have long been pursuing."

The immediate economic benefits are obvious, he said, with construction
workers deployed to build sets, taxi drivers shuttling camera crews to
remote filming sites and hundreds of others getting work as grips and
extras from both the African and Carib communities. In the longer term, he
said, other moviemakers could be sold on Dominica's natural backdrop of
mountains, rain forest and waterfalls, and moviegoers could be enticed to
book vacations.

He has no qualms about the human barbecue scene — a peril from which
Sparrow apparently escapes, because production has already begun on a third
Pirates movie. "The Caribs are not being portrayed as cannibals, because
it's not a story about the Caribs," the tourism minister said. "To my mind,
this is as much a mythical story as 'Batman' or 'Superman' or 'Dracula.' "

Carib historian Prosper Paris applauds the council's decision to let people
decide whether they want to take part in the film, saying that is the
democratic approach — and a pragmatic one for a community that suffers as
much as 70% unemployment. But he worries about long-term implications for
harmony among the Caribs.

"This is creating animosity inside. When people live in a deprived society,
they need employment and will turn a deaf ear to the negative image the
work might involve," he said. "I worry that there will always remain a
stigma" toward those who work on the film.

"This is a way to make money but you have to think about your principles,
pride and culture," said Kathleen Jno-Lewis, school principal for the 94
students in this village that serves as the seat of the Carib Territory,
the self-governing reservation on which most of the community lives. "No
'Pirates of the Caribbean' can pay us for this legacy."

Lorna Dalsan, curator of the Dominica Museum, said the distorted accounts
of the Carib population in school history classes here as recently as the
1980s kept the Caribs isolated and feared by the majority of Dominicans.

"When I was a child, they were not so integrated. They had a more warlike
image and we were told they were fierce," recalled Dalsan, who is of
African descent. "I know the Caribs were not happy with this portrayal, but
it's what we were taught. It was in the history books, which came from
England."

European settlers who brought in African slaves to work coffee and fruit
plantations in the late 17th century may have cast the indigenous people as
savage cannibals to scare their captives out of trying to escape, Dalsan
speculates.

For the locals being paid almost $100 a day to give the film a more
authentic ethnic backdrop, there is tolerance for literary license.

"It's just a movie," said Annmarie Valmond, a 45-year-old fruit farmer who
has been hired as an extra. "It's the kind of picture you look at and say,
'Well, that's obviously not real!' "

Aaron Aubigny makes his living as a drummer in the Karifauna cultural group
that puts on shows of native dance and music for tour groups shuttled in
from the cruise ship pier in Roseau, a 90-minute drive west. He has been
hired to appear in the film and brushes off suggestions that the
spit-roasting scene will besmirch his people.

"I don't remember ever eating flesh," the 32-year-old musician said. "If it
was true that our people did that, I would be feeling it in my blood."

Disney's Hendricks argued that the controversial scene, which he said will
be less than five minutes in a two-hour movie, should be taken in the
context of the movie's other bouts of surrealism and camp.

"This is a big fantasy. There is no sense of reality or any idea that this
is how the Caribs' life was in the 17th century," Hendricks said. "I think
when people see the movie and its fantasy and comedic elements, I'm
optimistic no one is going to be offended by it."