“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” — George Orwell
A quotation that captures one of the greatest tragedies facing Bonaire today.
Education is not simply about mathematics, languages, or science. It shapes identity. It teaches children where they come from, who they are, and why their society exists as it does.
When a people are denied their own history, they gradually lose the ability to understand their present, defend their rights, and determine their future. As Bonaire commemorates 1 July—Emancipation Day and July as Emancipation Month, we remember the abolition of slavery. Yet, as discussed in our previous article, Conditional Freedom: Bonaire’s Unfinished Emancipation, legal emancipation did not automatically bring freedom.
The descendants of the enslaved remained politically, economically, and culturally subordinated, while their own history was largely absent from the education of successive generations.
Perhaps the greatest injustice is not only what happened to our ancestors, but that generations of Bonairean children were never taught that history.
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” — Michael Crichton
Many Bonaireans completed school without learning about slavery on Bonaire, post-1863 forced labour, emancipation, ancestral resistance, or their island’s colonial history.
Instead, they learned more about Europe than their homeland. Deprived of their own history, many remain disconnected from their identity and less able to understand the human rights and constitutional challenges affecting Bonaire today.
Like thousands of my peers, I completed my education without ever being taught Bonaire’s colonial history or that 1 July 1863 marked the abolition of slavery in the former Dutch colonies. It was only in 2010, during the dismantling of the Netherlands Antilles, that I began researching Bonaire’s past in order to understand the constitutional changes taking place. That search fundamentally changed my understanding of our island’s history.
When I , after 2010 began writing and speaking publicly about slavery, colonialism, and Bonaire’s forgotten past, I was met with fierce criticism. Political and community leaders publicly condemned me and argued that Bonaire should not “go back to the past” and discouraged discussions of slavery and colonial history. Rather than promoting historical awareness, the prevailing message was that these subjects should remain taboo and buried.
The most revealing moment came after I delivered a lecture on the abolition of slavery on 1 July at the church in Rincon. Following the lecture, my mother in her late 70’s, who had attended the event, admitted that she too had never known that 1 July commemorated the abolition of slavery. Like many Bonaireans educated before her, she had never been taught this defining chapter of her own history. Because she had never received that knowledge, she could not pass it on to her children.
This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Bonaire Education Crisis. When one generation is denied its own history, the next generation is denied it as well. The chain of historical memory is broken.
“If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday then any leader can tell you anything.” — Howard Zinn
Following Bonaire’s constitutional transition in 2010, education came under the direct responsibility of the Dutch State. Expectations were high that educational equality would improve. Instead, many parents and educators continue to express concern that Bonairean history, language, culture, and identity remain insufficiently reflected in the education system.
Howard Zinn warned that people who do not know their history are vulnerable to accepting whatever version of reality they are given. For Bonaire, this is not merely a philosophical observation—it describes an educational reality whose consequences continue to shape society today.
The restoration of Bonaire’s history within the education system is therefore not simply an academic matter. It is a human rights imperative. Every Bonairean child has the right to an education that reflects their own history, protects their language and cultural identity, and prepares them not only to understand the world, but to understand themselves.
James Finies – Founder BHRO
