Hilton Head Monthly Magazine

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Tom Barnwell doesn’t want this article running in our February issue.

He wants this article running all year long.

At the tail end of our conversation about Gullah culture, the unique challenges it faces and how it can endure in this modern world, the energetic fifth-generation Native Islander emphasized one last point: “There needs to be this kind of dialogue on an ongoing basis. We are all here together now.”

The “we” he refers to are the “binyah” and the “cumyah.” Translated from Gullah, binyah refers to the native islanders and cumyah, the more recent transplants.

The “now” he refers to is “after the bridge,” a division of time you’ll find pop up again and again in discussions with the island’s many “binyahs.”

After the bridge

It was that bridge that altered a culture otherwise fundamentally unchanged since its people were freed from slavery. That bridge dragged Native Islanders into the modern world, and triggered a seismic shift in the culture that can still be felt today. At first, as it so often does, this sea change came about slowly, incrementally. The Gullahs could barely even feel it happening.

“We gradually had to adjust to whether we would get (electricity and telephones) and we had an additional financial responsibility so we had to make adjustment so that,” said Barnwell. “Then later, county building codes came along. We used to build houses wherever we wanted to.”

Emory Campbell is another Native Islander who echoes the bisection of time into before and after the bridge.

“The culture has been changing since the bridge,” said Cambpell, who in addition to being a Native islander is the chairman of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. “We were overwhelmed by a new type of culture. Ours was based on the land.”

Campbell described skills that are no longer needed—small building blocks of the Gullah culture that are easy to discard in the modern world, but nearly impossible to recall once you have. Skills like basket weaving that were once passed down out of necessity and are now extinct on the island. (According to Campbell, the last local basket weaver, Jenny Cohen, passed away years ago.) Before the bridge, if you didn’t know how to work a boat you not only couldn’t get anywhere, you’d probably go hungry. Now, Campbell describes this skill as another casualty of modernity.

But it wasn’t just the sea that shaped the Gullah culture.

It was the land, and for the Gullah it’s almost gone. Before the bridge, the 2,500 Native Islanders shared 10,000 acres. Today, a population estimated to be around the same size shares 650 acres.

And beyond the culture, the ways of life passed down from generation to generation, there’s the language. The term Gullah actually refers to the native tongue of the Gullah, a hodgepodge of English and various African dialects forged in the fields of plantations along the coast.

It, too, is being cast aside as Gullah culture finds its way in the modern world.

Take the word “biddie,” for example. It’s a Gullah term meaning chicken, and as Campbell points out, “You don’t see chickens, so you don’t hear that word.”

Again, it’s an incremental loss, like having to apply to the county before building a house, or purchasing a basket instead of making your own. But pile up enough incremental losses and you’re left with one giant loss.

When it comes to the language, Campbell points to successes such as the Gullah translation of the New Testament, but also admits that his generation could very well be the last to speak Gullah fluently.

Into the future

Not all is lost for Gullah culture on Hilton Head Island, however.

“There’s an article today (in The Island Packet) about the town and county buying land for Mitchelville. That’s a major step this year; one that makes my heart happy,” said Barnwell.

Mitchelville, a proposed park for which Barnwell has been a major champion, sits on a historic spot for Native Islanders. The site of the “Port Royal Experiment,” Mitchelville is basically ground zero for Hilton Head’s Gullah. It was here, with the island occupied by the Union and the plantation owners having fled, that the Gullah were able to claim that this land was theirs. The Town of Hilton Head Island and Beaufort County are helping the Gullah make that claim again, with a pledged $258,000 in support.

Then there’s the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which was designated by Congress in 2006 and is part of the National Parks System. It has helped visitors understand the depth of Gullah culture up and down the coast.

And, because you can’t stop old-time religion, Native Islander churches are seeing more congregants.

“There are more, they have grown and have held steady. That is the one thing that is constant,” said Barnwell. Campbell echoed his statement, listing the religion and spirituality as two aspects of the culture that are still intact.

But beyond land, beyond museums and churches, there is one crucial element upon which the entire culture rests: According to Barnwell, it is education.

“Education is the key and core to everything,” he said. The education he describes is twofold. The first is for Native Islanders to pass on the skills, sounds and flavors of Gullah culture on to their young.

The second aspect of this education is for visitors to learn about the culture and gain an appreciation for it. It’s here that cumyahs can help, by educating themselves this month at the Hilton Head Island Gullah Celebration.